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Akutagawa regarded him with an unreadable stare.
The moon was a thin, bright slice in the sky and the stars shone like shards, but Akutagawa’s eyes were endlessly dark in the gloom of night. It made Atsushi shiver.
He'd always loved stars. They'd been a constant of sorts, his sole companion during nights spent curled up in the dark. Some nights, he felt as though they were his. Heaven into pieces, just for him. Every glittering piece a lighthouse that served to remind him: Heaven waits for you. Other times, when his head pounded with hate—his, theirs, towards him, within him—the firmament and it's stars seemed far from reach. No longer was it heaven more so than a stretch of the world, of the universe. The same universe that told him everyday since he'd been discarded in the garbage outside the orphanage— you do not belong. Yet, even when salvation was but a dream, there was comfort to be found in that splattering of light.
Atsushi, in spite of everything, had always loved stars.
But as he stared into the depths of the man before him's gaze, Atsushi found himself thinking: "Oh. So this is how a black hole looks like."
Akutagawa’s eyes are decidedly not stars. They are too consuming, too devouring. Light is absorbed more than it is reflected and yet—Atsushi found himself pulled into their orbit.
Akutagawa's brow wrinkled in contemplation, a look now reluctantly familiar to Atsushi. He was thinking about what to say.
Akutagawa was always so careful with his words in all the wrong ways. He never stuttered or rambled like Atsushi always found himself doing but for all the care he put into brevity and speech, there was none to be found in the choice of words themselves. And yet, in the short amount of time they've known each other, his careless careful words always seemed to reach inside of him. Past muscle and tissue into soul and sin. When he spoke, Atsushi felt he heard the hiss of snakes between his syllables.
Something in Atsushi feared Akutagawa's words, eyes, him. He feared how they could change himself. He feared being taken in by those serpentine words. Feared being devoured by the abyss within those eyes.
Something in Atsushi feared that if he allowed himself to be pulled into their depths, he would be remade. Atom by atom, limb by limb. There is something about Akutagawa that makes Atsushi fear being fundamentally destroyed and crushed into stardust.
Akutagawa was startlingly pale normally—so much so that Atsushi thought he looked more like a vampire than the ones he was apparently hunting—but moonlight seemed to blanch his skin alabaster and the shadows carved the angles of face into something more. Something hallowed. Despite the promise of destruction in his eyes and the hiss behind his words, he reminded Atsushi of the stone angels in the church's cemetery. He looked—sacred. It made Atsushi feel sinful, a simmer at the bottom of his stomach. He hated it. He didn’t like Akutagawa.
end.
Hellfire burned in his veins but Akutagawa's fingers were cold as they gripped the bare skin of his forearm. The initial touch had been hesitant, mere whispers of touch, before his fingers wrapped around Atsushi's arm firmly. Their whisper into a declaration. It wasn't painful or demanding, only sure—like Akutagawa was trying to tell him "Yes, I want this. I want you as much as you do me." The realization made Atsushi's heart leap up his throat and if he wasn't already flushed before he was definitely beet red now.
His heart thudded hard in his chest and Atsushi was quite certain that he looked ridiculous, his eyes crossing as he watched Akutagawa's face get closer and closer. His eyelashes casted shadows on his face and this close, Atsushi swore he could catch the faintest hint of jasmine before—
Petal soft lips met his and with their gentle touch came the destruction of a world. Atsushi felt as if a dam had broken. It was a genesis flood, forty days and fourty nights, washing him away. A wrongly healed wound reopening.
Despite his best efforts, he felt his throat spasm as he pushed down the sobs caught in his chest. He could feel Akutagawa start to move away and, desperately, Atsushi pressed his lips harder against him. He clutched Akutagawa's shoulder and kissed him like he was a lifeline, like he was the raft that kept Atsushi from drowning—because in a way, he was.
The sound of voices and whispers telling him "You are unworthy of life, of love" and the image of disdainful stares, hateful eyes, seemed to dissipate at the feel of Akutagawa against himself.
His presence, his warmth, his lips on Atsushi's felt like the ark, the dove, and the rainbow all in one.
Whatever this was, it was a wrongly healed wound reopening—and rehealing. A world destroyed and recreated.
Their lips the collision, the catalyst for something newer, brighter.
Tension melted from his body like rain washing away snow but Akutagawa did not make to deepen the kiss nor did he move away. He kept his lips on Atsushi, the press of them intimate in a way beyond a mouth against another mouth. As his thumb ran gentle circles on his forearm, Atsushi knew: in the creation of this new world—a world that could house the both of them, a world that belonged to the both of them, where there was no need to belong, only to be—it was these quiet moments that would become it's foundation.
A few beats of silence passed like that, their breaths mingling into one.
Atsushi wasn’t sure if this was what kissing was; neither of them were moving their lips but neither made to move away. Akutagawa’s lips were soft on his and it felt right in a way that made Atsushi’s heart feel warm. But it wasn’t a painful heat. It was...gentle. Kind, even. And it prompted a realization that felt a lot like what Atsushi thought a revelation would feel like. Maybe the warmth in his chest when he saw Akutagawa wasn’t hellfire, but sunlight. Maybe they didn’t have to be damned.
He knew demons were said to be beautiful and Atsushi's sure he’d never seen anybody as beautiful as Akutagawa but there was nothing deceitful in the way he could feel Akutagawa’s eyelashes tremble against his cheek or the clamminess of his hand as it gripped Atsushi's forearm.
Akutagawa reminded him of many things. Angels, demons, space, and earth. He was, to Atsushi, an entirety.
But Atsushi knew better than he did before. Akutagawa was no demon from the depths of hell or an angel made of stone, Atsushi had seen that, seen so much of him, too much of him, to think that Akutagawa was anything but human.
Maybe this, whatever it was, didn't have to be a perdition. Or maybe it was. Or maybe it wasn’t anything at all.
Maybe, it was just what it was—them. Atsushi and Akutagawa.
As he breathed a sigh of relief, his lips reslotted against Akutagawa’s more naturally, thoughts of angels and hellfire falling away until all that was left was the feeling of Akutagawa’s cold fingers and warm lips.