Work Text:
✄
They stand knee deep in silence.
Milky white fingers grip his wrist, the contact sears, bone crushing in itself.
There’s a wide expanse of an ocean between them; the waves push at him through his gaze. A step forward, and a mere three inches separate them that Akira can count with the plane of his knuckle.
He was in all white.
Covered head-to-toe in silk, a long sleeved button up and slacks that fit too well.
Now the only silk he sees is the stretch of his skin, the rain pattering off his shoulders, his hair sticking stubbornly to his forehead. He blinks, and pearls of saltwater bead of his lashes. Blue.
Pull me in with your tide.
“Why do you refuse?” he says.
They stand waist deep in silence.
Pull me in.
“Akira?”
His voice breaks the shore.
He’s leaning forward, and his cold drags off his skin, trickling its way into Akira’s lungs.
Pull me in.
“Why do you refuse? Why? Akira,” he pleads.
“Akira, can you stop it?” His voice snaps at the edges.
“Please stop it. I want you to stop it.”
His chest is heaving with his ragged breaths, and the fingers that curl around Akira’s wrist stay cold and trembling.
They stand elbow deep in silence.
Pull me in.
I'll push you out.
Akira kisses him.
Their lips are pressed flush together, only their lips. Apart from his death grip on his wrist that drains all the feeling from Akira’s fingers and the uncomfortable graze of his nose against Akira’s own, there’s no other contact. Akira revels in his hitch of breath, the tightening of his hold.
Neither of them close their eyes.
Akira watches as his lashes dance on his cheeks, as he sucks in a shaking breath through his nose. How his gaze wavers and how his pupils dilate when Akira drags his tongue across his freezing bottom lip. Sea-salt. The hairs on Akira’s nape rise when rainwater sneaks through the gaps of their mouths.
They part with a soft noise, and he is full on shivering when Akira runs his thumb just so across his lip.
They stand drowning in silence.
His grip on Akira’s wrist slackens, but doesn’t fully fall away.
Pull me in.
“Akira?” His voice is hoarse and unsteady. “Akira? Can you say my name, Akira? Can you?”
Drown me.
“No.”
Tobio’s gaze flitters across Akira’s face, searching and tired. Tobio leans forward and drops his head to Akira’s shoulder.
Akira doesn’t push him off.
Tobio’s jaw pokes uncomfortably against the side of his collarbone, and Akira squirms at the feather light feeling of his lashes at the crook of his neck. Tobio’s shirt has shifted completely translucent, the trio of beauty marks littered over his shoulder visible. Litter in the ocean. Litter in the ocean. Tobio is freezing.
Akira raises a hand to the back of Tobio’s head, pulling through the strands. He whispers, It’s been so long, Akira, please. It is static. Oceans roar, would he stay through the crashing of the tides?
Akira fists his hand in Tobio’s shirt. Water drips at the edges.
“And while my love wholly is yours, Tobio,”
Bile twists in Akira’s gut. Tobio heaves an exhale, as if he’d been freed. Akira’s shoving him back into the cage.
“Your love isn't unconditionally mine.”
Tobio’s muffled sob is a gradual regression, and the tide pulls back.
Akira wishes he didn’t pull him in. Their toes dip in the silence.
✄