Work Text:
To love is to consume.
Teeth breaking skin, blood over the tongue—to love is to take another’s essence into your own body. Himiko cannot imagine loving any other way; cannot imagine any other way to express the overwhelming all-consuming feeling that seeps through every cell of her being. Love tastes coppery and metallic, like split skin and lips; it feels like an overhaul of your own body as you transubstantiate into the object of your affections.
When Himiko explains this to Ibara—tells her, To me, love is consumption, Ibara gets this faraway thoughtful look on her face. Silence hangs between them as she contemplates Himiko’s admission. Himiko picks at the skin around her fingernails, pressing against the flesh until it breaks under pressure and red beads at the cracks.
“I understand,” Ibara says, finally. Her hands are folded in her lap. They’re always folded, like she’s always praying, like everything she does is an act of worship in some way. “It’s a bit like Communion.”
Himiko scrunches her eyebrows. “What’s that?”
“A religious ceremony, of sorts. Participants take the flesh and blood of Christ into their own body—whether the act is literal or metaphorical varies based on denomination, but in the end, the meaning is the same.”
“Can I try?!” Himiko exclaims.
“The practice isn’t open to nonbelievers—”
“No,” Himiko interrupts. She doesn’t care about eating God; she doesn’t hold any love for Him in her heart because He made it clear He holds no love for her. If she is going to worship, it will be something she can hold in her hands. If she is going to devour, she must know it is not a mere stand-in metaphor for a being too righteous to touch.
She cups Ibara’s face in her hands, gazes into her dark eyes, says:
“Let me taste you. You’re the closest I can get to holiness.”
Ibara’s eyes widen. Her breath hitches. Himiko waits, not backing down, not letting go. She may not be permitted to drink the ichor Ibara can, but surely there is nothing stopping her from swallowing a drop secondhand?
“I shouldn’t…” Ibara mumbles, though she does not pull away either. She lets herself fall in closer, lips ghosting over Himiko’s.
And Himiko greedily accepts, sealing their lips together, taking everything she was offered and more. She sinks her teeth into Ibara’s bottom lip, then licks the blood away, slurping at the puncture wounds faster than they can satiate her desires. So she tears deeper, desperate, seeking righteousness or maybe just acceptance.
Love and worship are the same, in the end. Ibara chases after approval from her God—molding her life around the prospect of pleasing Him—while Himiko reaches for something equally unattainable. Both all-consuming unfulfillable desires which pull them like puppets on strings, until they must devour what will otherwise swallow them whole.
With blood filling her mouth, Himiko allows her quirk to activate. It crawls through her body like the vines of Ibara’s hair, transforming each cell to match those of the girl whose mouth is still on hers. It quiets the fiery want that courses perpetually through her veins.
She wonders—with this face, could she be seen as pure? Could she be allowed to eat the flesh of Ibara’s God?
Or does this expression of her love truly mark her as unsaveable?
Ibara brings one hand up to rest against Himiko’s cheek, and the other entwines with one of Himiko’s. Identical fingers locked together, fingernails pressing into skin.
(Whether prayer or blasphemy, Himiko knows this is the only holiness she will ever find.)