Work Text:
He’d heard the word sunkissed before
In books, movies, descriptions of other people. Aslan hadn't understood what it meant as a child. He’d curiously asked his brother what it meant, and Griff had explained it had to do with freckles or tanning in the sun. After he burned every time in the glow of Cape Cod summers, little dots of brown always peppered his face and shoulders. Sunkissed.
Griff was always something of a hopeless romantic, he’d heard somewhere that freckles were where someone kissed you in a past life.
Hearing this, Aslan would stick his tongue out and gripe that his brother would say such sappy things, Griff would only ruffle his hair and laugh as they sat on the sand, drinking canned coke and staring out at the ocean. Aslan would pretend to get annoyed but secretly he’d like talking like this with his brother. He treasured these small moments of quiet between the clinking of beer bottles and reprimands.
Ash would stare in mirrors numbly each night and look at the ugly dark splotches littering his neck and chest, rubbing his arms over fresh bruises.
Every now and then he’d remember his brother’s ramblings of sunkisses, lovers and freckles. His stomach lurched at the thought of any of those kisses being carried with him to his next life.
Dino hated when he burned or freckled, so he was kept inside, only occasionally going out during the winter when the sun couldn't find him. He was stuck staring out of windows yet trying to avoid his own reflection.
Now he understood what it meant to be sunkissed. What it meant to have someone to leave wonderful reminders across your skin, to have soft laughter and warm summers again.
Eiji was his sun.
Both of them would get freckles in the summer, they'd fade with the coming winter months but spring up even more during the next summer. He liked to think that each summer more sunkisses would appear on skin after lips would peck at them. Imprints of gentle tanned fingers and warm brown eyes meeting him wherever he’d go.
He’d jokingly told Eiji of his brother’s lovesick ramblings as they sat side by side, his head lying on Eiji’s shoulder gazing out at Izumo’s shores. He’d expected a snicker or some remark brushing it off. Instead he caught the dark haired boy smiling before placing a peck on the bridge of his nose.
“Another reminder then, for you in your next life.”
And what could he do other than smile and return the favor with a gentle brush of lips across sunkissed cheeks.