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It is a night like many others since the time Kirawus had begun slipping into Kadokura’s futon, the flash of his grin in place of words, the slide of his palms around Kadokura’s waist in place of response to the grinding noise made in Kadokura’s diaphragm as he stirs. The moon is out, and it makes Kadokura want to turn back to see if it has highlighted Kirawus’ jaw in silver, the image in his mind’s eye blurred, distant.
"Were you lonely?" Kadokura’s mouth opens, closes, just like breath. The manifestation of self-consciousness is not quite so regular for Kadokura as to lead him to trepidation or conformity, but instead a plainness of his strange existence, reconciled in blunt mockery and resignation. It is not this resignation that compels him to speech in Kirawus’ presence, however. Instead the same slow-drip, suspended-time ambiance found in the curve of the moon, and the light of it on Kirawus’ cheekbone.
"Hmm, no," Kirawus takes a slow, indulgent breath through his nose, let's his words drift between Kadokura's shoulder blades with the soft motion of his lips, "I have my kotan to look after. I was surrounded by people I cared for and who cared for me in turn." He kisses Kadokura's spine, just above where the thin, dark lines of his tattoo begin to mark his skin, and shifts his hands around his middle, laying a hand over the gentle swell of plush at his navel. Kadokura hums, gives a subtle nod.
"But knowing you is different," He thumbs through the sparse hair there as he speaks, testing the give of Kadokura's stomach with the pads of his fingers, “Like I lost you somewhere before, and you’ve been gone for a long time, and I was born missing you.” Kirawus’ breathless words stagger, catching in the furrows of his gums and the tight interstices of his teeth as they come, “and now you’re coming back to me.”
"Oh," Kadokura says, pulling in against Kirawus' casual touches, his abdomen just vaguely tensing--before loosening, slackening into the stroke of Kirawus’ fingers, slow enough that their brush draws gooseflesh.
“Yeah,” Kirawus says, wetting his lips and dragging them against Kadokura’s nape. He seems pleased, a little tell in the way he slumps, shuffling his legs to fit his ankles beneath the arch of Kadokura’s heel, another confirming instance of closeness.
“A little lame, isn’t it?” Kadokura swallows hard, huffs some distant relative of a laugh, an awkward pass of air through the nostrils accompanied by a quirk of the brow, another little inward draw of his stomach that Kirawus trails with an unspoken reverence. There is something cold tightening in his marrow, something strange and dreadful tightening the muscles that are nearest to the white monument of bone.
Does Kirawus know what he’s saying? A long time? Before he was born? Kadokura has never been presented with such utter scale to disappoint on.
It makes him want to turn tail and run. Still, in combat of the strange, seizing feeling, his navel stings with heat, a festering burn like venom-prick. When Kirawus passes his fingers over the skin, he can envision the suction of the stinger, the flesh inflaming and bloating around each tender tap. He slumps his way through a breath barely wheezed, giving in to it.
“Finding”--he takes a breath here, only heard for their closeness and only noticed for Kadokura’s attentiveness--“purpose in an asshole-rummaging old man? Definitely.” He laughs, and the breath makes the patch of saliva just below Kadokura’s hairline cool, drawing his thoughts to the sheen of liquid on his pale skin, capturing a distorted slice of the moon against the tendons melding skull to spine. Drawing his thoughts to the closeness of Kirawus’ mouth.
Purpose. Kadokura has no idea what to do with that, not even a little bit.
“Were you?” Kirawus murmurs, nestling down, his temple pressing into that shiny splotch, letting it dry in the mutual heat of their skin. He thumbs against Kadokura’s belly button, somehow endlessly entertained by the mundane reality of the space they occupy, by narrowing the spaces between.
“What?” Kadokura says, and his own voice is muffled in the swell of his eardrums, hot and pulsing between narrowed cartilage.
“Lonely,” Kirawus supplies, naturally, without irritation for Kadokura’s sedate manner and scattered thought.
“Oh,” Kadokura’s tongue feels heavy, and really, that is what he wants to say. He doesn’t want to answer the question; He wants to ask what Kirawus means, wants to ask if he means what he says, wants to ask what he’s supposed to do with any of it. Kirawus keeps thumbing at his stomach, scritching along his happy trail, a hand drifting down to feel the curve of his hip, the small protrusion of the bone there.
“Oh,” Kirawus hums in prompting, the merry curve of his mouth pressed to Kadokura’s back. He can hear him take a long breath through the nose, breathing the warmth of Kadokura’s sleep clothes in.
“I don’t know if I ever thought about it too much, I guess,” Kadokura’s hand shifts, scratching at his stomach with sheepishness, a small appeasal of the burn that Kirawus’ fingers had left. With a little sigh of startled, mischievous delight, Kirawus snatches his palm when it comes near his own, knitting their fingers. The burn amplifies tenfold, and he keeps himself from panting.
“I mean,” Kirawus says, squeezing the gaps of Kadokura’s palm, flexing the seldom used tendons between each finger, “you’re the one who brought it up.”
“I did, huh,” Kadokura says.
“Mm-hm,” Kirawus is still smiling.
“I think,” and there’s a moment of levity, and suddenly the image of Kirawus’ sideburns, the crease of his crow’s feet, the small, rarely exposed furrow that bridges his temples filigreed by moonlight sharpens, “maybe I’m the same way, sort-of.” Kirawus hums. Another prompt, without urgency.
“Just that I think I missed you too.” Kirawus’ hum this time is clear and low, brassy and full, and Kadokura can tell what’s about to happen before it does, the same little strike of claret irony that had compelled him to mirror Kirawus’ sentiments: Kirawus uses his warm hand to roll Kadokura just a bit onto his hip, just enough to barely face Kirawus, and then draws back, propping himself up on his elbow to lean over and kiss him.
Kirawus’ face is too close to see, but Kadokura knows, like everything else, that he’s smiling, the curve of his cupid’s bow dipping handsomely, the set of his eyes softening to match. He always looks at Kadokura like that. He’s stupidly handsome for a bum.
“You look good.”
“It’s dark out, Kadokura. Your eyes are going.” Kadokura sees the dimple at his jaw, the way his overlong sideburns are webbing across his flushed cheeks from turning in the night, from his incessant habit of pressing his face into Kadokura's back as they lay side-by-side.
Kadokura doesn’t stop himself from tilting his chin up, catching their mouths in another brief, giddy nip, chaste and misplaced, flavored like a first kiss. Kirawus’ fingers flex on his hips, and that makes him feel younger, too. Maybe that’s what he’s supposed to do. With this, with any of this, at all.
“I mean, I don’t have--anything, like that. Like you do. I mean, I guess I had a kid--”
Something fractures the atmosphere and, in the splice of time, the coldness seeps back in, the frigid tightening, the all-too familiar sensation of good things gone sour. But then, Kirawus laughs.
“Really? What woman slept with you!” His laughter is easy and incredulous, but his fingers tighten again, nails skimming the very first layer of skin with a desperate, grateful belonging that feels almost sublime enough to ignore the sound of Nagakura’s fist thumping against the floorboards.
“Shit,” they murmur, but Kirawus cannot keep himself from laughing still, fumbling over Kadokura beneath their blanket, kissing his jaw and mouth and throat and sternum.
“Tell me about the kid,” Kirawus says as Kadokura squirms against him, unable to keep himself from chuckling in turn, breathless with a ragged joy, “The woman, too. I want to hear.”
Kirawus takes another one of those breaths. Only noticed because they are exactly who they are. “The people you cared for.”