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A rock band’s lesser-known senior album had an outro with lyrics that had holed themselves up in Minato’s memory. The music was droning, coming on atmospheric, but the vocalist — an airy masculine voice riding the waves of a dreamy guitar rift — sang of a Greek mythos. Someone or another had claimed that humans once possessed double their appendages with two heads sprouting right at the top until Zeus had split one into two for their hubris. Two halves of a united whole now forced to seek their equivalent on their own accord—the birth of the “soulmate” concept. The story had been uninviting to Minato, for where the reviews touted the track romantic, it was all too soon distorted with visions of four-legged humanoid figures moving like awkward crabs. A bumbling collection of arms unsteadily swinging to balance its poorly weighted shape. Ridiculous imagery for the sake of pretty empty words that were as tangible as the existence of these bygone stitched-together humans.
These past opinions rose suddenly in his thoughts along with the music that sprung them on, and labeled as “ignorance” did he ship those observations off. With four arms intertwining to hold the opposite body and legs entangled like a strange gangly thing, lying twisted, the two may as well be one. Chests submitting to the presence of the other expanded in breaths taken in tandem as if with one set of lungs. Bare skin flush against each other warmed to a twin temperature. A heartbeat, whose? He could only hear a single resounding sound.
Ryoji’s temple lifted off Minato’s collarbone and he supported the weight of his upper body with his arms. The cold snuck in between the space of them that the tunnel of blankets couldn’t shield. Looking up, a rare stolid expression gripped the features of the otherwise expressive other half, and, were it not for the black strands framing his face, he could be mistaken for a mirror. Minato felt a compelling responsibility to grin, to keep a piece of Ryoji in the world through their likeness. A misguided imagination for a task he was unfit to carry through. Minato couldn’t smile as Ryoji could, that was a fractured part of their semblance that was all his own. A piece Minato had lost under their fissure. Was it for that reason that the other’s avid emotions were so precious to him who couldn’t reflect them? Furthermore, what was it that he had that compelled Ryoji? Minato could think of nothing he offered, nothing of note to make his part in their repaired division worthy.
Eyes pouring an excessive of admiration in their softness were untainted by beliefs of their object of attention’s inadequacy. Minato had never seen anyone look at another like this, but couldn’t discern a hint of timidity from it. He reached a hand to Ryoji’s face — cupping his cheek and sliding a thumb over an eyelid. One gaze was enough to hold a whirlpool of sentiments to become consumed by. With a faint touch, Ryoji held Minato’s wrist. He pressed his lips upon the protrusive vein.
A flurry of warmed air rushed his skin, courtesy of Ryoji’s face tucked in Minato’s neck. The divide between their bodies arrived back to zero. In all the clumsiness that pervaded the social contracts of people whose uncertainty convoluted their connections, there was an absolute rightness in the two’s bond — a total correlation. Lines of understanding that ran not parallel but converged as one singular path. In that being so, their overlapping shapes were the only feelings that truths never needed questioning. Minato had never been one acclimated to touch, that which was a foreign body invading, but Ryoji was not merely an external force, he was always intended to collide with Minato. It was how it felt; like touching oneself—nothing obstructive nor discomforting to sever the kindling of their body heat. No strangeness suggesting a mistake.
An arm slung over Minato’s chest found his hand to lace fingers with; connected, attached, forever — that was his wish. The Fates meant it to be so.