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They haven't looked at each other since they left the stage.
The lights have burned themselves into Kohaku's eyes, and the afterimage of swirling colours beneath his feet still seems to follow his steps all the way to their dressing room. Madara isn't that far ahead of him—maybe a few steps at most—but in the narrow, fluorescent-lit hallway, the sight of his back feels like looking through a telescope at a star on the other side of the universe. Kohaku could reach out to him, but what would he feel beneath his hand? The warmth of Madara's body, or the remnants of something that burned out long before Kohaku ever laid eyes on it?
Madara opens the door of the dressing room and flicks on the light switch.
There's a stillness in the hesitation of their movements as they start to discard their stage clothes. These aren't their usual uniforms—not the ones that had blood stains washed carefully clean and cuts and tears stitched closed. These are like the swirl of an oil spill, like the night sky distilled into ink and poured into water. When Kohaku first looked at them, he almost had to look away—he couldn't imagine wearing something like it. Not something so bright; a painting in a palette made only for them—of them, both of them—for the first and last time.
From the corner of his eye, Kohaku can see Madara lean against the cluttered counter of the dressing room, the wide mirrors behind him leaving no side of him hidden. The opposite wall is also plated with mirrors, and looking into either makes the room span forwards and backwards infinitely, with the two of them caught in the middle of it all.
Kohaku drops his gloves onto a side table but only half thinks about the action because it feels like all of his awareness is honed in on Madara: his jacket unbuttoned, his head low, his mouth parted like he can't decide if he wants to speak.
But they've been orbiting each other all night—maybe longer, much longer, maybe since the night they met—and whatever it is that Madara wants to say, Kohaku doesn't want to hear it.
When Kohaku crosses the room to stand in front of Madara and share his space, when he reaches out and grasps the ring on his neck to pull him down to the same level, when he kisses him hard enough to bruise and wishes it would sear—he doesn't do it because he has nothing to lose.
His hands are holding Madara's face, his fingers are catching in his hair, and Kohaku feels the sharp stutter of Madara's breath against his mouth just before Madara gives in to what, with one of his bullshit excuses, he would reject on any other day but this one.
Madara's hands grasp his waist, gathering the fabric of his jacket like his hold is the only thing keeping him standing, tethered to Kohaku. He kisses back like they're thinking the same thing; in their most desperate moments, they're always one mind in two bodies, binary stars: If I'm losing everything, I'm taking one thing for keeps.
Something burns white-hot in his chest, and—if he was foolish, didn't know any better, was still the same person he was a year ago—he might think he could cry.
"Kohaku-san," Madara breathes against his mouth, eyes half-closed but still searching, always looking at him like a child given a riddle with no answer.
Kohaku pushes forward and kisses him again.
"Shut up," he murmurs, voice so tight it almost breaks. "Don't talk. One night, for once, just don't talk."
Madara doesn't answer with words. He takes off his gloves; he cups Kohaku’s face in his hands like a dying man desperately trying to keep water from running through his fingers. He traces the pad of his thumb over Kohaku's mouth as if trying to commit the feel of it to memory in every way he can. These are all answers, part of the language they created that Kohaku feels like he remembered before he ever learned.
Madara ducks down and answers him again—kisses him with his mouth half-parted and his eyes closed shut, kisses him like there's oxygen in space, and the only thing either of them wants to do is share it.
There are more than a million of them in the mirrors of the dressing room, backwards and forwards forever, always in the same moment. A million universes of the only night he'll ever feel Madara Mikejima hold him fast and press his lips against his heartbeat.
In the morning, this might feel like a dream—or maybe more real than it does now, when he still hasn't had to give up or let this go.
But right now isn’t the morning, and he’s sitting on a vanity counter in the backstage of a concert hall, products scattered around him and his back pressed against a wall of glass. He doesn’t think about how fragile it is behind him or what image is cast on it.
Kohaku’s arms are wrapped around Madara’s shoulders, and he feels warmed through, like he’s holding the sun.
The universe is the size of the room, and so long as he doesn’t think, he doesn’t need to remember that later—too soon—he has to let go.