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How many ants would a moth that size feed, anyway? Yoshiki wondered, entranced by the miniature parade performing their instinctual routine in perfect sync. He would have to remember to look it up when he got home. For now, the oppressive humidity left him too listless to do anything but lie on the grass, even reaching for his phone too much of a bother.
The moth didn’t struggle as it was carried off, clearly already having met its fate. It was a shame, really. The creature had such fluffy antennae, and must have looked downright adorable when still alive and moving. At least the moth’s corpse wouldn’t be wasted, Yoshiki thought, the idea of the ant colony being nourished for at least another day bringing him a small crumb of peace. The moth would become one with the ant, its soft insides converting into energy that would carry the small worker through its toil the next day.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad way to go.
The idea of having your death prolong the life of another, being of use even when you’re gone… Such thoughts floated lazily through Yoshiki’s mind as he flopped over onto his back, shielding his eyes from the sun. Everyone had to die someday, after all. Everyone except for ‘'Hikaru'’...
“Hey…” Yoshiki commented casually from his desk, not looking up from the homework he had yet to touch.
“Yeah?” 'Hikaru' perked up, sitting cross legged on the bed, work-book open across his lap.
“When you lived up in the mountain…” Yoshiki took a breath, questioning whether or not to drop the subject before the rest of such a bizarre thought escaped his mouth.
Normal boys did not think about these things. Normal boys focused on their homework, sitting up straight and proper at their desk. They did not long to curl up on the floor beside another boy in the dead heat of summer and think about… certainly they didn’t discuss… He couldn’t bear to finish the thought without his stomach lurching, instead electing to re-read the same paragraph for the third time.
“I told ya I don’t remember much ‘bout it,” 'Hikaru' pouted. “I was… something… and then I was here with you. I know I like this kinda stuff way better, if that helps ya any.”
“Yeah but…” Yoshiki swallowed thickly, eyes still fixed on his textbook. “Was it rough out there? Like, did any of the impurities try to attack ya? It’s just… ever since you ate up that impurity in the woods, I’ve been wonderin’ if anything like that ever almost happened to you.”
“Nah,” 'Hikaru' smirked proudly, pushing his book to the side. Standing and giving his arms a stretch, he crossed the room to rest his arms across the back of Yoshiki’s chair. “I was always way stronger. Why so interested all of a sudden? You’re not thinkin’ of sending me back to the mountain are ya?” he pouted playfully.
Yoshiki sighed, sweat beading on his brow. 'Hikaru'’s breath seared his neck, their proximity suddenly stifling in the stuffy bedroom. Yoshiki longed to turn on the fan, but getting up would mean breaking free of the suffocation he adored for dragging him under, an addict bringing a bouquet of roses to his vice.
Instead, Yoshiki shifted just enough to crane his neck and look 'Hikaru' in the eye. “Don’t even joke about that. You know I won’t let ya leave me.” So selfish. So fucking selfish. Maybe the ants should carry his corpse away too. “I was just wondering if you knew what it was like…”
“Yoshiki!” 'Hikaru' prodded his cheek, and it took everything Yoshiki had to stop himself from nipping at 'Hikaru'’s finger like a hungry dog. Too many tendrils invading his mouth too many times, muscle memory that should be burned at the stake until it fully evaporated from his rotten mind. “Yer making this feel like more homework. I got no idea what yer gettin’ at.”
“If I died, would you eat my corpse?” Yoshiki asked point blank, stomach sinking as 'Hikaru'’s eyes grew wide, arms dropping away from Yoshiki’s shoulders as he took a step back. “I mean, like, not the way humans do. The way we do when we mix. Only… you wouldn’t let me go after.”
“Yoshiki…” Yoshiki’s heart sank as 'Hikaru'’s left eye slowly began to waver, leaking hypnotic swirls of his inner substance. “I would never kill ya. Never, I swear it!”
“No!” Yoshiki’s voice came far louder than he had meant for it to, reverberating around the tightly closed bedroom. Thank god his family wasn’t home. Calmer, he repeated, “No, I know ya wouldn’t. But just say if I…” Fell off a cliff. “Got really sick one day, and didn’t make it. Would you… Ya know what, never mind. It’s stupid.”
Yoshiki’s face burned as he turned back to his book, willing the pages to suck him in.
“We could mix right now.” 'Hikaru' sounded small behind him, nothing more than a teenage boy worried about his friend. Suddenly, worlds away from a feral monster who could devour Yoshiki whole at a given whim. “You don’t gotta die just to feel me.”
Maybe if Yoshiki stared at the words on the page for long enough, they would somehow rearrange to form an answer for him, just so he wouldn’t have to admit his shameful desires out loud.
“Yeah…” Yoshiki breathed, so hushed that his words would have been lost on normal human ears. “I wanna feel ya.”
“Yer heavy,” Yoshiki complained as 'Hikaru' climbed onto his lap, grasping at the first words that came to mind just to fill the air with something other than tension and body heat. In truth, ‘Hikaru’ was small and light for a boy, almost delicate, as if he were the one who could break with ease if Yoshiki were not careful. Suddenly the pillow he slept on each night felt hard as the bare earth he should be buried in. Wedged uncomfortably behind his back in a miserable wad, as if recoiling from the repulsive act he was about to perform on top of it.
“And yer sweaty,” 'Hikaru' retorted, pulling his own t-shirt off over his head, like it was nothing to strip in from his best friend, like the body he was undressing belonged to a child’s doll.
“...Sorry…” Yoshiki mumbled, reaching toward the nightstand for a tissue.
“Nah.” 'Hikaru' caught his wrist, bringing the sensitive flesh to his lips, running his tongue over the salty droplets. “I like it. Makes ya more handsome this way.”
Yoshiki could do nothing but inhale, biting his bottom lip just to keep from groaning at the simple act. God, he was pathetic. Any creature foolish enough to consume him would be sick to its stomach for all eternity. He was poison in human form. An illicit drug to be poured away, swirling down the drain.
Wordlessly, 'Hikaru' allowed his chest slit to fall open, unknowable and inviting, a void beckoning for want of Yoshiki’s very being, and his alone.
Yoshiki wondered if what he saw inside that endless cavity may be what the final moment before death might look like.
Tentatively, Yoshiki reached toward the opening, petting the smooth edges until 'Hikaru' shivered, shifting in his lap. A single tendril slithered outward, meeting his touch, coiling playfully around the dark mark on his wrist.
Yanking the tendril towards his lips, Yoshiki pressed his mouth against the cold, slimy form, whispered voice trailing between the fractals, “Mix with me.”
A thrill ran down Yoshiki’s spine as a swirling mass poured from 'Hikaru'’s face and chest. Rather than the fear that had gripped him at their initial mixings, a surge of greedy anticipation tore through Yoshiki’s heart. A diseased satisfaction at knowing this sight--this true side of 'Hikaru'--was meant for his eyes and his alone.
He was sick. Filthy. Any other boy his age would be in throes of ecstasy over a porno mag right now. Shouldn’t he be like them? Not pressed against the headboard by a boy undoing his very atoms to become a formless mass, solely for the sake of becoming one with Yoshiki. Should not be letting his mouth fall open to welcome a thick strand of cosmic void.
It didn’t matter.
Nothing else in the universe mattered when this--whatever it was, whatever the hell they wanted to call it--felt so damn good.
Fuck the invisible spies living in his head. The moment 'Hikaru' enveloped him, the thousand pairs of unseen eyes that had judged each and every one of Yoshiki’s thoughts for the past seventeen years lined up in front of a firing squad, without a second spared in service of their mourning.
There was nothing left in his head but 'Hikaru' as they melded, each of Yoshiki’s senses shutting off, a series of string lights popping in sequence down the line, becoming one with 'Hikaru'’s inner substance, as if they belonged to him instead, as if everything that had made up the human being known as ‘Yoshiki’ now lived within 'Hikaru'. As if whatever it was that made up what Yoshiki had known as the self had returned to its home after years of wandering a strange land in which Yoshiki’s soul did not speak the language, the local customs all a farcical parody of the truth he now found within 'Hikaru'. Here, now, deep within this joining of cold globules and living flesh.
Bliss. Pure, and free from the dents, the pinholes and pockmarks, the rust that the hearts of others may have forged in attempt to sully such unadulterated emotion.
Yoshiki never wanted it to end.
He wanted to grab the all-consuming sensation tightly enough to burst it. He wanted to eat it alive, bones and all. Bones inside his bones inside his bones inside 'Hikaru'. Insideinsideinside
Don’t you ever leave me.
Whatever was left of Yoshiki’s independent consciousness realized, blithely, that he could no longer breathe. Ah, he’s in my nose again. The notion so absurd, he might have laughed had his mouth not been filled to aching with unknowable mass. 'Hikaru' would have liked to see him laugh, but as quickly as the thought came, he somehow knew that 'Hikaru' could experience him. And along with an answering sketch of a grin, there followed a cord of worry, a single pluck on a guitar string reverberating into shared nothingness.
Yoshiki lay gasping for air, vaguely aware of tendrils exiting each and every orifice on his face. It was decidedly less pleasant on the way out. Vision still smeared, Yoshiki blinked slowly at the image of 'Hikaru'’s face re-forming inches from his nose.
Familiar hands gripped his shoulders. “Hey! Hey! I… didn’t kill ya, did I? Say somethin’!”
His own tongue feeling like a failed transplant inside his mouth, Yoshiki managed to rasp, “Wouldn’t mind if ya did.”