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It’s cold. When hasn't it been cold lately? Touya's lungs are burning, and it feels like they've been burning for months. Maybe they have been, maybe he's dead in his childhood home and his father has been crying at his grave, cursing his name, playing music for his youngest son.
Touya coughs at that, like some kind of instinct to laugh even if his sore body screams at him for it.
It hurts to breathe. He thinks his skin is rejecting his soul or something similar in words, something poetic and kind, something to soothe himself. In reality, his lip is split and his shoulder is bruised and his skin there is torn from the rifle recoil, his bones feel like they're shattering.
Aoyagi Touya is alone. And now, he always will be.
—
It always feels like they’re running. Or, Touya is always running. He’s always felt cowardly, even if he was just bowing his head; submissive.
Panting, growling, sweat on his back. It’s the same kind of feeling.
He’d been chasing something, at some point, and it felt better than running. It was freeing, more than anything, peaceful, even with the unimaginable noise and a gravely voice in his head telling him they needed to go harder, push their limits.
He was still like that. Just meaner, Touya thinks. Jaded, perhaps? He could never place the words, not like he used to, not when he could just speak and not wake the world around themselves.
Them?
Them. Always them—who else?
Tan, weathered hands on his wrist, tugging him like he’s cargo, something precious even if he’s grimy and dirty; never clean. Green eyes fixed on him from across a stale chapel, his boots muddy and too big. Touya never minded the calluses and blisters he got from them, they felt like the ones on his hands from the unforgiving grip around an axe. He always focused on the furrow of thick brows instead and the sweat dripping down scabbed cheeks, the frown on thick lips and the permanent indents from sharp canines imprinted on the bottom.
So…scary. No, not scary, frightening, maybe. Horror and terror aren’t the same thing, you see, because Ann Radcliffe stated that…
The boy curls in on himself, covering his ears, the bruise on his shoulder pulsates.
He thinks about the noises, the familiar ones.
Whimpers. Oh, he listened to the choked whimpers, like he was tending to a wounded dog. Touya has never been good at offering comfort. No, he’s too awkward, too narrow, too doll-eyed and cold. It was predatory, in a way, watching someone—no, something— bigger than him break down, even if it was silently to keep him safe.
He was always safe with that something. Always, because it was so headstrong and all teeth and claws and blood flowing in it’s veins like it was scared the fluid would stop at any second, just because.
But Touya watched, always, as squared palms rubbed roughly at downturned eyes and irritated the skin like it was punishment. He’d always scoot in, just a little, never enough to startle, just enough to get close. It was simple, so sweet and kind; his unwashed hair resting against a shoulder, his fingers held cruelly by thicker ones.
His tone was always softer then, in those moments when nails were digging into Touya’s knuckles in a way that made him feel giddy, even if both their bodies reeked of gore and dirt.
“We’re safe,” he’d promise, low and raspy from the whimpers and whines.
Mutt, guard dog.
“With each other.” Touya would always finish, his voice a little louder.
Touya shudders at the memory, thin fingers curled into his palms as if to replicate the feeling of warmth, of safety. He was never safe, he never has been, even caged he was threatened.
Ak…
No, the thing. The creature.
He made it different. Watched him, stalked, much like Touya. But where Touya observed tears of anger and hot, shaking hands, He observed stillness and the stiff rigidity of a corpse and his voice.
“I watched you.” He admitted one day after they fell through a hospital floor, scrambled for their weapons frantically and almost went deaf from the gunshots echoing around them. The wretched groans and screeches the only proof they weren’t aiming at air.
Touya had paused in his walking to retire his boots, the steel toe visible through the torn leather.
“Watched…me?”
Confused, slow. Ditzy, perhaps.
“Yeah. Sing, n stuff.” he’d mumbled, shoving his gun in the holster around his waist, “Was creepin’ around and that’s when I saw you.”
Touya had blinked, glanced up with a slight furrow to his brow. He’s not sure why they’re having this conversation in this forest, why he is so inclined to tell him about it.
He looked away after that though, a flush on his face. Touya thought it suited him, the square edge of his eyes and the long line of his pupils against the gentle pink, like his heart was trying to soften the battered shell.
Touya found he didn’t mind. The creeping, as it was put.
He’d hummed, smoothing his pants down like it mattered in the middle of the woods before speaking, “For how long?”
Did it matter then? Touya couldn’t and still can’t remember how long it’d been since he’d felt normal, apart from the manic joy that would fill him at the smallest things, like a spare bullet in a station.
But still, he’d huffed, grabbed a thin wrist and tugged it next to himself to keep walking.
“Dunno, a decent while.” He’d glanced next to him, Touya always thought it was odd he stared so often, “You don’t seem fazed, you idiot. I stalked you, ain’t that weird?”
A simple shake of the head, that’s what Touya had offered.
It was often like that. Moments of nothing but fear and pumping adrenaline, of muffled screams and shaky panting, then a quiet little conversation.
So sweet, in Touya’s fragile mind.
His gun always felt nice against Touya’s hip when they’d walk, brushing against him, reminding him they were alive.
—
Touya is still cold, presently, hugging his arms to himself and gritting his teeth like it’ll keep the warmth inside him. His rifle is at the bottom the stairwell he’d dragged himself up, the near empty magazine is somewhere around, he’d kicked it away from himself when he’d realized it was still in his pocket some hours ago.
He should die. Right now, here—should let himself be mangled by the monsters or the men who have nothing better to do in all this misery.
Doll-like. He’s been good at that, he’d been good at it, the quiet submissiveness that came with it.
He’d been ruined, hadn’t he? By that love.
A chain rattles next to himself and he startles, instinctively scurrying to the other side of the cold pediatric ward he’d wandered into.
He pants heavily, pupils shrunken into pin points and hands shaking as they slide against the tile.
There’s blood on the wall, viscous and gooey, something so putrid and simple it makes Touya gag from his distance. The vile substance coats a cartoon dog.
How fitting.
Mutt, guard dog.
There, the creature sits, it’s wrists and neck bound by the same chain. It groans, hungry—no, starved—as it stares at Touya.
I watched you.
There’s a chunk of it’s throat missing, and Touya wishes it were him instead. That those awful bite marks were in him instead. A hole bleeds through dirty tan skin, straight through the jaw.
He’d left his rifle on the stairwell. How could he bring it, after he’d been so cruel? So scared as to hurt his creature.
Touya’s eyes blur over, the image of a beast merging with that of a boy, his boy.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, hands covering his mouth, “Oh, god, please I’m so sorry,”
He’s crying. He hadn’t done that until now.
Touya crawls, faster, doesn’t care if he startles it this time.
“I was scared, you know that, don’t you? You—no, please don’t do that,” he gasps out, voice rising in pitch, reaching for the jaw that’s opening, drool falling freely after a loud hiss from it’s throat.
Touya claps the jaws shut, his middle and ring fingers squelching when he shoves them in that jagged bullet wound.
He pants and whines, sobs as he clamps yellowing teeth shut and stares into foggy green eyes.
“It’s me, okay? And you’re you,” he sniffles desperately, whimpering, “We’re safe, together, always together, just us,”
He clings to him. To it, until he can’t, until his fingers tear through seemingly soggy bone and rotting flesh, the hinge loosening just enough to come unattached.
Then, Touya curls over on the floor, cradling the bone to his chest as he spits and sobs, empties what was in his stomach and then dry heaving at the creature’s feet.
“I love you,” he whines childishly, “I love you, I love you, I love you—”
Drool falls to his already dirty hair, slides down the greasy strands and drips into his ugly mess on the floor.
—
Shinonome Akito is dead. And now, he always will be.