Work Text:
It would be a lie to say he hadn’t imagined something like this before.
But, it wouldn’t necessarily be the truth either.
Haise —
The recollection of him, the echo of his thoughts undulating inside Kaneki’s new skin, tickles, agonizingly. The reality dawning on Kaneki now feels too much like a dream that Haise is having while sleeping peacefully between Kaneki’s ears.
But.
Haise always woke gasping against a fleeing vision of soft skin, sweet gasps, supple heat that squeezed firmly but nebulously until his blanket was damp. Haise’s imaginary hands lingered over a body unmarked by sun, or scars, or even — Kaneki’s gaze lowers — little dots. In Haise’s mind her hair was always smooth and silky and never like this, mussed and tangling up every ray of morning light, and the more he looks at it the closer he comes to believing that this is neither his dream, nor Haise’s, but something, somehow, more fleeting, and surreal, and precious. Kaneki presses a finger to the spot on her breast, lightly, as if in punctuation, declaration. Touka. Here.
With...
...me.
She swats at him, tiredly.
“If you keep doing that,” she mumbles, “you’re gonna rub it off.”
The swat was so weak that after she makes contact with him, her hand simply falls, gently furled, against him. She doesn’t withdraw it.
Wait. S-so — not tired or weak, but…intentional?
He can’t rid himself of the question mark. Her palm feels cool. This is another thing Haise had never imagined, another thing that books never mentioned, along with the goosebumps on her arms in the morning chill, the wrinkle of her nose as she nuzzles her face to him to avoid the light, the sliver of her nape, the red lines left by creased sheets, the rustle of her hair and the slack of her body as she takes a deep breath and lets it go against him, warm.
“Touka,” he calls softly, and he adds hurriedly, “chan.” Sometime earlier, he recalls, maybe he left that last part out, maybe he gasped “Tou” and cried “ka” and didn’t have breath for the rest. Did that all…really happen? Or was it just some asphyxiated delusion?
One of her eyes opens, but not too widely. She glares. He swallows, unable to put anything to words, and unable even to hide behind a book. Finally, Touka grumbles, and rolls over, with a yawn, onto her back. The blanket falls away. More of her skin is uncovered now, and revealed to be peppered with even more goosebumps that he has an urge to smooth away with his entire body.
“Kaneki,” she says. “I know we have to go soon. But can we…be here? A little longer?”
She’s looking at the ceiling. Kaneki watches, transfixed. She’s so…
“Yeah,” he says. “Of course. Anything.”
There’s no evidence on his body that anything at all has changed since the day before. But his thoughts feel suspended in liquid, or light, or maybe even clouds. His eyes still sting from not so far earlier. At that time, it had felt like something cradling him had shattered, and even now his body still feels weak, like his muscles are still trying to figure out how to maneuver and anchor him into the fragments this new world coalescing and still becoming real around him.
He reaches out, with a single finger. Touka sighs when he prods the beauty mark again. She swats at him, this time definitely not tired, or weak. Her hand meets his, and tightens around it, and doesn’t loosen.