Archive of Our Own

From the first time the two met, Mori Ougai and Fukuzawa Yukichi had never been too fond of each other. 

If only they knew that their souls were already too far tangled into one another for that to be all there ever was to their relationship. 

In the beginning, however, neither were aware of that fact yet, and thus didn’t know of all the lifetimes before this one that they shared as willing captives to the bounds of love they let tie them indelibly to only each other. As far as the two men knew in the lifetime they lived now, all Mori and Fukuzawa thought they were to each other were reluctant partners in battle by choice of Natsume, a bodyguard to a deceptive doctor, two sides of the same coin yet undeniably opposite. 

It was an unfortunate inevitability that came with the rebirth of life after death, that was the loss of memories in reincarnation for the chance to start over new, because the mind was weak and forgetful. But, Mori and Fukuzawa never did quiet accept that as their fate and complied regretfully to the idea that a lifetime to love one another was all they would ever be allowed. Instead, they defied the stars and the universe and found a way for them to remember their love themselves, once finding one another in every life, if the mind would not. 

It was utterly and abysmally cruel of a fate to accept once they had traveled to the end of the road in one lifetime that they would have to part in the possibility of forever, in the chance they wouldn’t ever fall in love again. It was simply a risk neither were willing to take, universe be damned, the loss of their love was a sacrifice they would not so much as juggle. Instead, treating it like rare and fragile glass, wrapped sacredly in the protection of bubble wrap, not to be chanced with the suspense of it shattering into nothing, like ashes of a fire, all in the prospect of a new life.

Helplessly tolerating the mere chance to find and fall in love with one another in lifetimes to come was exactly what they stood against. Latency for their remembrance to one another in being rebranded into new life was understood, but a complete unremitting loss of memories from when they fell in love to when they moved onto another life was simply not fathomable. They wanted not a  chance, but certainty.

Mori loved Fukuzawa like the ocean loved the moon, that he became resistless to the currents the older pulled him through, compelled and overcome towards Fukuzawa like a gravitational pull. The other man was like a star that shinned through a sky full of light pollution, through every star that was stolen from the city lights below, somehow there stood one. A light in an incomprehensible stretch of darkness, that it was inevitable Mori would be drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

And Fukuzawa loved Mori like the best kind of plot twist. Like the fires within himself he let no one else see finally ran out of fuel. After burning for too long, unnoticed, there came someone who did, pressing a palm to Fukuzawa’s own, gently resting a hand over his ash heart, like his touch stamped the flames. Mori gave Fukuzawa peace. When he thought that was nothing but a fairytale concept his story wouldn’t come to know.

How could they be expected to let go of something they held so preciously cradled to their hearts? They couldn’t, more so, they wouldn’t. Which is why, while oblivious, when once again in another lifetime Mori and Fukuzawa followed the path back to each other in Natsume’s plan to have them join forces as the first ever known Double Black duo, they started to recall the memories of their past lives. Mori was the first of them to experience the recollection of memories. 

It happened close to the start of their partnership. The two were sent out on a mission, one of the few they had done with each other so far, still becoming familiar to both their fighting styles and adjusting to working with another person by their side. As such, Natsume shouldn’t blame him for getting separated from Fukuzawa, the two of them parting off in different directions of the building they were currently in, when Mori had something catch his eye and had forgotten he was meant to be by the side of his ‘bodyguard’.

At the end of their mission when they had to regroup, Mori wondered the now deathly silenced building in search of his partner. And when he finally found him, Fukuzawa was left passed out soundly on the floor of an empty room, spare for the dead bodies scattered around him. Mori scanned his eyes over the scene, blinking surprisedly down at Fukuzawa, having not expected him to be taken down so easily. 

Mori and he had only been on a scarce number of missions together, but he wasn’t ignorant to his partner’s strength and skill. They wouldn’t have been paired together to begin with if Natsume hadn’t acknowledged it either. Which is what confused Mori to see the man he had before watched marvellously take down a group of men in the time it took the first one to hit the ground, frighteningly quick, now be laying on the floor himself. 

He continued further into the room, crouching down beside Fukuzawa’s unmoving form to inspect his state, which was when Mori came to an understanding of what must have happened. As the younger man flicked his eyes over Fukuzawa, noting the breathing and steady rise and fall of his chest, minor injuries but nothing close to significant enough to have him left unconscious, a flicker of something that shinned got caught in his peripheral vision. He followed the glimpse to find an intricate, sliver dart plunged into the side of Fukuzawa’s neck.

“Tranquilizer,” Mori muttered to himself in understanding.

That made sense of Fukuzawa’s unconscious state with his lack of injuries. He glanced up again, looking at the bodies in the room who were sprawled similarly on the floor to Fukuzawa, apart from the one distinct difference separating them being his partner’s still beating heart. The enemy must have managed to land a dart on Fukuzawa, yet in the end the silver-haired man stole each of their breaths before sleep came to steal him away. Truely, what an impressive man, Mori considered for a moment, before humming thoughtfully as he focused his attention back to Fukuzawa.

“No matter.”

Mori nipped the dart from Fukuzawa’s neck, dropping it carelessly to the side and letting it roll away as he shifted his position to lift Fukuzawa up. Mori took Fukuzawa’s arm into his grasp, shuffling closer to the other’s side, before slinging the limp arm around his shoulder. And in that moment, suddenly, Mori’s mind went blank, all thoughts abruptly wiped as an ethereally intense feeling of déjà vu tingled throughout his body, shooting up his spine like the rise of a firework before it exploded, and all at once Mori’s mind was pulled into a scene running vividly through him.

The sun shinned down on the grass and the tree’s below, casting the park in light and blanketing Mori and Fukuzawa in all the warmth they needed. Mori had his head rested comfortably on Fukuzawa’s lap as the rest of his body laid down on the fresh blades of grass, unbothered by the lack of material separating him from the earth aside from the purple yukata he had wrapped around himself.

Mori held one of his hands to the sun, a smile lifted upon his lips in complete and contented serenity, as he spread his fingers wide and watched the stream of light slip through the gaps like water flowing through the rocks of a waterfall. Fukuzawa was sitting upright, one hand loosely resting over Mori’s shoulder, allowing his fingers to trace absent lines up and down the shorter’s arm as though soothing him impossibly further into peace. While, his other hand clasped a small book that he had his attention focused on as he recited aloud old and familiar poetry to them both.  

The sounds of children laughing, planes passing by overhead and the singing of summer insects bounced around the park. Yet, they were all mere background noise to Mori, distant when compared to Fukuzawa’s voice right beside him, deep and smooth like an endless surge of water, but rich like finely aged wine. Mori was charmed to lay there and listen to the other speak for hours, and that is what he did.

He especially loved the sound of Fukuzawa’s voice whenever the other would read to him. He loved the way it would evoke subtle emotions into his voice as he got lost in the words he told, the shifts of his tone and small empathises applied to the passage he read. They were all such trifling details about Fukuzawa, the kind of finely embroidered patterns into Fukuzawa’s personality that anyone could miss if they weren’t paying enough attention. What Mori knew only his ears would ever be able to detect.

Mori was tugged from the scene, the picture of the sun slipping between his fingers fading along with the trail of Fukuzawa’s voice, until his mind was back in his reality. Mori blinked before the dark room around him, at the blood soaked bodies staining the carpet and the direct contrast to everything that he had just been wrapped up in. He didn’t understand what he had just seen, and all the emotions he had been feeling in that moment that didn’t exist.

But it had felt so detailed, so unexplainably natural like nothing was out of the ordinary, like that moment was simply nothing but a moment that did once exist. And Mori, for the life of him, couldn’t pin point why whatever he had just seen in his head felt that way. His expression tightened, eyebrows pinching together as his lips parted for a moment long enough for an unsteady breath to escape him, before ultimately pressing his lips into a thin line.

One moment Mori’s mind was here, readying an unconscious Fukuzawa upright and preparing to get him back to his underground clinic, and then suddenly déjà vu had consumed him so heavily for a scene he denied existed, for which the déjà vu was telling him otherwise. But it had all happened so quickly, that by the time he snapped out of it nothing but a few seconds had gone by, so Mori shook his head, ruling it as an awfully strange fluke from something so silly that it wasn’t worth lingering on. 

Mori continued fixing his hold on Fukuzawa, before heaving the taller up and letting Fukuzawa’s weight lean onto his side. By the time he had gotten them both back to his clinic Mori hadn’t let himself think of what had just occurred when it all felt too trivial and brief for it to have been anything at all. By the time Fukuzawa finally awoke as the effects of the tranquilizer wore off, Mori had forgotten about it all together.

—

Fukuzawa pushed open the door to Mori’s medical office only to pause once his gaze settled on the other. He had left the room for only a few minutes and come back to find Mori slumped over his desk, eyes closed and breathing heavy enough for Fukuzawa to determine the other had fallen asleep. Fukuzawa sighed, before stepping further into the room, letting the door swing close behind him as he soundlessly approached Mori’s desk as to not risk waking the other.

A part of him was glad Mori was finally getting the sleep that Fukuzawa had been reminding Mori he needed, but he did wish it was in a more suitable place than his desk. The other was going to wake up with a sore back, but Fukuzawa would rather have him suffer through that than wake him and have the repeated cycle of Mori working himself until he was physically incapable of fighting exhaustion any longer.

Fukuzawa eyed the the half eaten bowl of cheap take out soup that Fukuzawa had brought and forced him to eat earlier, now sitting dangerously close to the papers getting crumpled beneath Mori’s head. He shifted the bowl off to the other side of the desk, far enough that Mori wouldn’t accidentally knock it over upon waking. He then went to save the documents Mori had been tirelessly working himself over from getting too crushed from beneath him, slipping his hand carefully beneath Mori’s chin as he lifted his head-

When all of a sudden Fukuzawa’s mind was stolen off into replaying a scene to him that he had never known he’d experienced before, but feeling all too real.

Fukuzawa was standing at his kitchen stove, all lights turned off apart from the cozily illuminating glow of the stove light, as he stirred the rice he had boiling on the stovetop. And finally, he heard the front door to his house click open and shut as the melodic voice he had been anticipating to hear all day, finally announced his arrival. Fukuzawa let his shoulder’s smooth out form where they had been increasingly tensing as the night grew deeper and deeper, and still Mori had yet to arrive home.

But now he was back, and Fukuzawa was glad above all for that. He listened as familiar footsteps padded into the kitchen after a few moments, and then sighed instinctually when two arms snaked around his waist from behind. Mori buried his face into Fukuzawa’s shoulder, slightly squeezing his hold on the taller as he pulled them closer together until Mori was all but melting into Fukuzawa. 

“Welcome home,” Fukuzawa greeted softly. He couldn’t help the fond smile twitching at the corner of his lip as Mori sunk tiredly into him, clinging to his back as though holding Fukuzawa and stealing his body heat was all he had been wanting to do while he was stuck late at work, once again.

An incoherent mumble of a response was all Fukuzawa received back, but from Mori’s lips pressed into his shoulder he could vaguely understand Mori’s apology for being late from the way he mouthed it against him. Fukuzawa closed his eyes for a moment as he let his fond smile stretch, before placing down the spoon he was stirring Mori’s late dinner with and instead placed a hand over Mori’s clasped around his waist. He remained quiet for a few minutes, allowing the muted bubbling of the rice to fill the silence as he rubbed his thumb along Mori’s hands, giving him time to rest after a long day at work. 

After enough time had passed, Fukuzawa eventually turned around in Mori’s hold, forcing the younger to remove his head from his shoulder and meet his eyes. Mori looked tiredly up at Fukuzawa, lips pulled into a small, unintentional pout as he kept a loose but stubborn hold around Fukuzawa’s waist. Fukuawa exasperatedly huffed quietly through his nose as he took in Mori’s sunken state, twisting his lips disapprovingly to the side.

“I really wish you would take a break.”

Fukuawa reached up and traced his thumbs gently along the line of dark circles forming under Mori’s eyes, touching them as tenderly as a kiss, wishing he could erase them in nothing but a simple touch. 

Mori sighed, closing his eyes as he let them be traced. “I know. But you know there is still so much to do and so little time to do it.”

“You would be able to work more efficiently in a better state of health. Which means getting more sleep and eating more.” Fukuzawa told him again what he’d already told him many times before, slipping his hands from beneath Mori’s eyes down to cup his cheeks, slightly titling the shorter’s head up to prompt him to look at him. Mori’s eyes fluttered open and watched Fukuzawa knowingly, already having listened to this speech many times before. “Taking better care of yourself more,” Fukuzawa added his finishing point.

Mori inhaled deeply, before sighing, leaning into Fukuzawa’s touch and embracing its comfort for a few moments. “I know, Yukichi. I do.”

Fukuzawa looked between both of Mori’s eyes, still unconvinced. “Then you’ll listen this time and take a break?”

It was silent between them for the next few beats, Mori watching Fukuzawa who only looked expectantly back at him. Eventually, Mori bit down on the inside of his cheek then smiled, and after trying for so long for this reaction, Mori nodded his head. 

“Okay. I’ll take a break tomorrow.”

“Promise,” Fukuzawa pushed, letting one hand drop back to his side as the other slipped from Mori’s cheek to hold him carefully under his chin.

“I promise.” Mori closed their small gap, connecting their lips in a sweet lingering press that sealed the promise.

Fukuzawa lowered Mori’s head back down onto his clinic’s desk, stepping back as the scene that had just played out before him seemed to end, reality all of a sudden filtering back in. As though whatever he had just seen in his mind wouldn’t leave him reeling in an overwhelming amount of confusion.

Before now, he would guarantee that the moment his mind had him unexpectedly recalling was something that he had not experienced, and was simply a crafted scenario placed unnaturally into his mind. Yet, he couldn’t shake the indefinable feeling of how enigmatically realistic it all felt, settled into his mind as though it was always there. The moment he had seen, with he and Mori in a kitchen of a house he could now remember inside and out, yet had never stepped foot in there once in the life he’d live.

The way he had been trying to convince Mori to take a break from work out of his own caring concern for the other, so similar to how Fukuzawa persisted Mori to take breaks constantly now. But there was more to Fukuzawa’s concern for Mori in the scene that had just flooded his mind, a care that exceeded far beyond the reasons Fukuzawa wanted Mori to take better care of himself. A care for Mori too dangerous for Fukuzawa to attempt to process right now. 

It was more than the sense of reality by similarity it brought as well. Being in the kitchen he had never seen in his life, holding Mori like the most precious thing in the world and having Mori hold him back as if Fukuzawa was all the comfort he ever needed, it felt familiar, intimately so. As though what he had seen flash before his eyes had happened before and he had simply forgotten about it until this moment, like it was just another uncovered memory of something long forgotten but meant to be remembered.

Fukuzawa left the documents under Mori to be crumpled and left the room with his breath held. He didn’t know how or why all of what he could feel was happening, but nothing ever needed to be considered further about this if it never happened again, remaining nothing but an outlandish coincidence. 

—

Mori and Fukuzawa’s partnership progressed as the days went on, time building them a level of comfortability, till they went from strangers who worked together, to people who could share silence with one another, existing in each other’s presence in their own enjoyment. Through the unbroken pattern of sunrises to sunsets Mori grew to know Fukuzawa’s combat skills like the lines of his palm, the older’s moves becoming closely acquainted to himself that it was like everything Fukuzawa was once taught was now being subconsciously transferred to Mori.

It wasn’t just Fukuzawa’s ability in battle that had worked its way into Mori’s knowledge either. Fukuzawa as a person was becoming familiar himself, and he knew all of this was reciprocated the same, if where he sat right now told him anything. 

Mori and Fukuzawa had recently finished a mission that had sent them out further than usual, the travel time back therefore becoming expectedly harsh when piled onto the strain of their bodies from fighting. Fukuzawa’s apartment had been closer than Mori’s clinic, which they would usually return back to in the convenience of having Mori treat any possible casualties. But today had been different, and the two had a mutually unspoken understanding of each other’s shared exhaustion.

So after the mission, when Fukuzawa wondered off down the route to his apartment and Mori followed silently behind, when not a word of protest was declared as Fukuzawa stepped inside and left the door open in wordless invitation, Mori had continued following him in. Fukuawa had taken the first opportunity of sleep presented to him and sunk into the couch, uncaring to the cushions beneath him that would be tarnished in grime come morning. 

Mori had been all the same. He sat at the end of the couch, legs resting next Fukuzawa’s head laying only a few inches away. Mori let all the tension and ache in his body slowly unravel as he sat there listlessly and defenceless in the unexplored territory of Fukuzawa’s home, listening to the other man’s breathing like one would enjoy the pleasantry of music. He listened to the sound of Fukuzawa’s breathing from when he was slipping into sleep, until sleep finally came over him completely.

Mori released a breath, glancing down to Fukuzawa beside him and before he realised it, his gaze was left lingering there like a compulsion he couldn’t disobey. His attention was specifically drawn to the few silver strands of Fukuzawa’s hair resting on his cheek. The sight irrationally irritated him, bugging him like an itch ever so tempting to scratch, like a whisper of a voice urging him to reach out and touch. 

Mori’s hand was moving before he could think about it. His finger’s gently grazing the surface of Fukuzawa’s cheek as he tucked back the out-of-place strands, and then, just like the first time that Mori had long concluded was a once over, his mind was suddenly pulling him into a far away scene rushing back to him.

Mori laughed in elated delight as he tangled his hands in Fukuzawa’s hair, running his fingers through the strands and combing them to his liking. Fukuzawa watched him from the old rustic gold vanity mirror he was sitting in front of, allowing Mori his bliss of getting to style Fukuzawa to his please. The older’s eyebrows dipped amusedly, a small fond smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

Mori was all too happy with the events of tonight and it wasn’t about the banquet they were already going to be late to attending. That was all well and good, but Mori’s excitement was coming from the fact he had managed to convince his dear, traditional clothes loving Fukuzawa to wear a formal suit. Which Mori had taken in euphorically, like the way the sun invited the moon to shine each night by lending its light. All of which having caused Mori to take over Fukuzawa’s appearance for the night as a whole.

Mori leaned around from where he stood behind him and pressed a quick kiss on Fukuzawa’s cheek, before walking around to the front of him to reach for the hair brush sitting on the vanity’s counter. 

“You’re having far too much fun with this, My Dear,” Fukuzawa remarked sarcastically, still ever the patient man he was.

“It is not so often I get a chance such as this,” Mori replied without a hint of an apology. He grinned again, wrapping a hand around Fukuzawa’s shoulder as he plopped himself down onto the other man’s lap. “Now, just what to do with you’re hair?” He hummed considerately.

Fukuzawa released a heavy sigh, and still, he remained seated in place, patiently indulging Mori for as long as the younger would like, even if it would make them late to where they were meant to be.

Mori retreated his hand away from tucking back Fukuzawa’s hair, watching the other obliviously sleeping man as though he had just burned him. Mori kept the hand he had touched Fukuzawa with held to his chest, eyes blown wide and confused and heart race accelerating by each second.

That was the second time this had happened. The second time Mori experienced a scene for which Mori took part in, so vivid, it was as if it had happened before. It was too clear, not only the details he could suddenly recall, but the emotions he was feeling during that moment, the sense of pure eased enjoyment without a single care for anything else in that moment but the pleasant feeling of simple happiness. He could think of that moment and feel all those emotions as if they were his own.

It felt like a memory. 

Memory.

Mori inhaled slowly, tearing his eyes away from Fukuzawa as he turned his head to watch the blank wall of Fukuzawa’s living room, letting his heart beat settle. Now in his clearer state of mind, recognising this as an occurrence that had happened more than once, Mori could see that as his answer. The last two scenes his mind had him remembering, from laying on the grass as he listened to Fukuzawa read him poetry, to playing carelessly with his hair, all memories of which he was sure had never occurred within this life.

Which Mori understood meant one last thing. That these memories were ones from past lives, lives before this one that he had shared with Fukuzawa in ways far beyond his and Fukuzawa’s relationship now. Mori exhaled and dropped his head back to the head of the couch, staring at the ceiling for a moment, before closing his eyes and thinking further about this now that he had figured out what he was seeing.

The first time a memory was triggered was back in the start of he and Fukuzawa’s partnership when he found the other passed out asleep from a tranquilizing dart. Mori replayed that moment in his head, step by step, trying to figure out the exact moment the memory came back to him. He remembered taking the dart from Fukuzawa’s neck, then reaching for the other’s arm, dangling it across his shoulder and then his mind went blank and a memory across a different lifetime suddenly came back to him.

Mori then thought about the similar incident only a few minutes ago. He’d reached for the loose strands on Fukuzawa’s cheek, scraped his skin in a feather light touch as he dragged the strands back and then…

Mori opened his eyes. Touch. The memories were triggered through touch. In both scenarios whenever Mori had touched Fukuzawa in a way that matched similarly to a way they had touched lifetimes long ago, that very memory of that moment made itself remembered in his lifetime now.

Mori and Fukuzawa never touched often, aside from the accidental brushes in combat, there was never a need nor a desire— at least ones that Mori refused to acknowledge—. Neither was touch shared with Fukuzawa something he had actively thought about so cautiously until now. 

Mori kept his hands firmly in his lap away from Fukuzawa, now aware of the chance that touching the other would bring, and not knowing if his mind could handle another spinning vortex of emotions making him dizzy as he recalled a moment that he now knew did once exist for him.

For that reason, the chance for memories to once again ignite between them became even rarer than it already was, now that Mori was cautious to avoid touch with Fukuzawa from then on. It simply didn’t make sense to him, remembering lives that once were, when his present one was abundantly different. 

—

Fukuzawa and Mori pressed their backs to the wall when they heard footsteps approaching, Fukuzawa silently reaching down to unsheathe his blade as the two waited and listened for the right opening. It had been a while since the two had been heavily demanded by Natusme that they work on a mission together, enough so that the two’s usual refusal didn’t cut it today. Which had them ended up silently waiting to take down their first targets, after having just infiltrated the instructed facility.

The echo of footsteps traveled louder and closer by each suspended second and just as Fukuzawa’s fingers came settling around the handle of his blade, Mori took a step forward away from the wall. Fukuzawa dropped the hand from his blade, quickly reaching out to Mori as the other attempted to turn the corner, miscalculated too soon. 

“No, wait,” Fukuzawa whispered sharply. 

His hand connected with Mori’s own in motive to tug the other back. But in that moment, when Mori’s hand made contact with his own, for a few spared seconds he forgot about the mission they were on, his mind presenting to him a scene that felt like a forgotten memory, coming suddenly and unannounced back to him.

Fukuzawa was walking along a beach, the sky above painted in warm colours spreading richer and deeper into the horizon as the sun dipped lower beneath the world. The sunset reflected onto the ocean below it, the blue canvas rippling calmly and still, as it became decorated in pastels that weren’t it’s own. He listened silently to the religious gentle lull of the ocean crawling up the sand before retreating back, feet sunk comfortably into the soft sand through each step forward.

In one hand he held both his shoes, dangling freely in the loose grip of his fingers. In his other hand Mori’s own lay pressed against his palm, fingers intertwined into his own as the other man walked in easy, familiar, routine pace beside him. Fukuzawa could feel the lines of Mori’s palm to his own, the many wrinkles brought about from time as their own reminder that Mori had lived, long and complete.

After all, Fukuzawa’s hand was just the same, because they had both lived a long life. Now thoroughly aged, old and grey, with weakly beating hearts slowing by each passing day. And Fukuzawa wouldn’t have it any other way. He felt a serene type of peace, walking along the beach with Mori’s hand in his own, knowing they were on their last days and contented with how that be. 

Fukuzawa was fulfilled with the life he had lived, without regret and without a longing for more, he was more than ready to move on, so long as the hand in his own wouldn’t have to leave his own in the premise of death. Fukuzawa smiled and squeezed Mori’s hand a little tighter, in all his aching bones could manage. He knew that not even death would do them part, and a gentle spark of excitement still ran beneath his skin at the thought, travelling to his old heart and getting it to beat a little faster. 

He was more than ready to move onto the next life, prepared to dive in head first and eyes closed, knowing whatever awaited him would be good because the hand held in his own would remain again.

The scene came back to Fukuzawa in full, and thus his mind returned to focusing on his present, just in time for him to pick up the click of a trigger being pulled. His instincts had him reacting while his mind remained partly absent, still swirling from what it was he had just recalled, as he used the hand still grasping Mori’s to tug the shorter back to his side. He swiftly spun them both around, shoving Mori’s back to the wall and stepping forward until their chests flushed together, in the narrow escape of a bullet sent flying past the back of Fukuzawa’s head. 

The two didn’t so much as acknowledge the bullet, two sets of eyes locked onto each other, unyielding to be removed or look else where. Fukuzawa’s heart pounded mutely in his ears, beating in a way that made him distracted to all other senses, without a thought to spare to the world around him as he watched Mori’s eyes staring up at him, wide, reeling and knowing. In that look had all the written words that Fukuzawa read, telling him what his mind had just shown him, had also been shown to Mori as well.

“You’ve been seeing them, too,” Mori whispered, whether it was for need not to speak loud in the close proximity the shared, or if he simply could not get his voice to reach a volume of assured confidence.

Mori’s eyes flicked between both of Fukuzawa’s, jumping from eye to eye, curious and capitulating to acceptance, yet with his face torn in too many emotions for Fukuzawa to grasp what it was the other was feeling. And, Ah, Fukuzawa understood. What he had been seeing every other time he touched Mori, were memories he had lived in lives before this one now. 

Fukuzawa slowly nodded to Mori, confirming that he had been remembering memories of lives they had shared together, too. But before the two could be left to understand and linger on what it meant and all that they were feeling, another bullet grazed the sleeve of Fukuzawa’s yukata and they were forced to return to the mission becoming dangerously compromised by their unforeseen and mystifying revelations.

Even so, later when the world allowed them their chance to unravel the purpose of remembering the memories they had, shift through the knotted strings of emotions tangled almost hopelessly. They didn’t. Because a yearning for those lifetimes now out of reach was starting to form, like two stars in the galaxy not destined to ever align. But those lifetimes, while once existing, were startlingly not his present.  

And Fukuzawa knew better than to swallow himself whole into a pit of longing for something that wasn’t his reality. He knew how easily one could be sucked away into a hopeless dream of a desire regretfully unattainable. So they both said nothing and tried to push the memories aside, touch even fewer as that was how they saw best to deal with it. Though somewhere in the back of their minds, amidst the memories trying to make their way back to them both, they must have known that, really, they were just cowards.

—

“Would you just let me do my job, Fukuzawa,” Mori chided, becoming increasingly impatient the longer this went on. 

“Rich of you to call this your job,” Fukuzawa shot back. He wrapped his opened yukata back around himself, coving the leaking wound of his stomach from where Mori had been trying to treat it before he bled to death.

Mori sighed heavily and frustrated as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “I am still a doctor in profession, and unless you want to die in the next few hours would you stop being so difficult and just let me treat you.”

“I can stitch myself up well enough,” Fukuzawa continued to refute, starting to pushing himself off the medical bench he was sitting on. 

“Oh for- sit down,” Mori deadpanned, patience worn thin. He put both his hands on Fukuzawa’s shoulder’s, forcing the other back down.

And in the heat of the moment, forgetting the possibility that touching Fukuzawa could bring. For as much as they had been trying to avoid it, just as Mori’s hands made contact with Fukuzawa’s shoulder’s, another old memory unlocked itself in both their minds.

“Stay in bed a little longer,” Mori whined in Fukuzawa’s ear.

The shorter was clinging to Fukuzawa’s back, arms wrapped around Fukuzawa’s neck and legs hooked around his waist as he laid his bare chest to Fukuzawa’s bare back. While Fukuzawa was trying to ignore him as much as he could, stood beside their bed, bending down and trying to put on his slippers, making Mori lay almost flat against his back. 

“You know I need to get ready for the day,” Fukuzawa replied back with a hint of apology in his tone. And yet, he still raised himself until he stood straight and leaned back, dropping Mori safely onto the bed, freeing himself from the other man’s hold. 

Fukuzawa rolled his shoulder’s upon the release of Mori’s weight, before flicking his eyes around the room in search of a shirt. All while Mori continued his whining, “The day can wait. At least another five more minutes.”

Fukuzawa huffed around a smile tugging at his lips despite himself, turning back to Mori and watching the other looking up at him hopefully. Fukuzawa dipped down, pushing Mori’s hair back as he rested his hand on the top of the other’s forehead, placing a quick apologetic kiss to the lower half. He went to pull back after that, truly needing to get ready, before Mori caught his wrist.

The younger pulled Fukuzawa’s arm towards him, making the older direct his attention back to Mori as he began pecking tempting kisses along each of Fukuzawa’s knuckles. Fukuzawa looked down at him exasperatedly fond and when Mori was watching him captivatingly alluring, in a clear expectancy, under his long eyelashes. Well, Fukuzawa was all too weak and surrendered himself to Mori’s wish.

“Five more minutes,” Fukuzawa caved. Mori grinned as Fukuzawa kicked off his slippers, sliding back into bed and hovering above Mori as he cupped either side of his face, looking down into the other’s eyes as if willingly drowning himself in their endless depths. “You’re lucky you have such stunning eyes.”

Mori titled his head, the corner of his mouth pulled upwards. “Ah, so it is just my eyes you fell in love with. I see your true motives now,” Mori teased.

“No,” Fukuzawa easily disagreed with a soft smile, gentle enough to match his gaze, as he sipped his thumbs along Mori’s cheeks. “Though, they were the first.”

The memory ended and the two fell abruptly silent, despite the arguing they had been caught up in only moments ago. Mori’s hands retreated from his shoulder’s as he released a sigh and Fukuzawa kept his gaze stubbornly averted from the other. The two merely absorbed the silence like a comfort, because neither knew what to say, and Fukuzawa didn’t know he wanted either of them to say anything about the recent memory they remembered.

“Just,” Mori started after a long silence, eyes remaining downcast as he prepared his equipment. “Stay still so I can do this quickly.”

Fukuzawa didn’t respond, neither did he move from his seating on the metal bench, which was a show of his own compliance itself. Mori delicately unwrapped Fukuzawa’s yukata to give way to his stomach once again, and Fukuzawa picked up the brief second of hesitation in Mori’s hands, before pressing a cloth to Fukuzawa as he began with cleaning the wound. A memory wasn’t triggered by this touch, allowing Mori to work quietly and Fukuzawa to reflect traitorously on the memory he’d just seen.

Dwelling would do him no good, but it was hard to ignore it when the way he had talked of Mori’s eyes was too similar to Fukuzawa’s first impression of Mori in this lifetime. He remembered the first time he saw Mori, wondering into the underground office of his future partner and announcing Natsume had declared them to be the Double Black duo. Just like the proclamation in the memory of his past life, Mori’s eyes were the first feature, of everything about the man, that had him enthralled.

How could they not? Fukuzawa looked into eyes of amethyst, irises that rivalled the gems themselves for their beauty. They had a hidden shine to them, only glistening if the net if light managed to capture them, evoking a twinkle amongst the purple, like the picturesque stars in a twilight sky instead of blue. The same way amethyst would only shine if the light reflected perfectly off the gem’s edges. 

It was a stunning bewitchment, to look into those eyes and simply be already captivated by a person in nothing but a single feature. Dangerous, too. And apparently so, a fatal flaw for which Fukuzawa carried throughout more lifetimes than just one.

—

Mori sat at one of the hidden piano’s amongst the Mafia’s many rooms. He pressed down on each key, reciting a familiar melody he’d learnt since a child, in hopes to clear his head the same way it used to, when lately he hadn’t found much time indulge in thoughts that needed to be sorted through. What with his work underground as a doctor, Natsume leading he and Fukuzawa’s partnership and his recent understanding that the current boss of the Port Mafia is simply not sufficient anymore.

The memories of he and Fukuzawa’s past lives was yet to be even considered. Because Mori was nothing if not a coward to dive down that route and reflect on anything to do with the matter.

He was sure this piano room, small and tucked away, easily lost throughout the many more known doors of the Mafia, was one only he knew of. But the unmistakeable presence of someone at the door was unmissable. 

“Come to listen to me play, Fukuzawa?” Mori kept his eyes closed, letting his muscle memory lead him though the song as he relaxed his body.

He wasn’t deigned with a response to that. Instead, he listened as Fukuzawa pushed further into the room, taking place beside Mori on the piano chair. Apart from his ever drifting hands along the keys, Mori remained unmoving, in the contrast of his heightened senses, focusing on the presence of Fukuzawa sat so close to him he could feel his body heat. 

Yet, when another layer of music sounded to his ears as Fukuzawa started to match Mori’s melody, playing by his side, Mori couldn’t help peeking one eye open. He glanced at Fukuzawa, curious and subtly astonished, unaware of Fukuzawa’s own ability to play the piano, and even more so that he knew the song. Fukuzawa spared a glance to Mori before looking back down to his hands as he continued with the song. 

Mori followed his lead, both eyes opening as his gaze stayed fixed on the keys while the song played further and further, each key they pressed sinking them deeper and deeper as they lost themselves in their music. They played right down until the song reached its final send off, Mori’s right hand pressing a consistent trail of each alternating white key to black down the low notes. Just as Fukuzawa’s left hand played a line up the high notes, until both their hands met in the middle for their final keys. 

By now, really, they should have known better. But the music had them thinking without worry, which inescapably ended in them triggering another memory from their past lives. 

Mori had been playing the piano, letting the sound of each key settle in through his ears to his mind in the hopes to find some peace. But had his fingers pausing when he felt the familiar presence of Fukuzawa take place beside him on the same chair. Any other day a smile would have lifted to the corner’s of Mori’s mouth, he would have shifted over even just the slightest more simply to make a show of invitation to have Fukuzawa join him in the way he loved. 

But right now Mori was upset with Fukuzawa and even though he knew the true fault of Mori’s displeasure was not Fukzuawa’s own, he still had yet to come to terms with the danger Fukuzawa was putting himself at risk to in the mission he had recently accepted to take. Mori released a breath, eyes fixed on the keys below him, unwilling to meet Fukuzawa’s eyes, and still the other man knew just how to get through to him.

Fukuzawa put his hands to the piano, starting to play a familiar but simple and short melody, stopping after the first few keys in a silent prompt for Mori to copy it. The room remained silent, the sound of their breathing the only sound to fill it in Mori’s distinct silence. While, Fukuzawa’s eyes burned the into the side of his head, his gaze heavy and expecting, yet somehow still remaining patient and gentle. Mori didn’t know how Fukuzawa could look at him that way, but the older also wouldn’t be the man Mori knew if he didn’t. 

So, after the lapse in silence, Mori pressed down on the keys again. He repeated the tune Fukuzawa had played, but on the lower keys, hands moving slower and less enthusiastic. Yet, that didn’t deter Fukuzawa in the slightest, the other determined to make Mori feel better, as he followed the tune into the next verse. Once more, he stopped after the first couple of beats, and this time Mori’s lapsing silence was shorter as he copied the same verse, hands beginning to pick up in speed more than before.

Fukuzawa continued the pattern once Mori finished playing his last verse on the low notes, drifting through the song like the stream of water flowing down a river. And by then Mori was biting the inside of his cheek in an attempt to fend off the betraying smile threatening to crawl onto his face. By the lift in Fukuzawa’s own lips he knew he was already seen through, though.

Mori repeated the last tune Fukuzawa played right after the other’s hands left the keys, this time matching Fukuzawa’s pace. Then, when Fukuzawa started on the last verse, he didn’t stop playing, continuing through the song while looking encouragingly over to Mori, and honestly, Fukuzawa was a hard man to stay mad at. Mori yielded to his smile and surrendered to Fukuzawa’s nonsense, as he joined the older in playing the last verse of the song together. 

Right down until Mori had stopped playing, watching amusedly as Fukuzawa dragged out the end of the song dramatically, until he finally finished and Mori was left softly laughing. Fukuzawa smiled down at Mori, soft and sweet, and somehow that smile was all Mori needed to know that Fukuzawa would make sure he would return back into Mori’s arms after this next mission. 

“I’m sorry,” Fukuzawa spoke gently and genuinely. 

Mori sighed, taking Fukuzawa’s hand into his own and lifting it to his mouth as he pressed a kiss on the the other’s finger’s. The press of his lips a silent and hopeful plea to any deity that was listening to keep Fukuzawa safe for all the danger he was about to step into. 

“I know, Darling.”

Mori blinked himself out of remembering the memory as he inhaled deeply, nothing but breaths similarly escaping Fukuzawa’s mouth where an apparent loss of words remained. Mori could feel it in him like the emotions scattered in the memory were his own, the pure and rich fear for Fukuzawa’s safety in the prospect that he might lose someone he cared about more than Mori ever thought was possible. Were those emotions his own to harbour in this life too…?

“Natsume,” Fukuzawa suddenly announced, abruptly standing from the chair after finding his voice, interrupting Mori from his thoughts. “Master Natsume has requested us. That is why I came here, so…” Fukuzawa trailed off, before taking another breath and exiting the room while his dignity remained. 

Mori swallowed, basking in the silence of the empty room for a few moments, until the silence gave way for his thoughts to run loose. So instead, he stood, smoothing out his shoulders as he followed Fukuzawa out of the room with as much composure as he could manage. 

—

Mori hadn’t returned from a mission Natsume had sent him on and Fukuzawa was growing restless by the minute.

As he sat by, watching each second pass with a remained to be seen sign of Mori’s return, an uncomfortable feeling was settling in his stomach. The feeling sinking it’s teeth into him and releasing it’s poison, making Fukuzawa’s stomach churn in an odd way, knotting itself in cold strings that whipped at his heart to beat faster. 

When it crossed an hour over Mori’s expected return, Fukuzawa sought out Natsume himself.

He found Natsume sitting quietly in one of the bars on the Mafia’s territory. The older man was sipping idly at his drink, the rest of the room empty aside from the bartender mindlessly cleaning drinks. Even so, when Fukuzawa entered, Natsume didn’t so much as spare him a glance, and Fukuzawa could assume the other man had almost been anticipating his presence.

“Worried about Mori’s return?” Natsume mused, eyes still watching the ice bounce in his drink.

Fukuzawa watched him wordlessly for a moment, paused at the entrance of the bar. From what Natsume just said he was then aware that some unpredicted element must have appeared in Mori’s mission, causing the other’s late return and the possibility of no return at all. Yet, he hadn’t sent out Fukuzawa to go after him, which is what stumped the silver-haired man the most.

“‘Worried’ might be a stretch,” Fukuzawa started as he began walking into the bar, stopping at Natsume’s side. Natsume turned his eyes up to look at him then, eyebrows slightly raised, gaze unconvinced. Fukuzawa ignored it. “Why haven’t you sent me after him? You’re the one who positioned me as his ‘bodyguard’.”

Natsume hummed considerably, turning his gaze back to his glass as he swirled the liquid inside it around. “It was my original plan to have you on the scene if things went unanticipated. But, I’m afraid this is already too far gone, sending you out now would just be suicide. An unnecessary double loss.”

“So you plan to let him die?” 

Fukuzawa didn’t know why the idea of Mori’s death irked him so, like sharp cuts of a knife slicing at him from the inside, never deep enough to gut him, but honed enough to hurt. And somehow, Fukuzawa was sure that feeling was being pulled from emotions he had existing in a past life trying to resurface. That it was because of all the emotions in the forgotten memories Fukuzawa had been remembering. 

“I plan to avoid the loss of two lives, when the inevitability only lies within one.”

Natsume’s response seared in his blood in a way Fukuzawa couldn’t rationalise, but it had him turning on his heels without another moment to spare his superior, headed straight for the door. Natusme was on his feet before Fukuzawa could get a second step in, stood in front of the younger as he blocked his path, hand raised to his chest in a gesture for Fukuzawa to stop. Natsume’s demeanour changed then, expression tightening seriously as he stared Fukzuawa down like he was communicating with a toddler. 

“I cannot let you go after him. It will be a loss that never had to be made,” Natsume refused, “One is already making my job hard enough.” 

Even though Fukuzawa had been denying the recount of he and Mori’s old memories as anything useful the the reality he was in now. He would swear it was their remembrance that compelled him to do the next thing he did, because something inside him with an absurd amount of power demanded that he could not lose Mori.

So Fukuzawa unsheathed his blade, and outstretched his arm until the shinning tip of his perfectly edged blade was held to Natsume’s throat.

Natsume’s tightened expression slackened, once narrowed eyes subtly widening as his eyebrows raised challengingly, weighing Fukuzawa with a heavily observational gaze that Fukuzawa could decipher was somewhere between a mix of incensed and impressment. 

“Think very carefully about what you’re doing,” Natsume tested slowly.

“Do you honestly think I would be lifting my blade to your throat if I wasn’t?”

Natsume raised his chin, eyes remaining fixed on Fukuzawa with calculation. “This is a fight that both you and I know who will win.”

“I do.” Fukuzawa’s gaze hardened in unmoving insubordination, voice levelling in open brazenness. “That’s why I’m asking you now; move.”

Natsume remained fearless, settling a look on Fukuzawa as though he knew this outcome was a foreseen possibility, for Fukuzawa to hold his own blade to Natsume’s throat in defiance to his orders. Just to save Mori. But that Nastume wasn’t expecting it to occur more than the chance of it not, and that was what left him astonished, subtly.

A small huff of a laugh sounded in the back of Natsume’s throat as the older man’s mouth ticked up in a small lopsided smile that Fukuzawa would dare to call amused. Fukuzawa squinted at the other for a moment, but then Natsume stepped aside and gestured with his hand to the door. Fukuzawa spared him all but one glance, before he took the opportunity and was out the door in the next. 

He was able to reach Mori and the mess of the situation his partner was caught up in, just in time to take down the last of Mori’s enemy’s. If only a second late, perhaps Natsume’s assessment on the mission being a lost cause and Fukuzawa falling with Mori might have been right. But he wasn’t late, and he was still standing, and Mori was still breathing. 

That didn’t mean Mori’s state wasn’t bad nonetheless. Fukuzawa had seen and experienced many unpleasant states of a human body in his life, therefore It took a lot for him to feel the urge to grimace at a blood drowned state. But a scene such as this didn’t pass over lightly at all. 

He crouched down beside Mori’s unmoving body, averting his eyes from the other’s face as he carefully slid one of his arms under the back of Mori’s knees, the other around his upper back. Mori squirmed at the touch and through a broken voice, choking on his own blood, he managed one word. 

“Fukuzawa?”

And Fukuzawa wanted to shatter at his tone, Mori Ougai speaking his name in collapsing relief, desperate hopefulness. Like a salvation.  

“Yeah, I’ve got you.” Fukuzawa carefully lifted Mori, cradling the other man’s head to rest on his chest as he held him bridal style to carry him to safety. “You can rest now.”

Just as he took his first step forward, Mori falling instantly asleep, he felt the beginning droplets of rain starting to cry down onto the earth and wash all the blood stains away from both their bodies. That was also when another memory from another life came back to him.

The rain poured down onto the earth in endless droplets of water, soaking through both Fukuzawa and Mori’s clothes. As the two stood outside to relish in it all, Fukuzawa holding Mori to his chest, supporting his legs and back in bridal style, spinning them around in nothing but the joy of the rain. Mori’s laughs managed to echo above the noise of the rainfall, replete and bright, everything that Fukuzawa wanted to listen to. Even in the cold rain, so long as he had that sound, Fukuzawa would keep spinning them like he was the warmest man in the world.

Fukuzawa blinked himself from the memory, short and sweet. And perhaps he would linger on it later, but right now, right this moment, the Mori in his present needed all his attention first.

—

The next time Mori experienced a recollection of a memory from a previous life, was the last one he would for a unknown long time to come. Because the day that Mori experienced that last memory, was the day that he and Fukuzawa ended their partnership as the Double Black duo. 

Their weapons clashed, metal to metal, grating in their ears, hearts aching in what they would both excuse as physical exertion. It was strange, how throughout their entire partnership they had denied to ever be similar, against everything that Natusme told them. Yet, today, in this moment of fighting against one another, it was because of their more than ever seen differences, and it had never felt so wrong.

A part of Mori, hidden deep down, locked away in a room only he had the key to, regretted ever wanting to be seen as different to Fukuzawa, if he knew that the first time their differences were finally acknowledged, it would be the end of them standing by one another’s sides. 

It felt almost routine, the weapons would clash, time, after time. But neither one of them was taking the final blow, as though neither one of them had it in them to truely be the one to take away the other’s life. But then the routine was broken, in nothing but a harmless brush of a touch in all the accidental ways they would experience when they would fight together. 

However, by now they knew that a simple brush of a touch was far from harmless, and in the split of a second their fighting was interrupted by a forgotten memory resurfacing. 

Mori ran there, faster than he thought he could, pushing himself beyond his limits, in the instant he received the message that Fukuzawa was at their secret spot. A spot under a maple tree, tucked far away from where anyone who wasn’t them could find it, and had always been their place to turn to if they had no where else, because they knew only each other could find them there. It was used as a place to take refuge, to meet without the watching eyes of the world, to love in secret because that was all they needed.

But this time Mori wasn’t rushing to the spot like the need for oxygen for any of that. This time Fukuzawa was hurt and now more than ever he needed Mori, he wouldn’t have gone to their spot if he didn’t.

Mori inhaled sharply when the tree came into view, Fukuzawa slumped with his back against the trunk, head hanging, and a scatter of bright injuries splayed over Fukuzawa’s body as though he had been used as a canvas for art. Mori was to his love’s side in only a few seconds to spare, falling onto his knees that dug harshly into the dirt without a care in the world. The only thing that mattered in that moment was Fukuzawa. 

The only thing that ever mattered was Fukuzawa. 

Mori’s hands shook against his will as he slipped a hand under Fukuzawa’s jaw, treating him like glass as he lifted his head to note the other’s eyes closed, unconscious. The only thing that eased him was the rise and fall of Fukuzawa’s chest, heart still beating. But his breathing was unsteady and each breath ached at Mori like it could be his last. So, he immediately got to work, not giving himself the time to indulge all the fears that came with losing Fukuzawa, when he was the one with all the power to avoid that from happening.

Mori bit down on the back of his jaw, frustrated in his hands that refused to steady as he worked through aiding Fukuzawa to health, stopping the bleeding and keeping a flow of air in his lungs and blood to his heart.

“You can’t die on me just yet,” Mori gritted out around a trembling voice, hands threading stitches through skin that shouldn’t be that far separated. “We move on together. You don’t get to leave without me.”

He was hopeless, speaking in futility. But he was also scared, terrified down to his shaking hands and trembling voice, everything about him set unsteady when the pillar that was Fukuzawa in his life was suddenly crumbling before him. And when people were scared they lost all rationality, Mori didn’t believe that to be true, used to think the way fear controlled people was by fault of weak willed individuals.

But then he felt the fear of losing Fukuzawa for the first time, and in that moment, he felt completely powerless, like he wasn’t a man feared by anyone who stepped into his presence. He felt like every other person he had ever made his victim, corrupting them in fear. When it came to Fukzuawa, Mori was no stronger than his victims.

Mori exhaled heavily, blood soaked hands dropping to his sides as he finished doing all for Fukuzawa that he could. He let his body slump, carefully dropping his head to Fukuzawa’s chest. He sat there on his dirt stained knees, listening to Fukuzawa’s heart beat as a reminder that he hadn’t slipped through his grasp yet, as he murmured utterly powerless, hopeless pleas for Fukuzawa to be okay.

Fukuzawa winced and Mori attentively picked up the weak groan, before Fukuzawa mumbled in an almost inaudible voice, “Rin…?”

Mori snapped his head up immediately, eyes blown wide and hopeful as they settled on Fukuzawa looking back at him in silver, dazed eyes. Mori felt the sting of tears suddenly pricking at his eyes in the absolute relief of seeing Fukuzawa awake, hearing the other say his name. Mori released a shaky breath, before cupping either side of Fukuzawa’s face without another beat. He pressed their foreheads together as he laughed, wet and rich from all the piling emotions building like a wave that had come crashing down into him in a complete consumption of relief.

“You’re at idiot, Yukichi! A complete and utter fool,” Mori chastised as sternly as he could manage through a trembling voice and tears staying silently welled in his eyes. Fukuzawa’s mouth lifted in much effort, a fond smile climbing to his face despite his condition. “You shouldn’t have done that for me,” slipped out weaker a moment after.

Fukuzawa slowly lifted a hand up, placing it delicately on the side of Mori’s face as he wiped the younger’s tears away. He proceeded to pull their faces apart just enough so he could meet Mori’s eyes with an incredible amount of focus for all the wounds his body had just undergone.

“There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you,” Fukuzawa promised Mori, voice low and gravely, but remaining confidently serious.

Mori’s lips parted, another breath escaping them as he looked in between both of Fukuzawa’s eyes, not finding a single trace of a lie. “Then live. I don’t want you to die for me. Just live and stay by my side.”

Fukuzawa’s eyes softened at the corners and he nodded once. “Always.” 

The memory ended. Mori and Fukuzawa paused, stepping back from each other as their weapons lowered by an inch in a second of reluctance, almost instinctively. They stared at one another, silver eyes to purple in a million racing thoughts shared between the space of two minds, spiralling confused and conflicted emotions shared between the beating of two hearts.

Mori knew why they saw that memory in particular, in this moment. It was trying to tell them not to do this, not to part and leave one another’s side like how they both dreaded to the point of fear in one of their past lives. But Mori and Fukuzawa didn’t have that kind of relationship in this life. So they said. 

Even so, Mori could not find it in him to strike down Fukuzawa, the way they had been dancing around it all battle, neither making the move to stop each other’s hearts. And now, after remembering how hard Mori once fought to keep Fukuzawa’s heart beating, how shaken he was from the possibility that it would stop. Those emotions lingered within him, flowing through his veins now that he remembered that was a way he felt about Fukuzawa, so the already present hesitation won the best of him. 

Mori dropped his weapon back to his side, giving up his want to have Yosano’s ability once again. Because Fukuzawa’s life for Yosano’s ability was a compensation incomparable, a price Mori wasn’t willing to pay.

“Go,” Mori told Fukuzawa, in one firm and emotionally detached word. His eyes focused on the other’s, almost pleading behind the hardened wall of hidden vulnerability.

And it’s not what the memory hoped he would say, but it was a sign no less that the memories were doing their job, starting to get Mori and Fukzuawa to remember the feelings they had for each other did in fact carry on into this lifetime. Otherwise, if they didn’t, if that memory hadn’t reminded Mori, then the younger wouldn’t have let Fukzuawa go, wouldn’t have given up so easily. But Mori didn’t understand that yet, still too deep in refusal to the acknowledgment of the memories and the feelings they were making him recall towards the other. 

When Mori looked at Fukuzawa, he saw the other grasping the impossibility to the idea of killing one another all the same in a passing flicker of his silver eyes, the mere idea detestable from a foundation of fear neither would admit. Then his eyes were masked by his similar denial to the memories, to each other. So Fukuzawa took the win as he did, listening to Mori’s demand that masked his hidden desperation as he waved his white flags, surrendering before the prospect of death could come to be, when, suddenly, no battle felt worth Fukuzawa’s life. 

And that was the day Fukuzawa left Mori’s side, because they still had yet to understand the undiscovered depths of the memories. 

—

It was years before Fukuzawa and Mori ever saw each other again face to face, years before another forgotten memory could be revealed.

They never got the opportunity to see one another for a great amount of time after they split ways, when Fukuzawa got caught up in building the Armed Detective Agency from nothing but a slot in one of the city’s many buildings. All while Mori was whisked away into his rising position as boss of the Mafia, starting to rebuild its greatness once again. There was always bound to be the physical distance between them with the sudden important changes in their lives that came with taking on the role of leading two seperate organisations.

But Mori never did stray too far from Fukuzawa’s thoughts, floating around his mind with memories from this life and others, like a mark already too deeply engraved for Fukuzawa to remove. Physical distance be damned, really, Mori never did leave Fukuzawa’s side. Until one inevitable day that Fukuzawa knew would one day come, he and Mori’s distance was once again closed. 

With the Mafia returned to its grace under their new leader of Mori, and the Agency making a mark on the map with Fukuzawa as its president, Santōka Taneda of the Special Division for abilities organised a banquet for an official meeting of all three of them together. Fukuzawa had arrived accordingly, knowing all that needed to be discussed throughout this event and having his mind focused on that, but still, the moment he laid eyes on Mori for the first time in years, the other man could still make him stop dead in his tracks.

He spotted him from across the room, eyes flying right over anyone in the crowd and landing on the younger like he was the only one to ever look at. He swallowed thickly, throat suddenly tightened as his stomach swirled with a sensation Fukuzawa couldn’t quite place, like feather light tickles brushing along the inside of his stomach and he would dare say it might be a cause of nervousness. 

Mori looked older, ever so slightly, Fukuzawa noted. His hair tied back into a low ponytail instead of being left down to frame is face in the perfect way Fukuzawa remembered it sitting. Now with it offering full view to Mori’s features, even from the distance, the older could see the creasing of crows feet at the corner’s of the other’s eyes showing more prominent than the last time Fukuzawa saw him. Yet, that remained to be the only notable change, his exterior otherwise fending off typical signs of ageing. 

Still, Mori looked different nonetheless, posture tall and shoulder’s broad, holding himself with an air of confidence that spoke of a person with power, chin titled subtly upwards in an implied warning for him to not be tested, that whatever he is to say is absolute. This was the Mori that Fukuzawa only ever used to see and live to tell the tale, the other’s danger and power no longer hidden behind the deception of an underground doctor. Fukuzawa inhaled, he could now see the importance of this meeting, as now the dangerous side of Mori he used to keep hidden was all that he would let anyone see.

Now that side of Mori was no longer the one he fought beside, instead it was his direct enemy.

With that in mind the night had progressed in nothing but professionalism, Fukuzawa, Mori and Taneda all sat around a small round table discussing all that was needed. And Fukuzawa and Mori had managed to keep from touching one another for the entire time, as if both their minds were hyper aware of exactly what could happen if they did, especially because it had been years since they’d experienced a recollection of a past life memory. 

It was always a game of chance, like Russian roulette, the possibility like an out of touch whisper that they weren’t able to rid, no matter how hard they shook. And now that it had been years since a chance for the memories to return, the possibility prodded at them even more likely. Fukuzawa tried to keep focused, talking through everything with clarity. But only half his mind was in the discussion,  the larger chunk of his focus divided in trying to keep his eyes from stealing too long glances at Mori and his hands firmly away from the other.

The universe always had a way of tripping them up no matter how hard they tried to avoid it, though. When all their focus came tumbling down with a waiter accidentally knocking a glass from their table as they passed by. With both their minds absent, Fukuzawa and Mori’s reflexes had them both reaching for the glass at the same time. Fukuzawa’s fingers wrapped around the glass, but they also wrapped around Mori’s own, and like a break in the surface after holding his breath under water for too long, another long awaited memory resurfaced.

Fukuzawa stood in utter boredom amongst the crowd of dressed up guests filling the ballroom, filled with too many enemy organisations that Fukuzawa was throughly sick conversing to as though they wouldn’t all pull a gun on one another the moment this night of a truce was over. It felt fickle, something Fukuzawa didn’t like to indulge in when he was nothing if not a realist. Yet, there was one man amongst them all, one enemy somewhere in the crowd that Fukuzawa would be more than happy to indulge. It showed.

When finally Mori had come to rescue him from his circle of small talk. The younger man passed Fukuzawa’s conversing circle, his body coming close enough for their shoulder’s to brush, and his eyes didn’t dare look to Fukuzawa, the two not even giving away a hint of acknowledgment to the other as Mori ghosted by. But, hidden from view of any possible prying eyes, Fukuzawa felt Mori’s pointer finger touch his palm hanging by his side, the other tracing a slow line from Fukuzawa’s pinkie all the way up to his wrist, teasingly tempting in the way Mori knew Fukuzawa would follow.

Mori continued walking by until Fukuzawa watched from the corner of his eye as the younger left outside the large door’s of the ballroom, before he cleared his throat. The circle stopped idly talking for a moment to direct their attention to Fukuzawa as he nodded once to them all, gracefully placing his half drunken Champaign glass on a waiter’s tray passing by.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Fukuzawa regarded, before turning on his heel and swiftly locating his way through the crowd until he reached the ballroom’s doors. Just like that, in one simple touch he was chasing after Mori like two opposite ends of a magnet compelled towards each other.

Fukuzawa closed the door’s behind him, the music from inside relaying muffled to his ears as he stepped out into a large, empty stairwell. The stairwell platform was spacious enough to dance through, cream marble all through as it curved down around nine stories, brightly lit by the small decorative chandeliers. But the architecture of the building was the furthest thing from his mind when a familiar palm was captured in his own, tugging him towards another body as Mori pressed their lips together by guiding Fukuzawa’s face down with a hand cupped gently to his cheek.

Fukuzawa didn’t so much as startle, the presence of Mori too familiar that his instincts recognised the other and his touch immediately. He leaned into the kiss, sliding a hand to pull Mori into him by the waist, his other hand running his finger’s through dark hair as they carded over Mori’s ear, curling in the strands with a soft tug. The kiss was rich, mouths joined with a kind of urgency they both had been yearning for the entire night, patience running thin for a moment long enough for them to slip away without the world noticing. Because their love was hidden, unknown to the rest of the world and yet to be revealed. 

Fukuzawa broke the kiss, pulling away close enough for the words to be mumbled onto Mori’s lips as he gazed down at the other, “Took you long enough.”

“I believe you should be saying thank you to your saviour.” Mori smiled, lopsided and pleased. Fukuzawa kissed him again in his own show of gratitude, Mori barely managing to reciprocate in the grin spreading over his lips, as the two began stumbling backwards. “You looked miserable.”

Mori’s lower back hit the stairwell railing, the upper half of his body leaning back slightly over it as his hands slipped into Fukuzawa’s hair, the other’s lips travelling from his own as he trailed kisses along Mori’s jaw. Fukuzawa kissed a line down to Mori’s neck, the younger titling his head back the moment Fukuzawa dragged his lips below his jaw, head hanging until his hair was dangling away from his face at the angle he was. 

“You know,” Mori started, breathless and quiet. He let his eyes close, melting into the warmth of Fukuzawa’s mouth covering his skin, the softness to his lips, the smoothness of the strands of hair tangled into his fingers. “If someone were to walk out that door, we could be caught at any moment.”

Fukuzawa’s hands only slipped slowly and alluringly further up his waist, sliding his lips upwards as he removed his mouth from Mori’s neck, his bottom lip left purposefully lingering a moment longer as it caught on the skin, breath warm against Mori’s skin as he spoke, “If you truly cared about keeping this a secret as much as you should, you wouldn’t have drawn me out here.”

Mori grinned and slid his hand further into Fukuzawa’s hair, guiding the other’s lips back down to make contact again.

“Are you two alright?” Taneda’s voice came filtering into his ears as Fukuzawa focused back on his present, almost jolting as the memory slipped away. 

Fukuzawa managed to stop himself from outwardly startling, instead inhaling as an attempt to regain his composure. From beside him Mori fixed his posture, rolling his shoulders backwards after the two placed the glass back on the table, before snapping their hands back to their laps irregularly quick. Taneda watched them closely, eyebrows dipping slightly as he considered the two carefully.

“Quite alright,” Fukuzawa managed after a moment, nodding once.

Taneda flicked his eyes between the two, assessing them for a moment longer, before nodding back and clearing his throat. “Alright, where were we?”

Fukuzawa never truly forgot the feeling of the memories, once a memory came back to him every emotion from the moment stayed as well, so each time he looked back on a memory from a past life he could recall it flawlessly down to everything he felt during that moment. But what he had forgot was the feeling of freshly remembering a forgotten memory, the contact between he and Mori and then suddenly the flood of déjà vu so intense it had them resurfacing a memory they had didn’t know was always there. 

That was a feeling he could never quite get used to, and after years in between this one to the last, it was like he was experiencing the first time he ever remembered a past life memory. By Mori’s reaction, the one only Fukuzawa would be able to read and understand, he wasn’t the only one who was stumped by it again.

—

It had been more years to come by the time Fukuzawa and Mori touched again, giving way for a memory to come alive within their minds again. Though this time, for the first time since this had been happening to them, it didn’t happen by an unwelcomed chance.

Fukuzawa was walking through Yokohama, wondering down to the edge of the city where the most forest resided, continuing through the bush and by passing all the green until he spotted one lone maple tree amongst it all. The leaves a burning sunset of orange, gently swaying to the melody of the passing breeze, taking along with it a few dark strands of hair from the person sat below it. 

This spot, this tree, was considered he and Mori’s secret spot from one of their past lives, a place only they could reach in the bounds of only their knowledge. It was the place that Fukuzawa remembered how to reach only because of the memory of this place that resurfaced the day Fukuzawa and Mori’s partnership ended all those years ago. And yet, here they both were now, finding one another once again at the spot they only knew of, because of a memory given to them when they chose to leave. Ironic, Fukuzawa thought, but there was nothing light about that irony.

Mori’s eyes were closed, head rested back on the tree trunk as he basked in the forest, patterns from the sunlight that slipped through the tree’s dancing leaves painting over his body. The other remained unmoving, even as Fukuzawa took a silent place beside him, but he knew Mori had already sensed his presence long ago. Fukuzawa inhaled long, taking with him the scent of the pine and the grass and the dirt, listening to the bugs around them singing of days of warmth, letting any tension in his body drift away with the lulling breeze, finger tips ghosting a delicate touch over the daises poking out from the blades of grass. 

It was just he and Mori, the bugs and the plants, sharing a space beside one another as if they’d never parted, content to silence before acknowledging both their appearances at this specific spot. For Fukuzawa’s curiosity had won, all the whispers that never let him be, urging him to seek out Mori for his touch that brung with it memories beyond his time, lately turning into screams. His body would ache to feel even a graze of Mori beneath his hold, fingers twitching despite knowing Mori wasn’t even near by.

No matter how fiercely Fukuzawa would deny what was once in all those past lives, was never to be in this one, he still found himself chasing the feeling, yielding to the subconscious yearning. A yearn for more, to know more, remember more, because the longer they went without touching in their separation, the persistence to remember kept building, telling them there was more than only the few memories they’ve seen. Why was it so important for them to remember all the previous lives when their current one was so different? Fukuzawa and Mori’s relationship was like the shadow of night, compared to all their memories being the shine of day. But, truly, was it? 

The longer time escaped them, following its continuation, through each sunrise and sunset without the memories, all the differences of their previous lives never reaching this one felt increasingly like a lie, like an excuse. 

“There has to be a reason we’ve been recalling our past lives, Mori,” Fukuzawa was the one to break the silence, the one to take the first step into finally addressing what they had been dealing with in nothing but their own minds to confide in for over ten years. 

Mori exhaled beside him, eyes finally blinking open as he levelled his head to watch the forest around him.

“A reason for the memories themselves, but also why it only happens when we touch,” Fukuzawa continued. “And we’re only ever going to understand it if we let the memories run their course, instead of avoiding it as we have been for the last decade.” Fukuzawa let the silence lapse them for a moment, knowing every second without a response from Mori was every corner of the younger’s attention being paid to him. “I know you can feel it too, somewhere within me that I can’t place, always telling me that there’s more to remember.”

There was a reason they were remembering all their past lives and Fukuzawa and Mori had been deflecting too many attempts that would reach them their final answer. It was by time that they surrendered to the recollection of their memories, because their remembrance was never Fukuzawa and Mori’s to decide. 

Mori turned to look at Fukuzawa, the older meeting his gaze half way and they locked eyes. Mori remained wordless, expression pulled in a torn look that came with understanding all of which Fukuzawa was saying, and he knew Mori wouldn’t let another soul see him look so vulnerable. Mori didn’t respond to anything Fukuzawa said, but he knew the understanding resided in them both when Mori lifted his hand, placing it onto the grass in the space between the two with the palm face up.

Fukuzawa took the invitation for their first ever initiation with intent to remember a forgotten memory, placing his hand in Mori’s and then, for the first time in ten years, touched with the purpose in hoping that they would remember yet another past life.

When they turned down two different paths, taking on two seperate lives since their time as the first Double Black duo, the memories became even all the more difficult to recall, with less chances than they already had given themselves to touch. As such, when they did, the memories also became more intense, the recollection of emotions distinct and undeniable, more persistent to have them work their way through the memories of all their past lives until the final one. 

And for this touch especially it had been so vastly, achingly long since their last chance to remember, that the memory selected for them to recall today was filled with a tidal of emotions so strong it exceeded any other memory before.

Fukuzawa and Mori eloped.

Under the star lit sky as their audience, the moon as their witness and the forest their altar. Hand in hand and souls intertwined until their hearts beat as one, Fukuzawa and Mori married in the secrecy of the night. Their lips met, touched like a gentle smile in an everlasting promise to be with each other eternally, irrevocably, incessantly. It was but a reaction of fire and ice, Mori’s lips to his own and then Fukuzawa was melting, tying his soul to Mori’s with a golden band around his finger.

They had shared countless kisses before, each carrying with it a new feeling, however trivial, that Fukuzawa would never be able to find himself bored from the touch of Mori’s lips. But this kiss was like no other, the feeling resonating through his skin and sinking down to his bones, like he could feel Mori’s soul embracing him. The feeling was indescribable yet unmistakable, the warmth burned and branded into all he was, so unequivocal that nothing else could compare even if a way to describe it would keep slipping through his fingers. A novelty that would always remain, but one that he would never quiet come to be familiar with, the feeling always fresh and never faded, yet at its loss he would recognise a sudden glaring coldness that would be never satisfied.

Simply, a kiss unforgettable. 

They parted, mirroring smiles stretched over two faces with gazes locked on nothing but the other, their happiness in this moment shared only to themselves and the trees. And then they were off. They ran, fingers woven together where their wedding rings pressed against one another, as Mori led Fukuzawa off through the trees, the forest passing by in a blur and while Fukuzawa had not a clue where Mori wanted to take them he would have followed him anywhere in that moment. 

“Where are going?” Fukuzawa called to Mori, blissfully happy and ceaselessly fond. He was utterly enamoured by Mori, and this night was far from the only one that he felt like this in.

The forest faded as they blended into open grass land, stretching for acres in a seemingly endless route for them to run through. “Wherever the night may take us,” Mori called back around a smile, voice so light it was as though anything bad in his life had never been and never would be.

Fukuzawa’s smile climbed his face impossibly more, as they ran carelessly into the field, the varying grass length long enough to reach their ribs. And at their disturbance to the field, the night gifted them once last wedding present. Small lights, glowing rich and warm revealed themselves in tens, to hundreds, until Fukzuawa lost count, as fireflies rose from the grass field. Like the stars above came to meet them down on earth, to light their way as they ran, married and happy, with no real destination in mind, so long as they made it far, far away from here, the other by their side. 

Fukuzawa sucked in a sharp breath, blinking back a wetness in his eyes that wasn’t there before the memory resurfaced, focusing his vision back to where he and Mori sat presently in a forest of Yokohama against a maple tree. He didn’t look to Mori and Mori didn’t look to him. Every last emotion he felt in that night of he and Mori’s marriage lifetimes ago, he could feel so incredibly clear. Their happiness, their love. 

Fukuzawa decided it was cruel, for he end Mori to remember such enchanting emotions when he did not presently get to live in it, to relish in the prospect of being fatally in love with Mori.

He was stripped of all words, lips parting and closing but finding himself rendered speechless. How was one meant to follow up a memory such as the one they just remembered, every detail replaying flawlessly in their minds on an uncontrollable loop?

It was Mori, this time, who spoke first. “Why do you think it is we’re remembering all of this? What is the purpose if this lifetimes is not the same?”

Fukuzawa didn’t know. He wasn’t given the time to process any emotions he had for Mori in his present when old memories also had him remembering more emotions than he knew how to handle, lifetimes of previous memories clashing directly into any from this one. So, to Mori’s question, he didn’t know. But, he could feel how close they were to figuring it out.

They claimed, no matter what these memories showed of what once was in a whole other time, Fukuzawa and Mori were two direct enemies. And yet, sitting under a tree they both sought out at the same time from a memory long before any they formed in this life, hand still resting in hand with the other on the grass between them, something told Fukuzawa that he was close to remembering everything. That his feelings towards Mori were so close to being known. 

That he just needed one more push to recall how they truely felt to one another, forgotten since being reborn into another life. Just one last memory.

—

Fyodor Dostoevsky forced them into a corner. 

Mori and Fukuzawa both struck and connected by an ability known as a Cannibalism Virus that would have them both dead unless one of them ended up dead first. So they met, inside an abandoned mansion only they knew of, in their last dance of death. Just like the night they ended their partnership and a series of times following that, their weapons clashed, Fukzuawa striking down Elise before Mori struck down Fukzuawa. 

Fukuzawa sunk to the ground, collapsing onto one knee with gritted teeth awaiting the final blow, he wasn’t dying in that moment, but he also knew there was nothing he could do to stop Mori from killing him in the next. Or maybe he simply just couldn’t, after all these years, kill Mori first. Mori walked over to him, eyes detached with a sombre expression as he crouched before Fukuzawa, meeting him at eye level. 

Mori lifted one scalpel to the older man’s throat and Fukuzawa yielded entirely then, all tension in his expression seeping away, jaw unclenching and shoulders relaxing, as he closed his eyes with an accepting exhale. But death didn’t come in the next second, nor the second after that. Mori only watched Fukuzawa intently, and maybe he was stalling, but when he spoke his voice was regretful despite himself.

“It’s a shame,” Mori began. His hand found Fukuzawa’s, his middle finger dragging a line up Fukuzawa’s loosely closed palm, the other’s fingers opening on instinct as Mori’s finger continued up to the top of Fukuzawa’s own middle finger. “That we never did get to figure out the one memory I can still feel is missing.” 

Mori intertwined their fingers, and just before he could dig his blade into Fukuzawa’s neck, that one last memory crashed its way into their minds, a memory from their first ever lifetime.

“I want to do something with you,” Mori said to Fukuzawa one day.

Fukuzawa gave all his attention to Mori then, looking at the other curiously. “Okay.”

Mori smiled, taking a spare seat and sitting down before the other where Fukuzawa sat at his office desk. The older swivelled his chair around to face his body towards Mori, the younger following it up by moving close enough to slot their knees together. 

“I want something that will safeguard our memories,” Mori continued, elaborating at Fukuzawa’s patiently expectant look. “So that when we go through countless lifetimes, and the memories we have to remember through each build, we will remember them. But, have something to summaries it all, like a final key to unlocking everything. It will all make sense to us then why we recalled such things.”

Fukuzawa’s gaze had softened, the subtlest upwards tick of his lips in a secretive fond smile. “You want us to remember each other through every lifetime?” Mori nodded determinedly. “Alright,” Fukuzawa indulged. “And what to you suggest we do to ensure that?”

That question, Mori was prepared for, he smiled proudly, sitting up straighter. “The body remember’s,” Mori touched Fukzuawa’s chest, before lifting his finger to the older’s head, “What the mind forgets.” He gently tapped Fukuzawa’s forehead, letting his hand return to his lap as he continued his explanation.

“So, we create a touch, special only to us and so incredibly specific that when we touch, in each lifetime, this will be the one that has us remembering and understanding all memories. That way I’ll never have to lose you.” Fukuzawa’s expression kept softening as Mori kept explaining and he thought he might melt under that gaze before he got the chance to finish. 

“If the mind won’t hold the memories safe, then we have to find our own way to remember. And the body, as the shell of the soul, will act as that. So that I’ll have you,” Mori jabbed a finger to Fukuzawa’s chest with a grin, “For infinity.”

“I like the sound of that,” Fukuzawa whispered, small smile set in place that the intimacy of his gaze alone made up for. 

“Here.” Mori took Fukuzawa’s hand and placed it in his lap. He proceeded to drag his finger along Fukuzawa’s resting, closed palm, dragging it up in a delicately traced line, making the older’s fingers unwrap until his hand and fingers were splayed up for Mori to lace them together. “It’s simple enough, yet exceptionally special to us, so that we will be able to find one another.”

Fukuzawa lifted their joined hands to his lips, placing a kiss to the back of Mori’s palm.

Moving onto a new life and losing all other memories of any prior, meant that no pain or sense of longing for all that they would miss would carry on as well, when they wouldn’t have anything to remember to miss. But that was just it, Mori didn’t want to forget Fukuzawa, would rather spend an infinity after him reminiscing about them, than to ever have it all erased from his memories. Fukuzawa had already left a mark on his heart, imprinted and engraved irrevocably, that it should have been an impossibility for it ever to be forgotten. And an impossibility is what they made it. 

The memory, the last memory that they needed to remember it all, who each other were to one another, finally sunk back in. And they remembered everything, every single memory of every single lifetime. The answer to why they had been remembering their memories throughout this life, was the same thing repeating, lifetime, after lifetime, because they were already in love and had been for centuries throughout different lifetimes. 

Mori’s blade dropped to the floor with a deafening crash, the grip of his hand immediately slackening.  

Mori and Fukuzawa stared at each other, eyes trailing all over each other’s faces as they took one another in, like looking at each other for the first time. As now their gaze was from the perspective of remembering they were in love— not just in a previous lifetime, but in this one too, because they had never stopped being in love, simply forgotten they were—. Every single emotion ever felt, every single memory ever experienced, all settled into themselves so familiarly, in the routine of this specific final revelation occurring countless lifetimes before. 

The remembrance didn’t come flooding back to them like a stream of water, each droplet being carried through just another memory coming filtering back to them. Instead, it was like a collision. On the moment of impact, as soon as that last memory had finished playing out before them, they knew who each other truely were. 

“I found you again.” Fukuzawa whispered, voice shaking in an overflowing stream of happiness. Mori huffed a watery laugh, wearing an adoring smile.

Twelve years and eleven memories. It took them twelve years and eleven memories for them to remember that they had always been in love, long before their time now. When it hit them, they remembered centuries of lifetimes shared with one another. They remembered absolutely everything, not a trace left to be considered something they didn’t currently feel. And they had been remembering each of their previous lifetimes, through every lifetime, all so they could find one another once again.

And not just find each other, it guaranteed that they would love each other in every, as well. As, since the beginning when they fell in love for the very first time, the love they had never faded or changed once, throughout all the lifetimes. Because with remembering each lifetime, it wasn’t just like watching a familiar movie play out before your eyes, it was their past across galaxies of time and life that they had lived themselves. 

They’ve only ever loved each other the same, because when all the memories finally got wrapped up with that very last one— the beginning of it all and the reason why this had been happening through every lifetime—, they would remain in love the same way they always had been.

And each time they would forget that fact, they would discover it, endlessly, always. 

Gazing at Fukuzawa— his love— now, how foolish Mori felt to once believing that this lifetime was not the same, that the memories held no real purpose. They had been recalling these memories, each life so that they would always end up with them finding their love for one another once again. If only they hadn’t been so arrogant to the truth, blinded in denial, they would have fulfilled their journey through all their previous live’s memories sooner. They would have remembered their beginning sooner, they could have loved the other sooner.

The same thought passed through Fukuzawa’s mind, as well, clawing at him deeper as he reached up with shaking hands. The tips of Fukuzawa’s finger’s grazed the sides of Mori’s cheeks first, his touch hesitant as though Mori was too good to be true, to have him before Fukuzawa again. It was like this, every lifetime, both of them overcome by the initial wave of emotions crashing into them upon their final remembrance of one another. 

Fukuzawa’s touch was quick to turn desperate, exhaling a subconsciously held breath as he slipped his hands to cup Mori’s cheeks securely, like nothing could take Mori from him, and in the way Mori was now all too familiar with and, oh, how he missed it. 

“We’ve wasted so much time.” Fukzuawa’s eyebrows dipped ruefully and Mori only smiled fondly and reassuringly back as he gently shook his head in Fukuzawa’s grasp.

“Oh, but we have infinity, My Love. There is no time we could ever waste.” Mori placed a hand over one of Fukuzawa’s on his cheek, pulling it slightly away to kiss his palm once. “Just time to wait for each other,” Mori kissed his palm again, “And then time to spend with each other.”

Fukuzawa closed the gap, drawing Mori’s face in towards his own with his other hand still on Mori’s cheek. Mori adjusted himself without effort, muscle memory all too intimate to Fukuzawa’s touches, as he dropped his hand holding Fukuzawa’s to rest over the other’s heart instead. Their lips met and it was electric, a thousand volt charge surging through them that sparked the most familiar feeling in them once again, which was their kiss.

Maybe to anyone else waiting over forty years for one kiss in one lifetime would seem like too long, the wait not worth the while. But for them, the time spent did not matter, when they knew they would always have this kiss and all others forevermore. The kiss ended short, nothing less of hungry and already starving for more, but keeping it short allowed for the simplicity for the two pull black, rest their foreheads against each other and relish in the feeling of kissing for which they had not felt since another lifetime ago. 

As if to reiterate his feelings, washing away any lingering worries, Mori reassured Fukuzawa for another time, “We have lived through countless lifetimes, I have loved you in each and I will love you in every.” 

They didn’t have to concern themselves about the worries as futile as wishing for another chance at life to find the other sooner, they could have found one another while they were waiting on death’s doorstep, and still, any moment would always be enough, because every moment was what built them all the memories from every life that had them reconnecting as lovers since time could tell. instead, the beauty of the wait, was that they never had to go looking for each other, were spared the curse of remembering one another since the moment they entered another time and the unreachable ache that would eat them away to seek out each other like it was their only source of oxygen. 

Fate had already promised them their infinity. So, when they eventually did meet each other, every time without fail, it was then that their love could remain as it always had and would be. 

Mori brushed a few loose strands of Fukuzawa’s hair out of his face, tucking it behind his ear just for the excuse to touch him delicately. Mori pitied anyone else who didn’t know the comfort it was to be promised he’d never come to say goodbye to the one he loved the most, those who would only ever know the concept of forever as a fear, but for them was the opposite. For all that could ever change over the expanse of each life, through every plot twist they would encounter, Mori and Fukuzawa would always have their love as their constant. 

Fukuzawa’s hands slipped from holding Mori’s cheeks to behind the younger’s neck, pulling him into an embrace with one arm around his shoulder and the other cradling a head of dark hair, and Mori wanted to stay that way, wrapped in each other’s arms, flushed chest to chest until their heartbeats aligned, embraced by Fukuzawa until he smelt like him. Fukuzawa holding him again after finding one another in this life was like making his way back home. 

The day Mori and Fukuzawa met, however long ago, was the beginning of everything. Similarly to the day Mori met Fukuzawa in this lifetime was that very same continuation. They had crossed galaxies of time to find one another and, always, they did. Through every first meeting they would experience, Fukuzawa would always and undoubtedly be a stranger Mori recognised. Because the one fact remained, for however long, since the time their souls were created, they were bound together by an invisible string promising them to meet, again and again and again, lifetime after lifetime, in the blessing of infinity.