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Mika always looked forward to spending time in their ("their"...) home when Shu returned. The Victorian furniture and rococo paintings, the tall ceilings and the persisting smell of dust no matter how many diligently Mika attempted to do upkeep. Their (there was that word again) canopy bed where they had spent so many nights holding each other tight, having yet to realize how one night wordlessly became one hundred. Shu came apart so quickly if you could only find his loose threads. Or maybe it was just that around Mika, Shu tended to leave them dangling in plain sight. A challenge, perhaps—though Mika had only ever been able to see them as a prayer.
There was a safety that came with crossing the threshold into this place for two, untouched by monsters or angels or emperors or false gods.
After so much time spent feeling like a military wife, Mika couldn’t help the relief that washed over him the minute he lay eyes on that familiar bread oven again. A reminder of his partner’s meticulousness that made him smile, even as said partner prattled on incessantly about this and that as he had since the moment his flight had landed and Mika was in his arms. Just the idea that Shu was “too much” in any capacity was enough to make Mika frown, suddenly reminded of the many, many times he’d been confronted with such an accusation by both his friends and Shu’s. Well, mercifully, Mika was the one burdened with the arduous task of caring for his master, and no one else. They needn’t bother with the idea that Mika would be “better off” elsewhere.
It took Shu’s hand on his to interrupt the younger boy’s scathing internal monologue, and Mika shook his head in an attempt to collect himself.
“M’yep! My bad, oshi-san… ‘ve been gettin’ too caught up in my own head recently. It sure is nice to have ya back, heh, I can already feel the cobwebs in my brain bein’ swept away…♪” Mika smiled to himself as he imagined Shu with a great big broom, beating at the dusty curtains. “I missed ya an awful lot.”
Shu, despite his usual jetlag-induced slump, returned Mika’s smile with a distinct fondness.
“I’ve missed you too, you know.” Shu turned slightly to take Mika by the chin, tilting it up to inspect him as though he were something precious. “How is it that you only look lovelier every time I see you? As usual, you defy all logic.”
The two of them remained still for a long few moments, Mika becoming increasingly convinced that he’d like to spend the rest of his life like this, until Shu finally let him go with a satisfied hum. Though admittedly disappointed that the intimate attention had only lasted a scant few seconds, Mika was quick to capture and store the moment like a firefly in a jar, and shelve it amongst thousands of other, precious memories he had shared with Shu. Even the smallest of touches, and words that Shu likely didn’t even remember saying, were lovingly displayed. Though that isn’t to say Mika didn’t have his favorites.
After his hands left Mika’s cheeks, Shu turned to the kitchen and set about unbagging their groceries. Even such a menial thing became special when done with his partner, particularly when it had been so long since they’d seen each other. Mika couldn’t help but smile at Shu’s choice of ingredients as he noted the increase in variety, not to mention the modest muscle gain that he’d boasted of. Mika deliberately allowed Shu to insist upon carrying most of the bags. It didn’t hurt that such a thing indulged Mika’s own persistent yearning for some semblance of the dynamic they’d left behind with their highschool days.
He suddenly felt like he understood exactly what the girls he’d grown up with found so attractive about the idea of a “prince charming”. Nothing would ever truly eclipse the feeling it gave him to be looked at with such warmth and affection. Every single day of waiting, of struggling, of holding Shu tightly enough that none of his broken pieces wound up missing… all of it would’ve been worth it for just one of those looks. And, instead, Mika woke up every morning knowing he’d get to hear the voice of the man he loved, whether it be to his face or through the phone; ah, how lucky he’d gotten. He wouldn’t trade this for the world.
Mika insisted stubbornly upon helping with dinner, eager to spend every second that they had together. He washed the dishes afterwards while Shu hummed to the tune of their songs, unpacking his suitcase and presenting Mika with small trinkets and toys he’d procured with him in mind. Shu relented easily to the request for a bath, and Mika nearly fell asleep in the tub with Shu’s hands in his hair and massaging his scalp. Being pampered like this made his heart soar.
It wasn’t long after Shu’s rigorous skincare routine for the both of them that Mika found himself blessedly tucked beneath the sheets and comforter, curled up against Shu’s chest, right where he belonged. He clung to the other boy like a child with a stuffed bear—a behavior that Shu had initially found annoying, but quickly came to accept and eventually reciprocate. In many ways, this was where Shu belonged, too.
Mika nuzzled into Shu’s nightshirt with a little hum of contentment, heaving a great big sigh as he allowed his muscles to relax. Shu’s fingers drew through his black hair gently. Mika smiled at the petting. But, for as calming as it was to have Shu’s hands on him, it was equally as distracting.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Mm… maybe…” Mika supplied noncommittally. “I love ya, oshi-san.” He mumbled, pressing into Shu’s touch. He couldn’t possibly get any closer to Shu than he already was, but that didn’t quell the wanting.
“I love you too.” Shu returned simply. The fact that they were at a stage like this, where Mika could profess his love with confidence that it’d be returned, was still unbelievable to him. Every moment was a treasure. He giggled and squeezed Shu tighter in his arms. The petting was making his head go fuzzy, and a small part of him rose up to crow reminders of an old and embarrassing fantasy.
Could he…? No. Mika tried to shut down the idea, but it nagged at him for the next few minutes, feeding off of the little, newfound security Mika had in his and Shu’s relationship, imploring him to try.
“Are ya… c-can ya try somethin’ with me, oshi-san?” Without thinking, Mika found the question falling from his lips in a distinctly graceless manner, only furthering his embarrassment. “Since… since I can’t sleep, ‘nd all?”
“Mm? And what might that be?” Shu opened one eye, giving Mika a curious look.
Now he’d really gone and done it. He could easily dig himself out of this rather shallow hole, as he knew he was only a laugh and a shrug away from dismissing his question as some unfinished thought he’d mistakenly said aloud. Mika found himself hesitant to do so, though, now that his lack of impulse control had made the choice for him. He steeled himself with a deep breath, before pushing onwards into the unfamiliar territory he’d condemned himself to.
“Uh… is it…” Mika paused again, fingers curling in the fabric of Shu’s shirt as he inwardly winced at his own awkwardness. “Could ya… c-could ya try, um, talkin’ to me like ‘m yer pet?”
Mika could feel his spirit withering away as he watched Shu’s expression turn from curiosity to surprise, before finally settling on confusion.
“Like… you’re my pet?” Shu echoed, raising an eyebrow. “So you’re asking me to pretend as though you’re a dog or a cat, or something?” Mika nodded in affirmation, already feeling his face beginning to burn red with embarrassment. Shu stared at him for a long time, at a loss, as though trying to find the piece to a puzzle that wasn’t there. Just when Mika was preparing to climb out of bed and find himself a nice patch of grass to turn over and die in, Shu spoke again.
“Kagehira, I don’t think I’ll ever grasp how that head of yours works. You’re capable of brilliant things, and at the same time, here you are in my bed, asking to be called like a pet dog. In every way, you are a curiosity.” Shu couldn’t hide the laugh in his voice, petting strands of Mika’s bangs away and leaving his gemstone eyes unhidden. He leaned forward to press a kiss to the other boy’s forehead. Mika made a little noise of surprise in response, before grumbling and relaxing once more into Shu’s touch. Shu held Mika’s face in his hands with another huff of amusement, and Mika smiled back lopsidedly, content to know that at the very least he hadn’t driven Shu away with his bizarre imaginary scenarios.
“...If it will make you happy, I see no reason to refuse. I can’t say I understand it, though.” Mika’s eyes widened as he processed Shu’s answer, somehow twice as embarrassed now that his request was actually being granted.
“G’wah… wha? Nngah, really?” Mika fumbled with his words, examining Shu’s face with disbelief. When he found no sarcasm to contend with, he defaulted to tilting his head in a silent question and fixing Shu with his big, mismatched eyes.
“I would be remiss to not draw comparisons between your mannerisms, certainly.” Mika’s head tilted further, eliciting another laugh from Shu. “Mm, what is it?”
“Yer really okay with it…? Even though ‘s weird ‘nd ‘m weird ‘nd…” Mika trailed off, mouth going dry with anxiety regardless of Shu’s insistence. He slumped his shoulders in defeat at the sight of Shu’s now-exasperated expression, and returned the laugh with an awkward one of his own. Shu had said yes, and yet Mika was still managing to embarrass himself something awful.
“Oh, quit pouting. It doesn’t suit your pretty face.” Shu dragged his thumb along Mika’s cheek tenderly. Mika couldn’t help but melt in the embrace, relieved that Shu was relaxed enough to be open and comfortable with him despite a hectic day that no doubt grated on his nerves.
If he could be that person for Shu (if he could be a person for Shu, period), the person who makes every one of those hectic days worth coming home at the end to… that would be his dream. Maybe he really was overthinking this. Despite Shu never having shown any real interest in owning a pet, maybe this softened return to form would comfort him in the same way it comforted Mika. That was his hope, at least. Not receiving a lecture on the importance of and meaning being his personhood was surprising enough as it was.
Whatever deep shattering of his psyche that had never properly been tended to, Mika supposed, only gave him more pieces to glimmer with. A beautiful thing was even more captivating viewed through a distorted, broken reflection. Mika bled with the need to be a lovingly-stuffed kill mounted upon Shu’s wall, a rare and strange butterfly pinned in place for him to admire, a would-be scamp groomed to perfection as a show-dog, and proudly displayed at his master’s side. All the things that Shu would never permit him to be, that he knew better than to ask for, but dreamt of nonetheless.
Maybe Shu had been right to want him kept under watchful eyes, because no matter his admittedly half-hearted attempts, Mika didn’t think he could fix this thing that was wrong with him. This thing that clung to Shu like it wanted to burrow inside him and make a home in the cavity of his chest. Though Mika had never regarded it as anything but a friend, he understood why Shu, and everyone else, was afraid of it. Meeting the eyes of a carnivore begged a fight, and no one wanted to be caught staring. It was dangerous, after all, because the scrawny black thing inside of Mika could drink until it was sick, but could not drink until it was satisfied. Who knew what it was capable of.
The realization that Shu was taking hold of and relying on what surely must have been an enormous amount of trust in his partner, Mika couldn’t help but burn up with fondness. Any scrap of caretaking he could wring out of Shu, he would swallow up greedily. It was the one thing Mika allowed himself to be selfish with. In the silent ballet of breaths between them, he took the hands outstretched to him.
He obediently allowed a smile to cross his features—not difficult to do considering he was looking at the man he loved.
“Thank ya, oshi-san… I’ll, u-um, I’ll be…” It never stopped being awkward, but Mika was now dangerously emboldened. “I’ll be a good boy for ya.”
Mika could feel heat rushing to his cheeks, and he couldn’t help but look a little cheeky as he observed Shu in a similar state of affairs.
“Hmph. I would certainly hope so. Were you to suddenly act out, I can’t say I’d believe you weren’t an imposter.” Shu scoffed and resumed his petting of Mika’s hair, pointedly watching his fingers as they moved and not the big adoring eyes that were trained intently on him.
“Nyeheh, yeah…♪ I’ll always be good for oshi-san~♪” Mika said happily, wiggling forward to press his nose firmly into Shu’s chest and bury himself in the warmth that was his partner. Shu made a disgruntled noise and redoubled his efforts to give Mika what were now proper scratches behind the ears and at the base of his skull.
“You truly are a troublesome creature. So needy.” Shu punctuated his words with a scratch beneath Mika’s chin, coaxing a pleased whine out of the other boy.
“Mhm… oshi-san’s gotta take care of me… can’t do nothin’ on my own…” Mika hummed between the strokes to his hair. “It’d be best to just collar me, so I don’t get lost, nnah?”
The silence that extended between them was suffocating, and for a moment, Mika was worried that he'd pushed this too far. He knew how oddly sensitive Shu could be when it came to Mika’s relationship with humanity. Once again, the same burning shame and anxiety crept into his mind and curled around his limbs like tongues of flame, intent on dragging him down into a hell of his own making. A hell he’d long since resigned himself to the idea of occupying, were it with Shu, but such things were easier to sew than to fit into.
“...You’re that hopeless, are you?”
Mika’s every coherent thought was suddenly rendered null. Shu’s eyes held a look of carefully calculated amusement, perfectly paired with the hint of a condescending smile on his face, and Mika found himself light-headed with glee as he struggled to form a response.
“Hush, there’s no need.” Shu pressed a finger to the boy’s lips. “It’s alright, darling. You’ve done enough. I can see now that I’ve vastly overestimated your abilities, haven’t I?”
Mika blinked at the question, unable to focus on anything aside from Shu’s finger upon his lips.
“You poor thing. Here I was, believing I was doing you a favor—but as it turns out, the puppy still needs to be led by the hand, doesn’t he?” Shu’s smile made Mika’s stomach sink and his ears buzz. “Or, paw, I suppose.”
Mika nodded stupidly, lifting his hand as if to offer it to Shu. Shu took it with a little laugh, leaning in to kiss each of his knuckles, almost apologetically. Mika couldn’t help the whimper that was torn out of him.
“Uh-huh, gonna be… gonna be good… mm…” Mika mumbled, a little lost in the labyrinth of his own head. Shu was a damn good proverbial minotaur; not that Mika even wanted to find his way back out. His master would surely weave something beautiful from Ariadne’s thread.
“We’re in bed, darling. Save your strength, for tomorrow is another day. Right now, what I want you to focus on is getting some rest. Can you do that for me?”
Shu’s voice was liquid smooth as it rolled over Mika in hypnotic waves. Vaguely, Mika recalled the ordeal that had plagued them during their preparation for Acanthe. It wasn’t as though he was unaware that he tended to be rather… suggestible, to put it lightly.
“Yeah…” Mika could feel his voice beginning to give out on him as his head lolled onto the pillow. It felt really good, being given permission. Being regarded as something small, something to be taken care of. The implications of the term something and not someone were not threads that Mika would be untangling right now—or in front of Shu at all, for that matter—but they were certainly stirring up within him as Shu’s fingers dug through the long-undisturbed riverbed of Mika’s swampy mind, clouding the water with black mud.
“Something as fragile as you should not be exerting yourself needlessly.” Shu whispered, having gone back to petting Mika’s hair, smoothing down the stray cowlicks that had sprung up from Mika’s writhing restlessly against his pillow. The smile that graced Shu’s lips made Mika’s soul ache to sing hymns of praise.
There was humor in the fact that both he and Nazuna had thought Shu a god upon seeing him for the first time, and while Nazuna had run in fear, Mika had become hopelessly enchanted. Had he not existed, Mika reasoned that Shu would simply have had to invent him. He could not fathom for himself a consciousness that wasn’t born from those hands, his heart could not bear to do so. He’d gladly give up all of his knowing for the sting of Shu’s signature in his skin.
Shu trailed the bare edges of his fingertips over the hollow of Mika’s throat, tracing the shape of where ownership would be worn. Mika’s heart twisted with fondness at the tender gesture, and he shuddered with the imagining of himself sprawled out upon the anvil. He only hoped his eyes could convey what words could not, because he thought he might die if Shu were not able to share this moment with him, seeing as how he’d laid out all the silverware so carefully in a long-long-anticipation of their feast.
Mika’s breath hitched, and he managed to huff out something resembling a “woof” as he fixed Shu with mismatched irises nearly drowned in the black of his round pupils.
Shu laughed at the sound, as if suddenly reminded of what they were playing at.
“There you are, little dog. I cannot help but adore the way your thoughts wander in such curious directions, the way you lose yourself in the slightest touches…” Shu ghosted a kiss upon Mika’s forehead and held him close, and Mika held back, violent with longing. Hapless and passive as he pictured himself to be in fantasy, Mika was a creature of fever, and he could not pray away the need for touch. Years of famine had devoured any contentment he may have potentially found in a gentle hand alone.
“I love ya… please don’t ever let me go…” Mika couldn’t help the way his voice wobbled, riding the bleeding edge of something terrifying. He had long made peace with every fractured part of himself, the devils he knew. Now was the unfamiliar fear of the foundation, the first bricks, the making of fanciful blueprints into reality. But his shaking pen-hand held the weight of Shu’s upon it—a weight he knew he was selfish for making Shu carry—and with it, the will of god.
“I won’t. It is my responsibility to guide your hand, to show you the right way in this world—even if it means dragging you kicking and screaming into the light.” The words conjured the graze of scorching sunbeam-teeth on his skin, and Mika drank in the promise of rebirth in the furnace. Heart laid to rest, he pressed a grateful lick into Shu’s palm. Shu startled at the contact, but allowed it.
His partner’s unspoken trepidation was obvious to Mika’s carefully trained eyes, and Mika knew that eventually he would need to set about cleaning their plates and addressing the bones left behind. But for now, it didn’t matter whether he was some shapeless creature or a human being, or that his blood ran hot and his chest housed something too big for his body; because far above everything else, he was Shu’s. That was his god-given role and he was so relieved to be reminded that it almost proved too much to bear, evidenced by the moisture gathering behind his eyelids.
“G’night oshi-san…” Mika curled against Shu, arms wound tightly around his partner’s waist, the gentle anchor of Shu’s fingers tangled in his hair.
“Goodnight, puppy.”
Mika buried his face in Shu’s chest, drawing in a lungful of clean linen and dragon fruit shampoo, and allowed himself to drift off. It was an old song, but a true and desperate one, in which his heart cried out in longing to follow Shu towards the peak of everything—the heaven covered in only the beautiful things he loves.