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With unrest clawing at his eyelids, Natsume stirs awake in Mao's arms. Internally, he curses the slow ticking of the alarm clock nearby. Externally, his eyes refuse to close as much as he tries to, evoking a bitter sigh.
The body beside him is less concerned with this rush of insomnia.
All it takes is a simple turn, and there Mao lays: chest rising and falling with every exhale, hickey-bloomed skin contrasted with the innocence of his soft face and fluttering eyelashes, messy hair adorning him like a mauve halo.
It's futile. It's enchanting.
It's something for Natsume and Natsume alone to keep; A memory to lock up in a pandora's box, with the key long thrown away.
Natsume doesn't know what compels him to reach out and to feel that hairstrand again as it rests and tickles his fingers. For a moment, he fears Mao will awaken. That the magic will break. But, he does not, subconsciously leaning into the touch instead, because Mao is weak, weak, weak and see, that's what leads Natsume to recoil.
'Pathetic', he thinks. Yet still, his hand doesn't move, indulgently staying there. 'Disgusting'. Only now does it sink in, how heavy Mao's arm rests above him and stings so sweetly where their skin touches.
Equally, it's only when their pulses thrum in union that both Natsume's fingers and heart tremble. There's a certain desire that flickers from within, a quiet flame—it burns even hotter than Mao's flesh against his, or his own flushing cheeks. It's a gnawing need of uncertainty that weighs one's soul down. The inherently foolish kind.
Hypothetically. Yes, maybe just …. once in a while he wouldn't mind seeing Mao like this more often. For some reason the sight makes pride swell in Natsume's chest, festers the urge to scratch ownership over every little bit of skin, pull him close (even closer) and chase his lips and...
Natsume snaps out of it. He flinches. And it leads Mao to wake up.
"....? Sakasaki...?"
This is bad. If he had derived comfort from Mao's arms before, they feel claustrophobic right now.
Away, he needs to get away.
There's a bitter remark forming at the tip of his tongue. The venom of such words came easy to him, he'd long ingrained it in his bloodstream after all. Right now, they refuse to leave. There's a lump in his throat that prevents him from speaking, from doing anything, swelling under Mao's touch.
A cold shiver runs down his spine.
And then he's pressed closer, skin to skin, heartbeat to heartbeat. Mao rubs soothing shapes against his back, and there's a tender shhh that invites him to ease up. All it does is leave Natsume more tense mentally.
'Away, away, away' his head warns. But his body doesn't listen.
It moves on its own accord, and Natsume can only watch himself as he chases the touch, as he leans in more. There's a fog forming at the back of his head, numbing his mind, his eyes, ears, you name it. Nothing makes sense anymore.
Terrific. Wrong. Despicable.
And yet.
Natsume closes his eyes. The shivers calm, ever so slightly, and instead, it's the quiet wave of something that gently places atop of him, foreign and scary. Mao's arms feel crushing but at the same time, there's a nice itch to the press. His own heartbeat is running away from him, compared to Mao's.
And maybe Natsume is too. Running. Fleeing. Trying to.
When he opens his eyes again, he catches Mao smiling. Like before, there's a second of uncertainty, where a lighthearted attempt of a joke is about to slip past Mao's lips. To ease the tension, most likely. A weak plea of pacifism. It dies down with Natsume's glare—even someone as dense as Mao seems to understand, on occasion.
Instead, they let silence speak as Natsume sinks into Mao's touch. That, as much as he hates, his body can't turn away from. That it latches onto like his lungs to oxygen.
Spell or curse? In the end, that hardly matters.
Inside, the terrific realization gnaws at Natsume's bones; he too must be falling—head first, eyes closed, 100 meters a second, with adrenaline drumming in his ears and a heart bursting with honest anxiety as he descends into horrific depths.
As always, it's Mao's fault.
It has to be.