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i. kiss
The first time they kiss, the world unravels. Sure, Yoru has "kissed" before, in the name of love he didn't feel, and sure, Chamber has done much of the same with murkier intent. But the dry, cracked grate of their bloodied lips only nurtures the post-violence flame that burns in both of their chests. For once, a partner who kisses father into the tang of iron.
For once, a partner who sucks in breath only in their dying throes, catching wind-blown sand in their teeth and laughing as much as coughing it from their throat. "Get a room!" Others can shout, but the two would rather stay in the graveyard around them, and anyways they wouldn't have understood, either, English is confusing enough without such sayings.
And for him, with his scar swept brow and his boyishly held sneer, the freedom is something inescapable. And it defeats the purpose of freedom so well and so inextricably that he can't help but kiss and kiss and kiss until the back of his throat runs raw with the threat of tears. And for him, with the gold-plated exterior so perfectly presented as some decadent chocolate or other sweet: he hopes, desperately, the other will never attempt to fold him open with unsteady, or even steady, hands. He fears, more than any disgust at the rot that will be found inside (no use denying it, no use at all), that the foil wrapping he has cloaked himself with would tear under the vulnerability.
Chamber and Yoru; Yoru and Chamber. One in the night, the other in the chamber, two bullets, two heads, only one end to the story. And still they kiss, until the others leave them there; that lump on the cooling desert sand, warming one another. Not with love, exactly, and not companionship, exactly, but whatever it is found only in a chain link blowing in the wind, connected to no substance but thin air. Freedom in captivity. Or maybe captivity in freedom. Whatever it is they find it in each other, that night, with one in the chamber—just one, the other bullets left carving holes in frigid bodies on the cooling desert sand. The other agents long gone. And until lips come apart and only gasping breaths fall from them and into the other, open, welcoming like Anubis, forehead to forehead they grasp one another.
If asked later who initiated the kiss, maybe they would laugh. It was not the work of a person any more than the tides or earthquakes are the work of a person, one would say, reminiscent. Nobody told the sun to love the moon but you can see how that's worked out, no?
ii. meeting
Suspicion was his middle name in the place where there was by nature nothing: Kiritani, Ryo. No centerpiece but distrust, a tagline bestowed upon him by a life more nightmare than reality. Unknown was that the other already had this intimate truth—and so many more—clutched in the cautious grasp of his consciousness. Chamber had crafted his entrance like an artist, much too careful to let stray ends ride the wind. A man who came prepared, it was unlike him to be blindsided by anything, let alone a carefully researched boy of twenty-four, let alone a carefully researched boy of twenty-four with only cruel words and crude manners. Insults tended to glance off Chamber like beading wax, but from time to time he found fascination in the burn.
So it was with great effort the man first tore his eyes away from the other and towards the beckoning call, a vibrant orange afterimage burning in his retinas as he grasped a consolatory hand. Brimstone shook like he meant it; Chamber found this laughable.
"Sorry about Yoru," he said. "The boy takes a bit to warm up to strangers."
"Apologize for nothing." The picture of debonair, he straightened his cufflinks. "I am sure we will get along." Said loud enough to permeate walls of chatter, intentional, the words caught the offender in walls of his own, purposefully raised; only a fool trusts quick. Yoru had given shame no place but outside of himself, and so there was only a metaphorical twitching of the ear at the challenge. Harboring dislike towards such a man, cocky and over dressed, seemed child's play. Insults flooded Yoru's mind like a tipped-over jar of fat black spiders. Material he would save for later, the promise danced across his forefront consciousness.
Like the thought had reached across the room and grabbed its subject by the collar, sharp eyes flicked to consider him, no longer trapped by professional courtesy. A prickle down the back of Yoru’s neck. Danger or annoyance he couldn’t decide. So tearing his eyes away he took a swig deep enough to drown whatever intrigue the moment held, loyally turning back to the conversation at hand. Something dull and old about finances. Following the alcoholic slide, interest continued to trace a slow brand down the soft flesh of his throat.
iii. cigarette
Into the afternoon street below, cigarette smoke snaked a coiling dragon. Yoru wondered if it counted as being in the eye of the storm if it was a storm you created yourself, and so he plucked the cigarette from his own lips with reluctant fingers and offered it like spare change. A rare pity had seized him with unshakable arms.
"Thank you, but I do not smoke." The reply was measured to a hair's width.
"Liar." On both fronts. But over black painted nails he took another drag, in truth glad not to share. Their silence fell in long banners over and across the balcony; for all their grandeur they absorbed nothing of the city buzz.
"You are right. I lied. I do smoke." A pause, his accent plating the words with fool's gold. "But I have been trying to quit."
Below, a pair with linked hands crossed the street below like first-date lovers. A street vendor beckoned onlookers close with colorful shouts. The pebbled street glinted with the leftover varnish of London rain, wafting up deep reminders of a gloomy morning. Quietly, a man took his place at the balcony, facing inwards toward the apartment as if to ignore the real world; the opposite of his near dangling partner. He extended a hand in request.
The cigarette shoved its way into his fingers. Pushed with little regard for central stability, when Chamber put it to his lips the dent carved shards of annoyance through his psyche. But the flood of nicotine flowed a choking river of tranquility through his chest and the shoving gesture again became one of kindness.
From the right corner of his eye, he searched a pale face for any answer other than I hate you I hate you I hate you, and found a bouncing off point in his gaze. Straight ahead into a gray horizon. Probing instead into the dashed furrow of his brow, he recognized the continued itching for a cigarette. And for once, Chamber found it within himself to acquiesce.
Two birds flew chirping through the dissipating cloud and the moment passed like another life. "Do you think there is salvation for people like us?" he asked, two fingers on the cigarette, one now, then none, as he passed it back to its rightful owner in reluctant fashion.
The long drag of a breath. "No," Yoru proclaimed, exhale gusting another fat cloud through the air: he was breathing his soul out. "When we die we are all going straight to hell." Chamber smiled then, gaze sharp, grin sharper. To Yoru he must have looked deranged.
He did. The effect was a slight warmth creeping out onto bone-cut cheeks. Yoru considered for a moment cursing the feeling, but thought about the thrill of the damp cigarette end and settled on reluctant acceptance. Invariably, crossed wires like theirs led to destruction. But in the meantime, he supposed such fires could burn quite beautifully. And what did he have to lose?
So with open heart, open hands, elbows to cold, cold, concrete Chamber said: "Then we will just have to have our fun before that happens, no?"
iv. date
Shooting is more fun with drinks to chase off the chill that death leaves in its wake. More fun, but less accurate, to the point where on occasion their dates end with the blood spilling too familiar of a chorus down their hands. An occasion like tonight, five drinks down and two kisses gifted and four shots gone and two dead. Or, well, six drinks including the half-drunk glass standing vigil in the street light and five shots, counting the stray. Chamber wonders aloud if they should count the stray; Yoru, clutching an injured side, says that certainly they should.
So Chamber counts it like a school child, one, two, three, marching fingers up his lover's right and halting finally at the frayed hem of a bullet hole, chuckling to himself in drunken amusement.
"It's not funny." Only he could look so handsome still with a mask of anger and shining halo of sweat.
"Another drink, my love?" The red lurches into frame like a dizzy cup of thermometer ethanol, only to dance away back out of vision as he reaches a hand. The wet slurp of a sip.
"Fuck you. Fuck you!"
"Alcohol is a blood thinner," he reminds, mild, flipping up the hem of a well-loved coat to reveal bloodied skin. The spreading pool of red beneath the two stokes an unveiled beat of concern. Amazing what alcohol will do to a man. A testament to inhibition, he can't resist slightly thumbing the wound. His finger retreats coated in glimmering blood. Yoru groans.
"You're a fucking blood thinner, Vincent!"
He tsks, mostly play, a little edge, though they both know the futility of admonishment. Still the statement rings more true than it seems: over and over they may save one another but in the end it will be in quiet vulnerability that the other bleeds out. Or not so quiet. A bandage smooths soft and painful over the wound. Yoru grimaces; Chamber smiles. In the fainting and resurrecting streetlight's shadow, love stalks the empty road at its most perilous. Dangerous. A lion walking the knife's edge; when the two meet eyes, it's adoration.
And though compared with the grandness of a universe they both know they hardly burn as bright as a flickering streetlight, in a world of insects, they doubt anyone could tell a streetlight from the sun itself. A pop-rock kiss serves that sweet reminder to their conjoined beings.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to burn.
v. scavenger
There will come a day when the last grain of sand hits the bottom of the hourglass, and it will sound like a gunshot to the heart. It will be a gunshot to the heart.
But before any of that, Vincent will cradle Yoru kindly, back to chest, and keep himself in the crook of his neck like a splinter. He will whisper sweet nothings until they really are nothings, a garbled jumble of sound indistinguishable from any language unknown. And Yoru will laugh, once, honest like the wrinkles on an old man's face, and say, in that sort of way that he has, that he loves him too.
Gunmetal will press quick enough to the back of his chest there will be an almost imperceptible reaction, nothing more than the instinctive clench of a sea anemone. Their only condolence: it's over so quick. And Chamber will be sorry, sorry sorry sorry, he'll be so sorry, he'll have killed his lover, what could be worse?
But still the shot will ring in his ears all through the room and through the hallway and the space-not-space of his teleportation and even still between the towering dunes of moon-kissed sand that had first promised their destruction.
He will lay the body there, not too scared to look, he doesn’t want to look, never too scared to look, or else how could he live with himself. How can he live with himself? He will watch the unmoving surface of a perfect face and a ruined chest and he will feed each arm back through a precious blue coat, gently, like helping a sleepy child. Around a dead man the coat will find itself tucked as some funerary linen, or maybe a blanket. With no warmth left to hold, it will provide no comfort.
In the frigid night blood will still soak cold and unforgiving over caught snatches of skin and fabric, and Chamber will leave with stuttered steps, a thousand microscopic hooks snagging his veins. It’s too late to fix this, he reminds himself, shaking hands, shaking hands, stop that. It was too late from the very beginning.
And in the morning, when desert scavengers find the body laid sweetly as a summer's feast, there will be a hungry scuttle of anticipation. And if someone were to listen closely: halfway across the world, half a country into the sky, the tip-tap of fingers against a wine glass will sound like a sob.