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"Well?" Adachi swallows with a croak, hand gripping the ruthlessly cold steel, the tiny 'clank!' it makes echoes in the room. "You got your answer, didn't you? I did it, I killed them. That's what you wanted to hear, right?" His voice wavers, unsure of what to say next. "The little reason why you and your group of friends have been running around in circles for a year now."
Maybe Yu should've brought them along, now thinking about it with a clearer conscious. Their gaze alone should bring plenty enough of guilt to pin him down, to make his steps falter and change course the second they moved.
But he didn't, so his mind was forced to be clear and his actions had to be unhindered.
Lifting his hand to reach for Adachi—Yu didn't know exactly why but, at this point, that was a given—he had just noticed how cold his fingers really were. "Push me away," Adachi ordered, his voice strained and scratching the inside shell of Yu's ears unpleasantly.
Adachi didn't look up—doesn't need to, he can feel Yu's brisk fingers and ruined gaze upon him, cracks in his dusky eyes would've already begun to form, and the righteous leader he played games with wouldn't be judging him, it would be Narukami Yu—as he starts to feel the pressing of two palms into each of his shoulders.
The touch was sickeningly sweet, painted with passive desire and reassuring glances from the supplier, and his mind only associated with the word 'hatred'.
Yu's fingers curve in an alluring swan-like movement. They arc into an unfamiliar style on top of his shoulders hesitantly. But then it's his hand that crooks next, his arms following suit. His movement is precious, they wrap around each other like a tightened bow and Adachi can't see it, but he knows it. Knows it in the way he knows how to breathe. Yu's arms bound into knots Adachi will never be able to untangle.
Yu can feel it against his skin; the cheap suit, the fallen dust, even the smell of Dojima's drunken haze seeping into Adachi's skin—he can feel it all on his fingertips. The blood stitched into Adachi's hands suddenly makes color under Yu's fingernails, the sway of murder is on his palm, and he's only inviting it further. In all the spots and crevices that can never be cleaned, gore is declining deeper into his body. And suddenly, just like that, the word 'we' becomes much more appealing to Adachi.
The grip doesn't falter and only sinks him in further, into a hole Adachi could never depart from. The bottomless pit he's been silently searching for yet loathing. It's only at that moment he understands that Narukami is a person that can never be figured out. A man of few words is a man who prefers action, the term itself describes Yu wholeheartedly but fights against him as well.
It's a hug.
Adachi is forced to realize this fact, as the choked sobs in his shoulder make their way to his ears. It is forbidden words that stay in their throats, only hoping to make their appearance through the slight dimmer in each other's eyes, the windows to their soul.
If he's not careful, this will be written down. Bold letters engraved into second-rate paper and their lives will fall beside the ashes on his shoulders.
He'll stop it, Adachi has to. He doesn't remember when the roles turned out like this, but he's already sick of playing his part. His character as the puppeteer and acts of wanton passion, he wonders, when did it become an act?
He'll shove back, be the one to make the first step, and move on. He'll be the victor in all of this like he always has, it shouldn't even be a choice for him at this point.
A quiet sniff. Then—"I'm sorry." And his will is burned to dust like trees in a wildfire. It would seem as if their paths had weaved the moment Yu made his first breath, and that would only add to the list of reasons why Adachi absolutely despised him.
Oh, how he resented Yu. Disliked, abhorred, antagonized—every word out there that even stood beside the word hate, Adachi would tell tales of it for as long as he could, his final breath and all. He hated Narukami Yu and that stupidly comforting charm of his.
"A fly trapped in a spider's web, huh?" Adachi would've felt disgusted if not for the warmth emitting from Yu, momentarily forgetting that disgust and remembering the provocation.
Yu's mind is like an open land of wind and, for whatever reason, he's the one who has to walk on the swinging leaves and wet grass, covering his face from the gushing wind that pushes from all the directions it's not supposed to. Drowsiness has already coursed through his veins, taking every sort of will from him and tossed it away. He has no reason to walk through these plains, but he does so anyway, regardless of the wind.
Even when he encircles his arms around Yu's back, drawing him closer to the nightmare he's been running from for his entire life, Yu doesn't blink nor flounder. He merely takes it as it is—an action to want and it's littered with bits of the truth yet the fullness is seemingly forever out of his reach. For now, at least, that's what Yu promises the both of them and even if it's not said with words, he settles it with looking up at Adachi's eyes. Looking straight at him, as if he were a human too.
He scoffs, Adachi had long given up that title, cast it aside as an unnecessary decoration for privilege. He threw out his bonds of trust, cut them away, and yet they wouldn't stay cut. Adachi wanted to smile, to laugh, and forget he ever woke up that morning because he just doesn't know. And neither does Yu.
They'll both dance the waltz to a never-ending song until one of them steps on the other's foot, and the one that makes that mistake will either be set free or will have to face the ends of both of their efforts. The other? Well, Adachi hasn't quite figured that one out just yet.
Yu gives one last squeeze before slightly loosening his grip and Adachi can feel his own fear starting to make form from emotion to reality. And once again, repulsive is the only word he could think of. The sting in his eyes isn't false and the skip in his breathing will have to be recognized as true or far worse punishments lays behind that door of disbelief.
Adachi finally looks Yu in the eye and it's everything he pictured it to be.
Yu can feel the grip against his back, they both can taste the reluctance as they take breath, he can smell the anxiety that the soft breeze fails to mask. There's a gut-wrenching feeling in his body and he wants to take everything back.
Adachi stammers with his last protest, and it still doesn't come out. Yu will leave and he'll return to this friends, leaving Adachi in the dust.
Yu lifts up Adachi's chin, still in his grasp, and can see the flash of tremors and sentiments that flash by Adachi's stare.
And like heaven, he kisses him.
