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Once, Akira was asked “don't you have a heart,” something that confused him back then, something that still confuses him. Of course he has a heart, he had responded, after checking his pulse. If he had not had a heart, he wouldn't have a heartbeat either.
He doesn't even remember what that whole thing was about - it wasn't anything relating to a patient's treatment, and so his memory had filtered out the unimportant bits. Like that somehow, even though his answer made sense, it wasn't the right one.
He rolls a hardened piece of golden honey between his fingers, holding it up in the sun. The shape, a cute yet ironic heart, was made by Kuniko and a few of his other children, glistens against the backdrop of a blue sky and fluffy white clouds.
Having a heart, he has learned, is different from having a heart. He can't say he really understands it, even now. He's read about it, he's talked about it with Makoto (though granted, Akira supposes that Makoto lacks a heart in the sense he knows about the most, instead) and he's even talked about it with the principal. And still, he doesn't really get it.
He has to assume that it's a lot like having or not having a moral compass. Akira doesn't have one inside himself, so he has Makoto as his external moral compass. He's learned a bit from that over the last century. He still doesn't have it in himself to understand right from wrong, or what's just enough or too much, but he has the thought of what Makoto would think about if he did something often, as a way of keeping his “most severe” urges in check.
“Can the same be done with hearts?” He asks himself the question, as he lets the honey drop fall into the tea cooling to his most preferred temperature. “Having an external heart…”
Swivelling the chair around to let him lean an elbow against his desk and slip his gaze across faces passing in the corridor outside, Akira lets the honey melt in the warmth for a little while.
If it's the right person, someone who won't just run from him the moment they see him, without an explanation as to why, then maybe. But how would a person “without a heart” like him be able to find someone with a heart, anyway? He has no idea how to know if they do.
“I'll have to ask, I suppose,” he ponders aloud as he goes to tuck away the jar of drops in a drawer, after rinsing out his cup. He doesn't jump, when he hears an enquiring voice behind him– “Ask what?” –he already saw the man approach though eyes scattered along the wall and windows outside. But Ebisu-sensei hadn't seemed to be headed for the infirmary, so Akira hadn't overly concerned himself about it.
The god's eyes, a deep red with small flecks of gold that Akira has seen pool just a fraction further into his scleras as he uses his powers, holds secrets of a soul that Akira knows he can only see glimpses of, but never truly understand.
You never knew about signs. Maybe they really were there, or maybe they were just delusions. Sometimes they are real, sometimes they're not.
The gold is barely there, but with his hundred eyes, Akira has seen it, and the colour is like honey glistening in the sun.
Ebisus's face is calm, as Akira backs him up against a shelf. It rattles, as Ebisu hits it. Maybe there's something there, something that flickers. He's not sure about that, he never is when it comes to emotions. But his eyes are sharp, even when he only has the two of them out, and the little flecks of gold shifts, a barely there band sliding around Ebisu's pupils. That's new, and it has Akira's breath hot in his throat with curiosity.
“Ebisu-sensei,” he says with a heat rising to his face. He steps even closer, and because Ebisu can't take a single step back, their bodies rub together when Akira sets aside the jar, presses up against one another as he takes Ebisu's face in his hands and tilts his curiously flushed face in his hands. “Do you have a heart?”
The rapid clipping of eyelashes is interesting, Akira decides, as Ebisu blinks up at him in a few moments of silence.
“Well,” Ebisu says, and he clears his throat, because for a moment he sounded like he had caught a sudden cold. “That isn't what I expected to hear. But,” Akira watches, with widening eyes, how Ebisu presses fingers to the side of his throat. “I'd assume so, since I have a pulse.”
If Ebisu is playing around with that comment, or if he knows just as little about the metaphor as Akira does, is hard to say. But the reaction thrills Akira, and he can feel Ebisu's breath mix with his own.
“You're not allergic to honey?” Akira asks, and with Ebisu's tilted head and questioning no?, Akira presses a bead of honey candy between his lips, that smooth sweet the only thing not allowing him to directly touch the god's tongue directly. Ebisu makes a noise from somewhere between his throat and his nose. His mouth, suddenly wrapped around Akira's fingers, is warm and damp. He nods, when Akira asks, “Does it taste good?” and Ebisu's eyes are so wide. The gold in them is spreading, pooling into the white, and it's fascinating.
The sound, as Akira withdraws his hand from Ebisu's mouth, is wet and sloppy, and Akira shivers at the way Ebisu's lips shine with a stray smear of saliva. He's already a hair's breadth away as he remembers to ask, “Is it alright if I kiss you?” and it only takes Ebisu parting his lips and tentatively hiding them over Akira's for the answer to be clear. He can taste the honey on Ebisu's tongue, sweet and warm, and the candy crunches between his teeth as he cups Ebisu's ass in both his hands. The sound Ebisu makes, a strange sort of squealing snort, makes Akira's clothes feel far tighter than they did minutes before.
It's been a long time for Akira, since he received such clumsy kisses. But kissing Ebisu's mouth is far different from kissing his own, and it's interesting, how despite his normal suave attitude that feels plenty similar to Akira's own in some way, Ebisu seems uncertain of just how to move his lips, how to tilt his head.
When Akira breaks away from the kiss, he's exhilarated at the sight of the god's face. Cheeks flustered, eyelids heavy, lips parted, glistening, and just a little swollen. Pupils blown wide, all colour in his eyes nearly swallowed by the gold.
“First time?” he can't help asking, and the way Ebisu's face turns positively crimson is just such a sight. Akira licks his lips, tasting the sweetness in their mixed saliva. “I'll teach you then, hm?”
He's not sure if Ebisu knows any better than he does about this whole heart business. But Akira has already made up his mind to see for himself.
And two people can sometimes learn things that alone, they would never be able to.