Work Text:
Something's changed overnight.
During their dalliance at Jaburo, a corner of Amuro's brain hummed to life. It was dusty with disuse and scorched with freezerburn, partitioned so totally from the rest of his awareness that he could forget it existed. (Could convince himself there was a point in carrying on without it.) But after that talk, after Char, brimming with possibility and furtive hope, caging him in against the wall and whisking him into the rest of the night, it gave, bending serendipitously, pulling greedily. He couldn't believe he had ever been without.
Char couldn't either.
It's withered. Lieutenant Quattro died: this, Amuro believes, for the person on the end of the line is unknown to him. It's gone cold, almost-dead, a mockery of the purpose they had once shared. A mockery of what came before it. Amuro almost wishes it were truly broken, if he could stand to conceptualize such a thing.
It's a corpse rotting bloated and pustulant – but not infectious. That would imply that there was some part of it that yet lived, which is false. No, there's just nothing there. A complete blockade. Deafening in its hollowness. An icy snowscape, absorbing all noise, cushioning Amuro's every scream and kick.
Char's always been stubborn, but not like this. He can't help someone who won't be helped.
He's not sure if it's better than not knowing.
But – something's changed overnight. Amuro can't quite put his finger on it. It tastes like smoke on his palate, jumps through his veins in a hurried canter. It makes him jittery, restless; he finds his leg inexplicably sore, only noticing later that he's been bouncing it very fast; he cycles through unprompted bouts of focus, snapping between intense achievement and spacy dizziness. His colleagues notice.
(He has those now. Actual colleagues, not minders monitoring his every step and tutting when he wobbled. Not family, either.)
His colleagues notice, so he finds himself sitting on his ass in the countryside of France. It's nice, he supposes, but it really does feel like a punishment. He's gotten to the point of wigging out of his own skin when the thing crests upon him.
It happens in the dead of night. Amuro turns in his sleep, makes to pull the quilt up, and halts. Awareness dawns on him with the grace of an anvil, with the texture of sinuous slime.
He feels like he's freezing to death.
Then the moment passes. Amuro gasps, breath returning to him, blood warming his body with every beat, but behind his eyes he remains cold. His lungs expand around phantom intrusions. He blinks into the dark, presses the heels of his palms into his retinas and breathes around a horrid, lodged lump; kaleidoscoping colours burst across his vision.
He lets his hands fall. Stares at the ceiling. The nausea abates in stages, but his chest clings to the memory. He swallows, then again, then sits up, hunching over the bunched blankets.
Char?
Nothing. There never is.
But then-
A spike pierces into his spine, at the base of his neck. From it radiates- something, something horrible and awful and consuming, and it travels downward with a wild abandon, almost preylike in its scurry. And then it's gone.
The retraction gives Amuro whiplash. He sits there, breathing in the dark, for a long while. He settles back into his own skin with an uneasy slide.
He gets up. He doesn't sleep until the sun rises the next day.
He's at a quaint little café when it happens again.
It's not the same. There's that creeping ice, but it's chased by a bleeding fervour, spreading its claws wide within his lungs, pushing at their limits, forcing his flesh to bulge around them.
A column of teeth burn along the opened nerve of his soul.
There's coffee all down the back of his hand. It's angry red. The waiter exclaims at him first in French, then in English. Amuro tugs out some napkins, pats his hand down, then rises and drifts out of the building.
He sits down under some trees in the shade. This town is unremarkable but for its trees, standing tall, undisturbed by the tumult of war. They're strange things. Amuro's used to the shrubbery of new growth, of optimistic planting and replanting, of the remnants of old goliaths and no more. Leaning against it feels profane, so he doesn't.
Char.
Nothing.
Char, come on. I'm not even the one reaching out.
The leaves clatter like paper chimes.
His hand is sore, he realizes belatedly. He gathers up the pain and launches it into space.
A refracted echo of- of derision? amusement? vindication? touches upon the crown of his head. He swipes it away, scowling.
Fuck you. What's wrong? Stop brain-blasting me, we don't talk.
Minutes pass. The breeze cards through Amuro's hair. It smells faintly acrid.
A ghost of a touch falls just barely across his shoulders. It asks to see. Amuro frowns but his heart jumps traitorously, and behind his eyes the presence hovers. For a few moments, he blinks in doubletime, then he's alone again, and the connection is cold.
He pulls and pulls but he doesn't come back. He hurls expletives until he runs out of steam.
Despite everything, he hangs on tenterhooks, waiting for the next encounter. But days pass, and it doesn't come, and Amuro's sick of feeling like a jilted lover, so he throws himself into work until they notice he's online and block him from signing in.
Stop it!!!, Chan texts. Traitor, he texts back. Go eat pain au chocolat, she says. He doesn't reply because she's busy and he doesn't want to continue distracting her. He watches the screen anyway.
A tiny ember of recognition smoulders within Chan, unnurtured and of limited potential. It's relieving and disappointing both. She's kind but unafraid to tell him when he's wrong (even when he's being an obstinate prick) and she never confronts him with condescension or coddling. She treats him like an equal. He likes Chan.
But they're not quite the same. It comforts him enough that it makes him guilty.
He wanders to the kitchen, unmoored, makes himself a quick brunch then heads to the door to open it because-
Because he's there.
He's standing there, sunglasses in place, offyellow suit jacket squaring his shoulders. He's cut his hair. It doesn't suit him.
If preempting his knock disturbs him, Amuro can't intuit it beyond the glasses. He's rigid, statuesque, almost inhumanly still.
Amuro stumbles over words, sentences, insults and demands and pleas and worries, and ultimately settles on none of them. He simply tilts sideways, and nods his head into the room.
Char walks by. He carries a whiff of cologne about him.
He maintains his vigil, turned away and vaguely adrift in the center of the room. Ostentatious but somehow repressed, he cuts a strange figure against the quaint summer cabin. It's unlike him.
Well, who's to say – Amuro's not sure he knows this man.
Like a crack in porcelain, Char's eyes alight upon him. They pierce through dark lenses. Their weight is almost physical. All Amuro can say is, "So?"
He can feel Char's attention meander, almost bashfully. Amuro glances towards the kitchen element, the pot of scrambled eggs to the side and forgotten. He shrugs with an edge of aggression. "Want some?"
Char looks at him. All of a sudden, the absurdity of the situation breaks through the mental dam and Amuro strides forward, anger propelling him, hurt boiling over. He snares his fists in that stupid jacket and digs into the skin beneath. "What's wrong with you? Why are you here?" Where have you been. How dare you?
Nothing but blankness meets him in return. A twist in the air: he's broken eye contact. Amuro shakes him, shoves him back with the points of his knuckles. He stumbles.
The suit jacket wrinkles. Satisfaction rumbles at the sight.
It's not enough.
If he won't tell him anything, won't let him in, won't respond to his begging and pleading nor the fraying of Amuro's end of the line, raw and overworked and sore with threadbare abrasions, then he'll just-
He claps his hands on gaunt cheeks and wrenches him down to his lips. Amuro bites from the get-go, worrying at tight chapped skin. It's like kissing a corpse for the first few awful seconds, then something breaks and Char is surging against him, thrumming in pinpoint sync. They bleed together, as quickly as they ever had, running into each other in a closed circuit. He's warm all over. Their teeth clack. A shard of ice slips under his heart.
Amuro blinks his eyes open but Char grips his shoulders, whirls them around, starts walking him back, his tongue sliding against the roof of his mouth and pressing hard into his canines and he can't really refute that. His head knocks against the wall and Char doesn't slow, dropping one shoulder and struggling the jacket off; Amuro holds the sides of his neck to try and back him up, just for a second, so he can more quickly complete the action, maybe remove those stupid sunglasses, but Char hunches, arms pulling at his elbows but his chin and tongue forward.
"Wh-" and Char sucks his tongue clean out of his mouth and kneads it between his teeth until he gasps for breath. "Mh, what-" and Char thrusts as deep as he can reach, freed hands spidering along his cheekbones, pinning him still and diving and taking. "Char-" and Char slides down his neck and tugs his t-shirt collar aside and he hears a few stitches tear, and bites down hard, maybe hard enough to draw blood, it hurts-
Amuro clocks him across the jaw. He careens to the ground. Amuro's neck fucking hurts. "What are you doing?"
His glasses have clattered to the floor. His jacket lies in a heap to his left.
A single breath passes and Char's scrambling forward, hands and knees, sits on his haunches and grips Amuro's waist-
Amuro closes a palm across his face and turns him away. There he is: cloudy blue, peering up over a pinched cheek, open wild and sleepless. He breathes mulishly through a nosetip askew. His eyes are beautiful, framed by spun gold and fluttering with need, but they're off. The tableau is wrong.
"Since when have you been this desperate? I thought you didn't want anything to do with me." Despite himself, the words lash bitter; he swallows his anger back where it can't hurt him, reminds himself that three years in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Even if. Even if- "Thought you were in space?"
A muffled huff. Amuro squeezes before releasing him, and his head snaps forward. He parts his lips to say something, then touches his teeth together, then manages, "I was."
They could communicate without even words, once. The fact that Char stumbled at all is infuriating, galling.
Amuro cards his hands in his too-neat too-short hair. He hums in quiet segments. "Is this all I am to you, then?" A booty call, he doesn't say, because it's humiliating and too plausible, so instead he urges his head back.
He stares up and like this, face-to-face, on the kitschy tile in a rumpled dress shirt, Amuro can see him. His chest seizes. Those eyes, formerly inquisitive and intense and a little cheeky, now contain… nothing. They're hollow. It's as if a film lays across them, inhuman in nature, almost buglike, the texture off in a way that he notices in the very back of his mind. He's glassy and limp, searching as if he were seeing for the first time and not taking it in. Something is wrong.
Concern wells over his mental blocks, cradles his anger. Amuro cups his face, strokes him gently over the cheekbones. His eyes flutter but do not shut, not as they once did. "Char," is all he says, more of a breath than anything, and he floats downwards, poking across the barren field below. He stretches his will out from his fingertips, warm and probing, carrying care, and tenderness, and maybe a hint of desperation. It roots inwards, slipping through earthen cracks, but doesn't spread in quite the right way. The wall remains implacable. Char can surely sense the emotions – his gaze flits, face sloped noble and somber, cast in shadowy blues and bracing greys. But he doesn't let him in.
Just as frustration brews low within Amuro, their eyes meet. The dense, split-second resonance distracts him, makes him jump when Char closes in. It's lightning-fast, sudden mania bleeding across as he presses his face into Amuro's joggers. He huffs, nose-to-crotch, ice blue flicking up as he parts his mouth and breathes warmth through the fabric.
"Char," he yelps, and he must be tired of hearing his name because he snaps, lowly:
"Amuro."
It rumbles in the chamber of his throat, muffling into his pants. His eyes are dark and full of teeth.
He summarily returns to mouthing over him. Pretty little groans rattle through Amuro's muscles. He's moving too fast, too frantically – there's an edge to him that grows by the second – so Amuro grabs his head, but-
He really can't deny how much he aches for this when his nails tangle against his scalp and it wrenches out a new, louder, pleading tone. He's so small for him, like this, but it's a predator's stare levelled up at him.
Char's face shutters. He doesn't know what he sees, but in an instant Char has gone from submissive and pleading to derisive and angry. "So this is what you've been doing? Wasting away your life in a forgotten place, for some Earthnoid cause? I was a fool to think you had grown."
It's bait, it's the worst bait in the book, but Amuro frowns anyway, "You don't know anything about me anymore, Char."
A sneer and a snort. "No, it seems I don't. Perhaps I never did."
It's that, more than anything, that gets him. A cavalcade of fury cascades down his back. It's tinged with humiliation. He stutters, words inadequate to convey anything at all. "Big sentiment for a man who immediately put himself on his knees," he says instead, distinctly on the back foot, self-preservation instinct wrenching his tongue.
He smirks, low and condescending. "You put me here. It's just like you to avoid responsibility.” Amuro growls, baffled aggression flooding to his toes. They were past this, which means Char is referring to something else: knowing him, probably some invented duty to Newtypes or something equally grand and unhelpful. He clenches his hands in his hair. Char's eyes lid. “Manhandling me?” He turns his head, nuzzles into Amuro, who jumps. “Would you like to force yourself into me? You've gone soft," which is very much not true, he's just gotten big, "you couldn't if you tried."
"What the fuck are you doing," Amuro mutters, a bit mad that he's into it (it's true, it would shut him up). This is the clumsiest Char's ever been, but there's an edge of real anger, a simmering hunger. He watches his cock fill out a bit more, pulling his joggers towards the man, who glances at it impassively.
There's no need to state aloud that Char's hardly in a position to be coy, or play it cool, or literally anything. He just presses a vague annoyance towards him. It's rebuffed, like a number sent to voicemail.
Amuro grinds his teeth as Char smiles.
He snakes his grip into the back of his hair and presses his head in. A deep laugh reverberates into him. "What makes you think I won't bite," he says, pulling back to say it, and Amuro grabs and twists and Char's pretty voice cracks down the middle.
"You didn't come all this way to bite me," he says, not quite as deadpan as he had intended; Char snickers, throat a line, Adam's apple bobbing under the taut skin. His eyes are red-tinged and hugged by deep sunken flesh. He looks awful.
And even if they're not connected as they should be, they still shared one another inside and out, once: Char's eyes flash murderous as he catches the flicker of pity. He turns to loosen his hair from the hold – Amuro jumps one palm to his chin, wrapping blunt fingers around his neck, and digs. Char's snarl swims under thick satisfaction, visible in the creases of his mouth, the exhale over his tongue. Like this, Amuro can almost pretend he looks this wrecked because of him.
"Uh-huh," he says, raising his lip. He tightens his grip, a pulse that brings Char's hands up instinctively, though they then sink back to the floor. "You're acting pathetic, you know."
"Am I now," he drones, voice tight, and he rolls his gaze into Amuro's, and it communicates everything at once: despite his anger, his hurt, his desperate sweeping loneliness and desire for more – here he is, hard for Char's table scraps like clockwork. Caught up in the web, again. Sometimes he thinks he's never stepped outside of it.
He tugs his cock out and crooks his fingers into Char's smarmy mouth, pushes his jaw open with fingers and thumb. His tongue is hot and wet and flat. He's smiling. Victorious.
Amuro pulls his cheek like a fish hook and slides into him. His teeth graze him from his mouth's skew but he doesn't care. Maybe he will bite. Wouldn't that be something.
He's calm, so pliant and quiet despite Amuro hilting in one. His nostrils flare at the junction of skin, and the bridge of his nose scrunches at the tickle of hair. He throbs around him, but he does not work and swallow how he likes – he's just still, almost… bored. He thrusts once, and it's hot and real and him , but his eyes only barely flutter.
"Really," he complains, flattening runaway hairs from his forehead to that slicked-back mistake, and Char doesn't even react. Fine.
To his own vague chagrin, he pets his crown gently as he starts moving. (It's just soft, soft above and below. It's nice.) Hot silk slips around him, the rasp of tastebuds almost abrasive against his head, needling him with pricks of feeling. His mouth makes terrible noises, spit clacking and squelching and parting for him.
He's still as a statue.
Amuro growls. He braces his hands on either side of his jaw and rolls on the balls of his feet. That get a reaction: Char grunts, delicate lashes fluttering shut. So he does it again. And again. Char vocalizes with some regularity like this, spreads his hands on the tile, fingertips perching atop it for stability.
Amuro knocks those hands apart and takes a halfstep forward and Char moans. His palms brace against his shins now, and they snare in his pants nicely.
He can't deny there's something about this, using Char Aznable like this. He's caused him so much grief, so much pain and loneliness, so many sleepless nights laden with sickening worry. He's intent on squandering what they had, what they shared, and it's spitting on Lalah's memory, spitting on everything they've gone through together. It's weighing Amuro's soul and finding it lacking – not actively, but rather in retrospect – which almost hurts more. Was the memory of him truly so corruptible?
He thought Char may have loved him.
Something gives, some junction in his throat and it's tight and filthy and Char finally, finally chokes, a wet alarming sound that makes Amuro jerk backwards, but Char brings his arms up and pushes him deep again. Amuro judders, groans, hips twitching uncontrollably, carving sharp hums and clicks from the back of Char's throat. His teeth are touching the root of him, lacking the wherewithal to cover them, his eyes only open in a sliver of white. It's the most beautiful he's looked all afternoon.
He was always good at this. Once, he claimed to be without a gag reflex, but it wasn't true. Amuro wonders how many people have seen him like this, stretched and pliant and so willing, rumbling feeling and spit down a shaft, tongue undulating on pull-out, chasing his own asphyxia. Clear film traces down his chin. Amuro rocks in, presses his nose into his pelvis, lodging proprietary deep in his throat. It doesn't matter. Right now he's his. If he can't gouge a claim on his soul, at the very least he'll make sure to do so to his body.
His stomach clenches with motion and heat. He flattens his palms around the back of his neck, and there's hardly anywhere to push him but he tightens his grasp anyway. Char chokes, vocal cords joining involuntarily, and his shoulders twist. His scar bunches up in a developing forehead crease. Amuro rolls on his feet, watches his face pinch, swipes a hand around to the front of his throat; he can’t feel himself or any of that porn shit, but Char convulses so he presses up under his Adam’s apple and the sound of spit hits a new volume. He always preferred it loud. He flicks his eyes up to Amuro’s and they’re- almost baleful, challenging, overwhelmed and demanding all at once, and his fingers snare in the pockets on his ass so Amuro bears atop him and goes for it. He watches the shuffle of Char’s heels, dress shoes pristine, jumping in counterbalance to the slap of skin. He’s burning. His throat works in an entirely different way, likely just to accommodate him. His hands slip and re-fist and maybe he’s panicking, maybe he needs to breathe, maybe that porcelain face is tomato-red against Amuro’s stomach, grasping the reality of his submission. And it’s this, the rush of power, the spindling vindication that does it for him: he comes into him, trembling, receptive and open and his.
He's chasing overstimulation when Char slams the heel of his palm into Amuro’s thigh. Char doubles over, spluttering, hair in disarray and flat on the top. He coughs come and drool onto the floor, his breaths ragged and reedy. It’s gross. Amuro made him that way. Char lifts his hand to his jaw, touches then rubs it, lifts his knifepoint gaze up. A string connects his lower lip to the tile. A bubble forms on an exhale and he tongues it away.
“Gross,” Amuro cuts, and rides the impulse to place his thumb on that mess and press his mouth open. He hasn’t swallowed, not that he entirely needs to; there’s a mess on the very back of his tongue and throat. Char winces, just a bit. “Jaw sore?”
A deep dissatisfaction crests on his face. He hums derisively in response, but he’s winded and it comes out well-fucked. Amuro lets his finger slide off, wipes it off on his joggers, meets Char’s judgmental sneer. “What? Is that not what you wanted?”
Maybe it’s the implication that he’s desperate, or easy, or whorish (all things that are true) – Char pushes himself to his feet, only a little unsteady, and looms over him with extra height from his shoes. He cages him in against the wall, radiating- something, and he leans down and- he opens his mouth, tongue curving and forcing forward the-
Amuro recoils, turns his head flat against the brick. “Wh-”
Char snorts at him like he’s ridiculous. A string stretches from his tongue, and Char grabs his face and pries his mouth open, and he could break away he knows exactly how but – the line of spit and come slips out of sight and onto his inner lip. Char’s breath is hot and earthy. He lowers; the slimy mess slides slowly across to him, and it’s disgusting and tacky and Amuro grunts and lifts his chin, mouth wide to catch it all. His brows knot at the taste but Char’s holding his jaw with those long fingers and the thumb on his chin is paralyzing. It slips across his tongue and a flare of revulsion lights within, so he slings his hands around Char’s nape, pulls him down, and pushes it back in. Char laughs, just once, a quiet huff, and like that they’re kissing.
It’s not unfamiliar. He knows this bitter coating. The taste of Char's spit.
Despite himself, his good will doesn't wither. Char's here, and maybe he's an asshole, a scheming deserter, a fairweather lover, but he's here. He’s licking into his mouth with the same passion as ever. They shared one body, once.
It's impossible to deny him.
"What do you need," he murmurs.
It seems the wrong question. His bearing quickens, rigid and unyielding, his gaze lofty and pinning. He's a world away but he's incising directly into his skull. Amuro frowns, offense lighting the low wick in the back of his mind; he swipes forward in a targeted jab, flicking at the confines of Char's self, and feels a rush of greedy gratification when the surface ripples. Char's eyelashes flutter. A heavy crease rests between his brows. (He's probably just thirty. If not, soon.)
And whatever's prompting this whole affair snaps out fully. Char grabs him, bites too-hard into his slick mouth, digs a thumb into the bruise on his shoulder. Amuro yelps, cringes back, but Char persists: he grabs the hair at his nape and yanks his head up and plunges deep. It's too rough but it's demanding and frantic and somehow quintessentially him, and so traitorously it works. He's come so recently but interest swims deep at the base of his heart.
He worms a hand between their mouths. It gets wet.
If this is to be a competition, then…
Amuro shoves them toward the kitchen island. Char goes rather willingly for someone who'd just been playing at power. One of his Oxfords squeaks as he steps and Amuro realizes, God, he stepped in his come, then immediately his toe feels sticky and he snarls. Fucking Char making everything fucking difficult. He grabs his lapels and growls into his mouth, fumbling forward blindly and Char parts so sweetly for him, so hungrily for him, hot and wet and he rams into him as he jars against the sharp edge of the marble counter. Char groans, pinching in pain but using the moment to grab and pull him up, holding him by the ass and urging him up on his tiptoes, and his weight must be hurting his tailbone but he's hard and rolling up in small flicks and his throat clenches. His red lips match his red eyes and Amuro drags his thumbs across his cheeks, spreading the flesh just because he can. Char watches with something like rapture and something like famine.
Curiosity wells. He lifts his lip up, runs his thumb along his gums, charting the arch of his teeth, the pull of his skin. Amuro caresses a canine, presses the point into the pad of his finger, swipes behind it to inspect the curve of the other side. He just feels like he should know this, needs to know this.
Char holds completely still. His breaths gradually turn heavy, eyes sinking half-closed. Amuro follows the valleys of his molars, charts the pull of the tendon under his tongue. At this Char breaks his lull, hips grinding up desperately against Amuro's flush stomach. Amuro huffs, a lash of pathetic breaking unbidden over the surface of Char's mind, and he shivers and-
He's feeling him. He's there. Just a sliver, but undeniably Char.
Amuro surges against him, chasing the taste, bashing at the gap with brick and cinderblock and Char trembles but doesn't buckle; Amuro slides his hand to his belt and fumbles it open, sharp clinking hardly registering in his ears and he pulls it apart just enough to jam his fingers into his briefs. They're red, as always. His cock is straining, damp at the top, pulsing with blood. Amuro pushes the foreskin down and Char gasps, spits on his hand and twists it into place and Char falls to his elbows. Amuro bears over him. He tilts to the side to allow his arm to move, to bunch up the skin under Char's cockhead and drag it as far back as it goes. He's so soft. He's radiating heat and trembling beneath him and he leans inward, hovering his forehead just over Amuro's shoulder.
Suddenly deeply frustrated, Amuro tugs then rips the buttons from his dress shirt then dives into the junction of his neck. It's been too long. He takes a deep pull of him, his smell drowned under cologne Amuro hates in a vicious rush. He strokes him harder, finesse escaping him, rubbing maybe abrasively, but he doesn't care and Char doesn't care and he sinks his teeth in, fully clenches his jaw, and Char howls.
It doesn't take long. Amuro bites and sucks and breathes and Char's fists pull Amuro's shirt tight across him. He needs this, he thought of Char as starving but maybe he's worse, maybe he just buried it so incredibly hard that now it's set to bursting when given the chance. It doesn't matter. Char is here and Char is here, against his mind, leaking agonized need and consuming pressure. For him.
He lifts his head, pants into his ear (a shiver ripples down his body): "For me, for me, for me, for me, for me,"
And he comes on a twist of the wrist and he shakes and slams his hand, uncontrollable with pleasure, against the countertop. He's so beautiful. Wide and yielding and mouth glinting. Pinned. Marked.
He wrings until Char escalates from shuddering to convulsing. Even then, he knows he could've continued and Char would've let him. His eyes crack open, heavy and fluttering. They're-
They're slightly misty.
"Are you crying?"
He bows his head so Amuro lifts a finger to tilt it back up. There's a blotted swipe along his waterline.
His eyes flick up to meet his own.
An avalanche crushes outward, across and into Amuro's heart, soul, body: in one total moment he's subsumed by frenzy, mania, electric desperation licking brands from what marrow of him remains, and then it's sublimating into throat-choking, escalating, freezing terror. Noncomprehension. Too much comprehension. A white, clear acceptance, a deep, thick dread, pressing down as one horrible hydraulic force, rending dull colour smaller, smaller, not into broken pieces but to compact distortions. Their disfiguration is permanent, horrifying in the sense of true, real loss, of knowledge that this precious something must be twisted into vile mockery. It's necessary.
It's an amputation. Jagged. Inadequately anaesthetised.
It's mostly complete.
Something blindingly red leaks from the wound's center. It pushes itself out in streaking lumps.
It calls to him. He stretches to meet it, and it – it snares up the width of him, at a speed defying logic, tightens its hold and suffuses him with heat. It's not warmth – it's the bubbling of an overflowing boil, a caldera expanding to bleed across every atom of his being. It's intense and uncompromising and alive. It pleads. It needs.
It soaks into his bones and he's real, body half-remembered, follicles shivering. He's melting and freezing. A twinge clicks through his wrists – he loosens his grip, sore, from Char's shirt, but he can't bear it in the same second he lets go; he shoves his palms into his collar, at the base of his neck, against his heartbeat. Char scrambles similarly, long fingers bracketing his collarbone, digging into the soft skin taut atop it.
Amuro wishes he would rupture the flesh.
His grip falters, and he blinks into himself with enough lucidity to recognize that these are not his own feelings. He's wearing them like a second skin, perhaps under his own skin, the division between them vinyl-thin. It's alarming enough that his hackles jump, and Char's eyes darken.
"Why do you deny this," Char rumbles, feeling Amuro's clavicle, "Even now you back away."
He burrows a spot in with his thumb. "If you recall, I'm not the one who ran."
Char keeps his gaze low. Either they're talking past each other or he's conceding the point; Amuro can't tell under the deluge of leaden dread, dull and sharp, oscillating between states with abandon that leaves behind a state of total whiplash. It's self-loathing honed to its finest point, morphed into something new. Something dangerous rending the walls of its home.
Amuro flinches and it parts for its twin, the seething agony. He gasps and Char surges up, guiding Amuro's stumble, pressing him against the fridge and it's a balm to the rolling magma as he kisses him, splits his lip, urges him in, opens himself wide for consumption. He can't seem to choose between demanding him and desiring him, and the push-and-pull is starting to make Amuro dizzy. His head buzzes, his skin buzzes.
He holds and squeezes what flesh he can reach. When he lifts his hands to swipe anew, a spear of loss lodges in his heart, so he glues his palms back to that static charge. It's peace of mind and incendiary too. He can't reach enough of Char. Char isn't reaching enough of him. His arms fold around his back, cushioning him from the metal of the fridge, taking into themselves the chill; he wiggles closer, flattening into him but never managing to burrow. Amuro shuffles up, failing as well; braces both arms and hops from the floor, wrapping his legs around Char's waist, who adjusts as if he were waiting for it.
They crush together, teeth clacking, spit tracking down their chins. Amuro needs him. He's hard again – Char groans and for a moment seems liable to drop to his knees a second time, so Amuro pinches his fingers into the flesh and says, "Bed."
Char's breath stutters. His frame is strong, filling out with age – his back tenses, his hands clench on his ass, and in one smooth sway, Char's carrying him. Amuro balks, briefly, swallows hard, then he's craning down and kissing rough and he can't tell whose pain is whose. He yanks at Char's bottom lip as he teeters and shuffles, and he's actually carrying him, he supposes all that time in the gym is paying off, he has a vivid flash of Char's muscles working underneath him, pinning that broad bulk with nothing more than his gaze and the force of his pleasure. Char stumbles.
They make it there in one piece. (Amuro has to direct them. It takes longer than it should.) Char drops him on the mattress, blankets unkempt and unmade, and Amuro urges him along with elbows locked round his neck. They tumble together onto the too-firm bed, and he doesn't care, it doesn't matter, his legs are still clenched around Char and he shuffles his shirt up with his knees, desperate to part any layer between them, and he's not the only one because Char starts struggling his t-shirt up. He lifts his arms for only a moment to allow its disposal, then moves to the dress shirt with shaky hands, but can't, not when Char's long pale neck is stretched to the side and he's breathing on his scar.
Amuro lifts his chin and hikes his shoulder. Char moans. He swoops in like a starving man, then balks. Amuro hums encouragement and there he is, pressing his lips delicately to the raised flesh. The circuit between them dampens on Char's end, a quietude reserved for reverence, so Amuro grabs the back of his neck and pulls him down, and the sharpest stars burst within him at the split and press of tongue. It's a pure kind of ecstasy, more than physical but manifesting as such, and he shivers and surges up into Char, who's begun laving slow swipes in and around the divot. He might be embarrassed for his vocals were it any other time, but Char's presence is like a black hole, folding him in and absorbing everything he gives and still ready for more. He can't be vocal enough.
The touch is gentle and pious, but delirium weeps behind it – overpowered but not for long. Shudderingly, Char retreats from the scar, as if unwilling to enact anything save worship to that particular spot.
A sort of embarrassment, of volatility claps through Amuro, a need to regain control, to shift the tempo away from this dangerous ground. He sits up, forcing Char up too, and tugs at the remaining buttons on his shirt, scowling. Char runs his hands along Amuro's wrists as he does, unable to stop touching, and Amuro's fiercely relieved for it. Char pushes whorls and lines into the curled hair on his forearms, breathing heavy, lidded eyes intense and beseeching. Amuro parts the halves of his shirt from his shoulders and the fabric pools around his elbows elegantly, almost femininely. The strength in his body juxtaposes with the bare vulnerability of him.
He's never seemed smaller, but he's never seemed more consuming either. Amuro reacts, as he often does, with competition.
With both hands, he pushes Char down, forces him to unfurl his legs and hitch them wide so as to coexist before the headboard. He doesn't give him the chance to shuffle into a more comfortable position, draping himself up over his body, skin to skin. He's so soft and warm and the frenzy kickstarts once more along with the grasp of his chin – Char's arms are snared in the shirt, fabric pulled across his back and laid on – a leap of rabbitlike exultation sparks in tandem. He's perfect like this, trapped and pinned and overcome.
Amuro steadies his hand across his windpipe, a familiar hold, and watches the anticipation bloom a heated glow into his eyes and spirit. He presses down, lightly, and his gaze swims, bliss rolling from the flutter of his lashes to the dark of his lips. From just this pressure, steady and slight and resolute, Char's breaths turn to moans, and his hips start to twitch.
"That's it?" Amuro murmurs, palming his groin – he flinches, still must be raw. "Hmm."
The dried come on his shirt did leave a faint tackiness on his navel. Amuro pushes a thumb through it, letting impulse guide him. He traces his hand, firm but gentle, across the lines of him: the crease down the center of his stomach, the dips tracing along his pelvis, his belly button. Amuro keeps the weight steady but his intention makes Char's voice hike, and he starts palming his chest, tracing its contours and cupping its meat. Char, whose hips have been jabbing seemingly at random up to this point, starts to squirm in earnest. His moans separate themselves, breaking into ragged, extended pieces. A lance of fire pierces Amuro's skin. In retaliation, he straightens his arm – Char goes boneless – and bends in to place his teeth on either side of a nipple.
Leaving him in the lurch for a minute, savouring the frantic buzz, Amuro darts his tongue out. It's stiff already and puckers under his breath. He swallows an abundance of spit and flicks along the sides, avoiding direct contact, feeling the tender flesh upon his teeth. Char gasps silently. The heaving of his chest makes it slightly difficult, but it's incredibly, devastatingly hot; Amuro presses down along his body to still him, and his waist bucks stupidly with what little give he can get, but his upper body flattens. Amuro tightens the skin around his nipple, pulling on it with fingers spread in opposite directions, and with a clear path he sinks down to suck.
It sounds like a seam tears in his dress shirt. He thrashes, taken apart for this barest of touches, but he arches his back and growls for more. Amuro thrusts against him and his mouth falls ajar with sensation, then he closes his teeth and tugs and Char keens. He massages his neck, alternating between forgetting and remembering to exert pressure, so lost in the act, in the manipulation of Char's breast, that when he recalls there's a second he almost misses the mark when he rushes to it. Char's cries layer and overlap as he pulls and twists the sensitive, wet nub and restarts his ministrations from scratch on the other side.
The angle is awkward and he keeps losing his grip, so he switches to- to groping Char, that's what he's doing, with both hands. As the thought lands Char surges upwards and chokes, "Amuro," and from the way he says it you'd think he was the jilted lover. Amuro bites hard into the flesh just outside that most sensitive range, is rewarded by a shout, then a drawn-out groan as he lashes his tongue hard and fast, plucking in time with every third swipe.
Char's enjoyment is so vast that Amuro wonders if he could come just from this. As entertaining as that might be, a swipe of frustration carries himself back to his knees. Something's clicked into place: the phoniness of Char's attempted dominance, the explanation lying along the hitch to his collarbone.
He's a distraction. Some kind of last resort. It rankles. At the same time, he'll take it, he'll take anything and knows he always would, so maybe it's himself that he's upset with. The hurt manifests in a scathing lust, a scornful anger.
Sallow eyes watch him, overcast with a mad glint. He tilts his head, coy, as if to say, what are you going to do to me, then?
His chest is dotted by purpling crescents and mottling patches. His nipples are flushed an angry red. Amuro tweaks them cruelly, inflicting more pain than pleasure that Char curls up into anyway. Whore.
A breathy laugh escapes over his tongue and that's enough. Possessed by a visceral need to not see his face, Amuro slips off the bed and shoves Char half onto his back. He rumbles in amusement but rolls the rest of the way – Amuro doesn't miss how he hitches when he settles on his front. "Take that thing off," he says, derisively, as if it hadn't just recently been his own ally. A graceful smile curves his lip as he sheds the shirt.
"Shall I remove the rest as well?"
"Do whatever you want."
His snappy tone clearly amuses Char further, but he doesn't care. He'll put him in his place shortly. He kicks off his own pants, noting with a snort the wet patch that Char had sucked into it. Whenever he tries to act high and mighty, he can always fling this image at him.
Amuro climbs atop him, knees spread on either side of his shaped thighs. Char pillows his head on his crossed arms. It leaves his chest open for a quick squeeze, a thumb-shot flick of the index to remind him of his place. He jolts loudly, then his brow drops to his forearms, his grip leaving impressions in his skin. He doesn't move to cover himself.
It looks good on him.
He can only play it so cool with one eye narrowed back over his shoulder, not turned enough to see Amuro proper but radiating anticipation. Amuro glides his hands from the back of his neck around his widened shoulderblades and along his muscled trunk. Despite the added mass he still pinches at the waist like a woman. Amuro sinks his fingers into the dips, extracting a huff and a slight arch, then moves to the divots above his ass, rubbing his thumbs into them as if they might give. Quattro would have been too prideful or shy to push into him outright – this Char is not. His shoulders hitch around his ears as he lifts his rear, wantonly urging Amuro's touch down.
He webs his fingers together and pushes. "You'll get what you get," he murmurs, scathing enough that Char stills. Deep-rooted helium hits Amuro in waves.
So he's using him to forget something. Fine. Amuro can be selfish too.
Spreading him with little fanfare, he watches his hole clench with a click of the tongue. Flaxen hairs shift finely – the first time he’s seen him unwaxed. He drags a finger down the small of his back, through the sweat gathered there, and down; he lets his finger swipe round the rim and Char bleats like some pathetic creature. He pushes against his finger recklessly, dryly.
"What, you don't even care?"
"Hurry up," he drawls.
It's awfully uppity. Amuro slaps his ass – he's never done that before and it almost takes him aback – but Char chokes on a mouthful of spit, so Amuro sinks his grip into the flesh. Perhaps unintentionally, he snaps at him below the skin too, and Char's spirit coos in response.
"Brat," he bites, and bruises his fingers down, squeezes his balls and cinches at the base of his cock. As he rocks he lets go. Gooseflesh erupts down his spine. Good. It's not supposed to give him any relief.
Something that doesn't give him any relief. Something to use him for.
The cloud Amuro swamps around them is almost as physical as his dick atop his tailbone. He pulls his cheeks apart, swipes a fist of his own precome down his shaft, thinks for a moment then cups across Char's head clinically and purposefully; ignores the jolt and twists what wetness there is onto him. He bears down, grabbing fistfuls of his ass, and nestles between. He's hot. He whines. Amuro thrusts leisurely, watches the play of tendon and muscle as Char straightens his arms wantonly, putting himself on display, turning his head to reveal a peek of blue. He's smiling. A demanding glint hovers there.
He's beautiful. His curves hug him persistently. Amuro's cock disappears then peeks out against his lower back, and he groans, fantasizes about the sight of marring that tan expanse with white.
Amuro pulls back enough to catch his hole on the next push. Char seizes. A twined burst of fear and intense need blasts across his exposed nerves. Char jolts with every thrust, writhing and flinching both. As the need starts to burn through the worry, Amuro laughs lowly. "You'd want it like this?"
When he speaks, it's almost too quickly, as if the affirmation is punched out of him. "Yes," he gasps, arched and catlike, "Any way, Amuro, any way you wanted. I'd tear myself apart for you."
It's disturbing. The words are too truthful, too heavy. They also stoke a morbid flare in him that Char falls across like gasoline.
It's hungry, and cavernous. He needs him to take point, to arrange him how he likes, to mete out what vengeance he deems appropriate. He needs him to claim, and ruin, and warp him into a state of carnal purpose. He wants it raw, bare, wants to fill up around him until something inside of him shifts.
It's a lot. It's too much. Amuro wants it too.
Pivoting on one knee, Amuro fumbles into the travel pack on the side table, pulls out the half-empty tube. From here, they can see each other's faces, Char's expression as overwhelming as ever, but fuller now. More honest, maybe. Amuro reaches, slides a hand along his cheek, around his head. He leans into it like a dog. From the back of his neck, Amuro presses his face into the sheets. A tautness thrums musically behind his voice.
He stays. Amuro flicks the cap open, gets his fingers slippery, and closes in. He pets circles into his rim, pulls it just to see, and his head rushes with muffled moans and tactile sparks. The image of him is deeply addictive: slumped torso, raised hips, knees apart, cock hanging heavy. Amuro slips a digit across his hole and Char rolls back – his finger breaches unbidden, dipping just in smoothly.
"No," Amuro growls, seizes his hip with his dry hand. Char shudders, groans, something in him falling out of place enchantingly with a tangible snag. The angle means Amuro has to be back, too far behind to hold him down.
The gleam of his concept meets Char with an electric burst, and he moans into the blanket. Fine then. He shifts atop one of Char's legs, twists, and- Char turns his head, eyes searching and darting like prey but presenting willingly like to the guillotine, so he braces his foot against his cheek and pins him there with vague cruelty and vague disgust.
This is what he wanted. To be used like an object, to be put in his place, to be unable to think of a single thing besides Amuro.
It's turning out easy enough.
Like this, he slides a finger in. His voice is deeply muffled but earnest like a bell. Normally Amuro would never escalate so quickly but he can feel the line of fireworks crackling at their ends; he works his second in, only as deep as the first knuckle, and he vices around him hard. Instead of reaching around to stroke him, to ease him into the touch, Amuro leans his forearm on his lower back and pierces. Char's breaths hiccup loudly, and only stutter further as Amuro thrusts. Soon enough, he's sucking him in, gasping with his face down, desperation crackling like scrap parts. The burn scratches a growing itch deep inside Char, an itch Amuro is coming to nurse as well.
He knows exactly where it is like it's his own body – he tenses and quirks his fingers against that spot, hard and unrelentingly fast, and they both groan at the spiraling quake of ecstasy. It verges on too much and then beyond and beyond then Amuro slides his fingers out and leaves Char canting helplessly into the air, voice reduced to an almost-sob but still managing "Amuro, Amuro."
With a probably-inadequate amount of lube coating his cock, Amuro releases him, stands on his knees behind him. His back is mottled red, blushing down his shoulders like always. He feints back in little uncontrollable kicks, so Amuro steadies him with one hand and holds his own cock with the other. Char's lungs heave and his fists clench and his hair falls astray, better like this, as Amuro presses his tip against and then in.
He's so hot, so tight it hurts. It's an entrance tense with friction, but neither wants it any other way. Swallowing, mouth completely dry, Amuro pushes, gripping hard enough to leave bruises. Char shakes mightily, paralyzed by harmonizing pain and thirst. Amuro can feel it. From the join of their bodies spirals up imparsable sensation, setting every cell to buzzing. Amuro's awareness balloons then contracts, incising into Char's skin through his urging, open, fanged maw.
Hilted body and soul, Amuro leans fully onto him, wrapping his arms around and underneath and dropping his forehead to his back. It curls up to meet him. They are struck at once by an impossible tenderness, by the subsuming of both threads of conflict. Like this, none of it matters so much.
Amuro loses himself in Char in the motion in the taking. He sinks in, feels Char open up around him, feels the drag of his hole on the pull-back, feels the sobs punching out on the thrust-in. Char's back sweats under his eyes. The bed rocks. Amuro holds him down, adjusts his weight where Char wants it (an uncomfortable, demanding press forcing him to arch more severely), and pushes in so deep, hamstrings straining, and he chokes up with molten velvet pleasure. Char moans, head sloping down behind his shoulders, elbows squared to better take Amuro, throwing himself backwards with every fibre of his being, coring himself out as hard as possible. Amuro chokes, smears his face against a wetness – ah, it's not Char drooling, it's him – and laves his tongue through it wherever he can reach, pushing teeth desperately at the taut-skinned column of his spine. He can't get a good mouthful. He tries and tries, teeth slipping along ineffectively as he fucks in. Char writhes, white fire licking up, his heart chanting need, chanting pleasure, thrashing in greed. Char wants him to bite down, to draw blood, to savage and expose the bone.
Amuro plants his knees, tightening his thighs, and holds Char in place as best he can while driving into him, turns his motion into fevered flush rocks that turn Char's voice obscene. The slap of skin is quieter like this, so close, and Amuro murmurs platitudes and praise and fervid need, each word sending soul-shocks through his partner.
His partner? That's not the right word, but there doesn't seem to be one, there can't be one, and if there is to be one it's a word Amuro doesn't care to learn. Char is just his. It's as simple as that. Affirmation roils through him, corrugated and corrosive and utterly consuming. He holds it, gripping until it bends and he bleeds.
And he finally tilts his neck just right, stills Char just right to clasp his teeth over and across a patch of spine, and Amuro bites down, jaw clicking, sinking so perfectly into the shallow flesh and the pain splashes up into his own fogging head and Char constricts around him, shouting, and Amuro fucks him through as he comes in long bursts, cock untouched, recoil slamming into Amuro's soul and he fucks in and in and Char's insides work and demand him and so he delivers.
Char needs it, he needs it, he needs to mark him so deep he can never forget. He spends every drop as deep as possible, grinding it in until he can't anymore.
It doesn't go deep enough.
Panic leaps within him. He doesn't want to pull out, ever, the world be damned, Char's aching knees be damned. A fervent flick crosses his mind at the thought – he's not sure whose it mostly is, but the taxed glow makes him clumsy and his legs shake and he slips out. A string connects them. Amuro watches it hang then snap. Seed slips out of Char's fluttering hole – Amuro defiantly lifts one trembling hand and pushes it back in.
Dissatisfaction snares Amuro's lungs. Char lays still, warmth leaching out into the air.
That piece of Char that slotted into submissive overwhelm lilts to the side. It's so easy for it to skew, almost like this was always its trajectory. Afterglow skips Char entirely, substituting with creeping tendrils of cold. Some manner of adrenaline pumps through Amuro's veins, a rejection, a violent bucking denial; he paws then shoves at Char, urging him supine, which he allows after a protracted moment.
He's hollow again. Any traces of manic purpose have bled out. In his eyes hunches total defeat, and the resignation to accept it: I should've known better.
Rage corkscrews in reaction. "What? What the fuck is your problem?" He leans on the heels of his palms, slapped haphazardly over his collarbone. Char's gaze meanders to his as if indulging. "What do you want from me?"
It's rhetorical, almost. Char blinks slowly, as if in reproach for even asking. Humiliation burns a helix through his lungs.
Amuro's fever is born in ungenerous circumstances, and maybe that's the problem. A blossoming, sickly sort of anger spreads outside of him, disrupting and overriding everything it can reach. His frantic malice forms a tangible presence in the air, filling to the limits of his awareness and tightening in his skin like screws. It condenses over Char, who meets it dispassionately, like an observer removed from the situation – it snaps and claws, indignant and doleful, and though Char's static field rises in response, it feels impersonal.
Impersonal.
Amuro curves his shallow nails into hickies as hard as he can, falling to bite and yank at his lips. He responds only on autopilot. It's not a rejection. It's not a rejection, but neither does Char lift his hands to caress in turn.
Amuro does the only thing he knows:
He kisses then bites Char's neck, pushes his hands in patterns persuasive, thumbs his throat and chest and grips with passion. He knees Char's legs akimbo just-too-far, clenches his wrist against the bed, licks into hickies stained black. He nudges his jaw up with his nose, then places his teeth along his windpipe, pressing in threat and plea to open it and slide within.
Char twitches.
A Pavlovian slither wisps behind his ribcage. Amuro lunges at it, dodging the bone, knowing the obstacles of flesh intuitively. He stokes it, molds it just to see that he can, pulls it this way and that, trying to find a shape where it isn't so dead, so cold. He scrapes his blunted nails down Char's hairless chest, praying for caustic pink, then turns them to flattened nipples, pulling them hard again. A quiet sparking pain bends Char's back into an arch. It's enough like desire: Amuro hunches in, coaxing, yanking what feeling he can, glutting himself on it like a dying man.
Something dents the barrier, just slightly. Amuro touches it then savages it and Char breaks his unblinking stare – it's something, it's a reaction – a thin stream of emotion streaks out, half-life short and destined to dry – Amuro makes a seal and drinks from the source, keeping it alive, becoming a conduit. Foreign desperation courses through him, slotting naturally beside his own. But his is a live wire, too, and his fire saturates the growing holes within both of them.
The feeling is deeply familiar, calling forth body-memory: the sprint to the hangar, the press of space, the coffin. Char.
And something wells up within him and – fuck, he can't blame any transference for this. He needs to do this. The backs of his neck and thighs are drenched with sweat, and his head clouds with exhaustion, but he wants. He's not sure how he even has it in him.
It feels too much like curdling hope, like pathetic misplaced desperation. But he acts anyway.
He straddles Char. His mind leaps through last-ditch insecurities: they never tried this, before (it’s not like they had the time), and Amuro only knows fingers (and that's in recent years), and he doesn’t- doesn’t know how clean he is, in the strictest sense of the word, but he hasn’t eaten yet, didn’t even get a forkful of scrambled eggs lying turgid on the counter, and…
Char’s eyes sharpen. Amuro braces a hand across his throat, quashing hysterical butterflies, and tries to impress his authority. He just stares up at him.
Maybe this will be his last chance.
It's not easy to finger himself upright. He's not going to abandon his vantage, feels like if he did, it would ruin something – he kicks one lubed knuckle in, too quickly but more efficiently so it doesn't matter. He splays one hand on Char's chest, monitoring, puffing his flyaway hairs rhythmic. His sallow eyes pinch under the dryness inflicted by his breath. Something howls distantly and Amuro scrambles to chase it: he bears down and his eyelids flutter, sinking enough to- yes, there. His body electrifies, tendons tight with sudden feeling, sharp and ill-cushioned, carving his jaw open. It's less pleasure than it is sensation, real and physical, traveling through and out of him undeniably. Char catches it, bends under its deluge, and his scar pinches and he groans. He's never done three rounds before, neither of them have, but it's not a question of want, really, it's a muddy consuming need. A need to consume.
Char's hands ghost upon Amuro's lower back. The red-hot blots underneath.
Amuro crushes teeth to teeth, tongue to tongue, skin to skin. Gets himself ready with grim frantic determination, impressing the weights of his body and soul. Gets Char ready, silent if not for the occasional whimper. He lifts up, curls his fingers around the base, fights the push of trepidation, the threat of a freeze. That's not what he does anymore.
Head down, he squares his shoulders. Hands flinch into the softness of his hips. He shuffles his knees back, lowers, jolts at the sheer heat. It seems absurd. Char's not small, but he's not big either – just long, princely and curving, impossible for Amuro to emulate with his clumsy blunt fingers.
Heat pulses from one heart to the other: a stubborn wave.
He presses down. It feels ridiculous until he opens around the intrusion, blistering hard object inconceivably different from a pair of fingers. It bullies in according to Amuro’s demand, whining and breathing rabbit-quick and grasping frenetically at the smooth expanse of Char’s body. His knees quake against the bed. He lowers in increments. It seems like it shouldn’t go much deeper, then does. He’s carving open a place for this, a place for Char. It feels right. It feels pure.
A shiver travels from tip to toe. He sits flush, chest heaving, senses groaning in overwork and overwhelm. It's pleasure, glowing heavy in his gut, but it's pain too, coarse and spiked. He's gone limp, but it's not something that particularly matters, not here, not now; what matters is this, this union, this singularity. This feeling.
This link.
He starts to move. His insides shift and dislodge and readjust. It seems like he retightens on every trembling lift-up, turning the subsequent taking into a pierce that never loses intensity. Hips click in effort. The drag of soft skin inside him is divine in nature. And he shifts, and shifts, and eventually angles his waist right and his voice echoes into the large room, charged with overbearing voltage. Swallowing through a mouthful of spit, there's nothing to do but to chase it, to follow the heat it promises with fervid motivation.
It's a unique hunger, pleasure different and strange. Dormant nerves sing alive, strumming new patterns into his voice and his heart. He feels flush with stars, high with delirium.
But-
Gathering the courage, or losing the will, or maybe by accident, Amuro meets his eyes,
And they're flat.
A titanic rush of rage, hurt, betrayal – it floods all throughout Amuro, overflowing and tipping onto Char and burning and bubbling upon his skin but he does not blink. Failure and hatred eat acidic through his heart and into the bed. Char's gaze fixes slightly to the side.
Even under this deluge, the chill receives and remolds itself around the melt.
Slamming himself down, clenching his hands around Char's neck; none of it changes the vague, hollow quality swirling in that steely blue. Amuro wants desperately for him to cry again – anything other than this, anything that isn't threatening blankness and agonized frigidity. If he can't be open with him, with him! With he who holds his beating heart within his tightening grip. Then-
Then-
He tastes salt.
An inevitability crashes into him. A mirrored resignation. A mirror, reflecting too clearly, too many times. Char and Amuro and Amuro and Char. Their gashes, seen and unacknowledged, held and brushed past. Nothing Amuro holds within him can ever fit in the shape of the space within Char. They're the wrong size of jigsaw piece, the both of them, insulting for how close they might be. Amuro's been angling, and twisting, and pushing and pushing, but he just doesn't fit. And Char doesn't fit, edges misaligned, sanded down on all but the most important curves. In another time, they had been perfectly aligned – maybe Amuro felt it, tasted it, and his cowardice pushed him to flee – maybe Char felt it, canvased it, and had tried.
Amuro can't know. There's no point to knowing, now.
But he can pretend. One last time, locked together ignoring the creeping claws of the clock. What he does best.
His ribs wrench apart in increments, piercing and tangling between Char's as lattice into the warm embrace of his lungs. They lock together. They bleed together. Char's mouth clicks agape. Amuro chases into it, carrying enough passion for two. He burns and burns up, wick in cinders, impressing every last lick into Char, who holds perfectly still for the lashing. Amuro pulls chunks out of him, raw and still nerve-bound, yanks sensation up into Char's throat, but the sound of his moan prompts anger within. He unspools the coarse fleshy wire below, pulling and slipping upon it, demanding Char give something, anything, as much as he has, and there, there: a pinprick passion, swaddled by fear, by dead, desiccating shrubbery.
Amuro grasps it, and it flops to life. It's a pathetic, needy thing, cloaked in despair and choking itself out – Amuro devours the parasitic growth, rending it with his teeth, then places the heat between his teeth and breathes on it. It flutters, hideously grateful, a mayfly's passion. Char's gasps spike in tempo and he grasps Amuro's hips and Amuro feels the dents upon his bones. His jaw clatters, vision spotting, that beautiful halo of gold shifting with every thrust. He's flayed himself bare, fully unguarded, split open body and soul, heart beating flush against another.
It's not enough. It's not enough and it won't ever be enough.
Perhaps in the same moment (perhaps they had never stopped), Amuro presses his thumb into Char's forehead, and Char presses his index into Amuro's shoulder. It's grounding, a desperate grasp reflected to the point of corruption. Char's nails are untrimmed, and the curve presses into the knobbly small incision wound; Amuro's are bitten down, and scrabbles futilely against the diagonal scratch. The sound of skin begins to deafen them, and morbid panic screws between them. Char digs into the scar until it splits old tissue anew, rightness trickling down in a limp bead, but Amuro can't, he can't do it, his vision swims and his legs shake but he can't and Char grabs his wrist and shoves his hand in, hard, and Amuro's knuckles brace with such force that even if he doesn't bleed, he might come away with a bruise marring the delicate skin of his forehead, then Char thrusts and a hangnail catches and blood draws and they cry out together.
They tangle in knots, impossible to differentiate, swallowing each other whole, glutting themselves upon the vastness of the other, clinging to that which is on offer that they individually lack. There's not enough to quench the thirst. They know there's not enough. Still they take, fully on offer, uncaring for the self in that horrid rush to have.
But it goes slippery, and they can't reach, magnetic polarities too close, and nothing they do can stop the fog from rolling in and enshrouding them in full.
Chunks of his own soul lay around Amuro's feet. Not rejected. But then, what?
When lucidity returns, Amuro finds himself sitting beside Char. He aches. His heart beats, shockingly sedate.
Quiet blue perches along his split lip. “I hurt you,” says a voice hoarse and reedy.
"Is that news to you,” Amuro breathes, neutrally spoken.
"You were never going to come with me."
Acuity flashes into him, as always, with the threat of Char's scorn. “Maybe not. But you sure as hell didn't ask, either. You shut me out completely.”
"What would it have gained?"
"What?"
"Amuro, our paths are diametrically opposed. You're only hurting yourself by pretending otherwise and you know it."
Inevitability finally crashes through one last ardent denial. Swords cross, only cushioned by a brief lull before they meet once more. This is what Dakar was about, this is what it had always been leading to. Amuro is a hypocrite. "Then what was this about, Char?"
An averted gaze. "Nothing. An experiment."
"An-"
"A false belief."
Silence. Come slithers out of him, as if rejected by his body. Harmony was always brief.
The next time he sees Char, it's on a television screen.
Maybe the cold is only natural.