Work Text:
Something came back with them. From the mountain…
Yoshiki can see it. In the fuzzy blur of every movement Hikaru makes. In the way his smile sometimes becomes tense and wary. In the way his eyes linger on Yoshiki longer than they ever have before, with a glimmer of some dark, rich color that stains the almost mirror-like shine of Hikaru’s eyes.
In the pouring rain and all-encompassing darkness, he had been the one to find Hikaru. On the verge of death, skin cold and body broken in ways that had Yoshiki clawing back the bile building in his throat. His flashlight had slipped from his grasp, casting them in a light made unstable with the static of rainfall as he dropped to his hands and knees, calling his best friend's name out in a strained voice. Trembling fingers pressed to his neck, praying to find a pulse there...
Soft. Weak. Fluttery.
Barely there, but it was there.
And it was fading…
“H-help… I need…” Yoshiki’s voice comes out thin, shaking from the fear or the cold, he wasn’t sure. Everything felt too loud, too real and visceral—but also dreamlike. A nightmare.
“H-hey!! Heyyy!!” Yoshiki called out to the tree lined void around them, the flashlight’s beam bouncing off of bark and making the dark seem darker. If anyone heard his cries, the sound of water pounding into earth prevented their own calls from reaching back to him. Or maybe, no one heard at all… “Over here!! I- I found Hikaru!!”
…
Nothing.
“Help!!”
His voice rasped against the storm.
...
Nothing…
“Please!! Somebody—anybody!!”
…
Nothing.
Nothing Nothing Nothing
Nothing Nothing Nothing
Nothing Nothing Nothing
His hand stayed pressed above Hikaru’s dying heart, fingers digging into his raincoat as the tears built and overwhelmed Yoshiki, letting out one more desperate cry.
“PLEASE—”
The air shifted. Turned warm and sticky and muggy and too thin all at once.
It drifted over him like morning fog and summertime, little sparks invading his vision and a scent both earthy and ozone settling thick on his tongue… And despite some ancient prey instinct telling him not to look, there’s no time to look, just run…
Yoshiki looked.
Rain meets his cheeks and lashes, landing on his skin wrong in a way he couldn’t decipher as he gazed upwards, wide-eyed. Unblinking as he stared deep into an ink drop given life and agency, unleashed from whatever liquid vessel it had been birthed into to roam freely. Colors sway and reach down in a thick spatter of clear skies and storm-rich clouds, pulsing with a light that felt like something speaking to him and through him with words he didn’t understand but felt somewhere deeper than marrow…
“Un…u…ki…”
Hikaru’s voice struggled its way out of him, drawing Yoshiki’s attention with an all too close feeling snap of his neck.
The world hummed.
Yoshiki fell over him—head to his busted up chest, arms supporting him over Hikaru to protect him and- and not even knowing how to or if it was even necessary, but…
If this was what… What Hikaru, and his daddy before him… And the old folks back in the village were all haunted by the mere existence of, all the way up here in these mountains… He had to keep Hikaru safe, he had to…
But…
“... Please…”
The word escapes his lips before he can find it in him to stop himself; raw and chapped and drawn tight as he struggles against the panicked breaths threatening to escape him in uneven bursts of adrenaline. “Please, please, please, please… Unuki-sama…”
A sob.
A waning breath.
The feeling of something sticky and smooth and warm and cold pawing at him with curiosity. A kitten sniffing an unfamiliar hand. A God indulging in its desire to understand an ant…
“Please… Don’t let ‘im die… Please, please don’t let ‘im die…”
He chokes around the word “Hikaru”, and gasps as something passes over his clothes and under his skin and through him, before it settles somewhere underneath and out of sight…
Hikaru gasps too.
Something came back with them from that mountain…
And it’s all Yoshiki’s fault.
“C’mooon, Yoshiki!!” Maki’s hands clap together loudly, striking straight through the din of after school chatter as he drops his head to Yoshiki’s desk in a desperate prayer. “I’m beggin’ ya! Jus’ lemme borrow ‘em fer five minutes!!”
Yoshiki sighed, feeling moisture gather on the back of his neck at the display. Everyone’s staring... “I said no. Last time I gave ya my notes, it took ya, what..?” Yoshiki grimaced, turning his attention towards the window. Blue skies…
“Literally five minutes ta drop ‘em in a bucket.” Yuuki chimed in, her reminder monotone and affirming Yoshiki’s hesitation as well as pulling a quick laugh from Asako. Maki had been just oh so grateful that Yoshiki was willing to lend him his class notes, he’d slipped and sent the notes flying oh so gracefully into one of the cleaning buckets they’d been using that day…
“I-it ain’t like that!!” Maki rebuffed, eyes wild with remorse, but also with the panic of someone who’d failed to listen to a lesson for a handful of moments and subsequently had no idea what on earth the teacher was talking about for the rest of class. “Accidents happen!! A-an’ how ‘bout I just borrow ‘em for one minute then?? I can copy ‘em right now an’--”
“Ahhh, sorry Makiii!”
For some reason that Yoshiki’s not yet entirely sure of (although he’s grown rather adept at feigning calm in such a short amount of time…), Hikaru’s words register long after his touch does. Despite that, Yoshiki can hear two of their friends responding in real time to him…
His head is swimming.
Arms close around his neck, pull back and hold him tight enough to keep Yoshiki close, heart thudding against the back of Yoshiki’s head as Hikaru cradles his friend's chin against the smooth flesh of his forearms, made warm by the heat of early summer. Yoshiki tilts further, separating skin from flushed, sticky skin as he looks up through his bangs and lashes, able to make out his friend’s beaming grin even upside-down and oddly angled as his view is.
The world feels tilted—axis locked around Hikaru.
His sense of whose voice is whose and who’s saying what becomes clearer as time suddenly tilts forward, and Yoshiki is being bodily hauled up out of his chair. He startles, makes some embarrassing sound in his shock that makes the heat along his nape almost unbearable, and Hikaru is laughing, bright and clear as he affirms, “I knooow it ain’t fair, but me and Yoshiki got plans, so!” Yoshiki barely has time to grab his school bag, his legs refusing to work with him even more than usual as Hikaru throws up a peace sign towards their peers and drags Yoshiki from the classroom with an arm around his shoulders. “See ya’ll Monday! We’re out!”
And suddenly, as they step into the hall, everything snaps back together and reality stabilizes beneath Yoshiki’s feet. His blood feels like it’s finally moving again.
And all he can blunder out is a slightly exhausted sounding, “What plans did we have..?”
“Dunno!” Hikaru chirps back with zero hesitation and shoots Yoshiki a naughty smirk, eyes creasing in that fox-like way they always did when he was feeling cheeky, like he’d gotten away with something that’d get him in trouble otherwise. Yoshiki rolls his eyes, a second by second breather before his attention falls back on Hikaru and he falters, feeling quite suddenly see-through as Hikaru’s expression softens, halo’d by the afternoon light and lit up with unguarded affection. “But ya looked like you could use some rescuin’ there, so…”
Hikaru, who only saves him from the most severe of social situations.
Hikaru, who’s proven himself to be entertained by watching Yoshiki squirm just a bit, as boys do…
“... So in return, ice cream’s on you, yeah??”
And suddenly they’re back again.
Simply existing, as boys do.
“Yer gonna choke on the stick, ya eat that fast…”
“S’wurth uht!” Hikaru garbles out, visibly cringing around the cold but looking pleased with himself as he swallows. “P’wah! Dunno why, but everythin’ just tastes waaay better since I finally got sprung from the clink!” Yoshiki sighs, biting into his popsicle and responding with “Released from the hospital” between the ice and his teeth. Hikaru scoffs, wiping his mouth off with his wrist. “Whateverrr… Felt like a damn prison sentence, bein’ all stuck up in bed all day, y’know?”
Hikaru leans back, further beneath the store’s awning and its blessing of shade. He lifts an arm to wipe the sweat from his brow, and Yoshiki’s eyes linger on his neck for a moment before his heated gaze flickers away to the gravely road ahead of them. “Prob’ly all tastes good ‘cause ya made it…” He mutters out, voice rendered soft by his own words… He made it. “Survivor’s euphoria or somethin’...”
“Ahh yea’...” Hikaru hums, a hint of awe in his voice. “So everythin’ feels extra awesome ‘cause I’m livin’ ta see it… Damn…” He goes quiet then, just for a moment before another grin curls across his face. “Heck, maybe I should take a tumble offa cliffs more often~”
He moves to indulge himself further and lets out a surprised, choked sound as Yoshiki’s hand comes up to bat the hand holding Hikaru’s popsicle, the motion sending the ice pop skirting past his tongue altogether.
“Don’t make shit jokes like that.” Yoshiki admonishes, devoid of guilt as Hikaru coughs and whines out an “Uncool!” and “Cheap shot!” while shooting him a teary eyed glare. “Like I said, don’t…”
Yoshiki pauses, the lingering question of ‘what if’ driving pins into his skin, annoyance in his eyes clouded by melancholy as he whispers, “Don’t kid about that…”
Hikaru’s ire softens to a simple pout once his lungs finally unstick from themselves. Yoshiki’s profile is shadowed by the curtain of fine black hair that hangs over his eyes, but… He looks troubled…
He hasn’t stopped looking troubled since Hikaru woke up in the hospital.
Hikaru finally sighs. He inches closer, leans in, and suddenly there’s a pressure inside Yoshiki’s skull that cannot take the weight of Hikaru’s arm and knee pressed up right against his own, of Hikaru’s head settled on his shoulder…
“I‘m sorry…”
Hikaru’s voice rumbles through him—strikes every nerve like a church bell ringing through his skeleton.
His heart is racing.
The cicadas sing in a swirl all around them.
“Hikaru..?”
“Mm…” Hikaru takes a slow, deep breath. In, then out, breath leaving him cold, then rising to meet the heat that follows the current into Yoshiki’s lungs as he breathes in, shakily. “Yea’, Yoshiki?”
“... I’m happy yer here…”
Hikaru can’t help but smile.
Yoshiki, so careful with his feelings and how he expresses them… To hear him say something so earnest?
He’s gotta tease him.
“And I’m happy ya can’t live without me, I mean… If ya didn’t miss me so damn much, who knows what would’ve happened–”
“Nevermind,” Yoshiki deadpans, lifting his head at long last. His face is flushed and pinched with aggravation. “Drop dead.”
And Hikaru laughs. Laughs out that Yoshiki looks constipated. Laughs and then sputters and complains as Yoshiki wrestles himself from Hikaru’s side so he can dig his fingers into the other boy's white hair and ruffle the soft strands into disarray.
When the dust settles, Yoshiki’s faint laughter has faded into silence. Hikaru continues to bemoan his closest, best, most DEAREST friend’s rough treatment of him until finally, Yoshiki pipes up again, “Hey… Can I ask ya somethin’..?”
Hikaru pauses his one man show of betrayal and teenage angst to blink at Yoshiki owlishly, his change in tone sending a flutter of nerves through Yoshiki’s system as he snickers, “Y’gonna ask me out~?”
Yoshiki huffs. He does not rise to take the bait, just stares at what remains of his ice pop, mostly melted and dripping down to greet the ants and the soil, neat little rows of black specks aligned in a carefully constructed swarm for resources.
“I’ve been thinkin’ about it a lot… That night…”
The slick slide of mud underfoot.
The sound of rain hammering down without mercy.
The grasping, gripping dark.
And…
“You said that… Ya don’t remember much from that night, right?”
Hikaru makes a thoughtful sound, consideration purring from somewhere in his throat as he looks out ahead of them, his brows furrowed as if trying to recall from that night what he could. “Yea', pretty much... Once I fell, everythin’ after that s’just kinda murky, y’know?”
“Mm…” Yoshiki nods. His head hangs low. “When I found you, too?”
“‘Member yer voice…” Hikaru responds, and his voice dips into something warm and sweet that slithers sinisterly around Yoshiki’s guts. “Couldn’t see much, but I heard ya callin’ out ta me an’... I guess I felt like things were gonna be okay then.” He sucks up what melt remains and manages not to stumble into Yoshiki’s forewarned prophecy about swallowing the stick too. “And that’s about all I’m able ta re-elect ‘bout that.”
“Recollect.” Yoshiki supplies and watches the warring look in Hikaru’s expression as he chews on the spent popsicle stick, all before something shifts into place and his eyes are clear again. “Ahh, yeah. Recollect.”
Yoshiki smiles, fondly.
How can he not?
“Can I ask ya one more thing?”
Hikaru’s sigh is heavy yet lilting, almost musical in nature as he tilts his head back and to the side, smiling at Yoshiki with a faux weariness that simply oozes fondness. “Yer one curious fella today, ain’tcha ‘Shiki?” He snickers as he pulls the stick from his mouth. He holds it between both thumbs and forefingers on each side and starts bending the wood.
It splinters slightly with each gentle bend.
“So?”
The softest, weakening crack pierces the air.
“What’s on yer mind?”
The wind dies between syrupy summer gusts.
“... Hikaru...”
The cicadas are silent.
“What came back with us?”
“...”
Hikaru’s hands still.
His eyes turn towards Yoshiki.
There’s worry there.
“I… I didn’t wanna lose ya… But…”
The worry swiftly grows into its own beast in his chest, fattening itself up on the fearful guilt in Yoshiki’s eyes as he straightens up, the gleam of unshed tears catching light at the corners.
“What’d I do..?”
“...”
Hikaru’s grip eases up on the fraying strip of wood in his hands.
It slips from his grasp, falls between his knees and lands at his feet silently.
Yoshiki’s escapes via a startled tremor in his clasped hands and falls to meet the ground as well. The last, half-frozen chunk of sweet splatters in a small star shape, liquid seeping into dirt as Hikaru’s weight settles more heavily against Yoshiki’s side this time.
Hikaru buries his face in Yoshiki’s shirt, the thin material doing nothing to keep the heat of the other boy's skin from bleeding through into Yoshiki’s own—third degree burns that brand him from the inside out.
“Hi-... Hika–” Hikaru’s fingers suddenly slot between Yoshiki’s and hold fast to him, shaking with the subtle sort of tremor that ripples outwards from a fear you cannot name deep inside you.
Cold, exhausted, terrified.
His body halfway overtop Hikaru’s, shielding him from…
From…
“I’m sorry… Jus’... Just don’t…”
Some foreign maw, wet and hot and cold and alive carves itself open against Yoshiki’s palm—the one pressed tight against Hikaru’s…
Something between them writhes and spills upwards.
“Been wantin’ ta tell ya, I swear. I-I… I just…” Hikaru’s voice turns watery as Yoshiki’s breathing comes faster and wheezier with each breath. His head doesn’t move—no part of him moves out of fear; except his eyes. His gaze drifts downwards, strains to make sense of what he’s seeing…
Thin tendrils, blooming and wilting all at once as they squirm towards freedom between his and Hikaru’s laced digits.
Translucent and opaque at the same time, he- he can’t make sense of…
One single speck of crimson flowers in the aurora, and the shape of it blinks up at him in the same empty, easygoing way a dog does.
He…
He should run.
He should run… Right?
He should–
“I’m still me…”
The way his voice breaks shakes Yoshiki to his core, and he’s suddenly back in his own skin again. Not floating above the two of them as a cloud of terrifying thoughts, wishing to evaporate rather than exist in its own fear.
Because Hikaru’s scared too…
“... I don’t know what all I can explain, h-how I can explain it… It’s…” Hikaru’s breath flows in just as shaky as his voice flows out, and there’s suddenly that same dry yet damp feeling soaking through where Yoshiki’s shirt, sweat soaked to his own skin, meets Hikaru’s right cheek and forehead, ducked down so Yoshiki can’t see, but… But he can feel it…
It’s the same feeling wrapping tight around his hand right now in monochrome prisms.
“I’m still me, Yoshiki…”
Tears. Small, hot drops that soak into him in a way he can recognize, and his heart splinters too.
“They kept me alive… Unuki-sama…” Yoshiki can see Hikaru’s free hand balled up in a fist against his own thigh, knuckles white as he tries to metaphorically hold himself together… Physically, some delicate balance has broken down, and whatever Yoshiki prayed to on that mountain is bleeding out of Hikaru and studying the grooves of every joint in Yoshiki’s fingers, huddling over the frantic fluttering of his pulse in his wrist…
“S’there all the time now, just… Just watchin’... Listenin’...” Hikaru lets out a humorless laugh—more of a gasp, an attempt to get a little more air in through the quiet sobs that rattle him so fiercely. “It’s funny, y’know..? I couldn’t tell at first, anythin’ about anythin’ with this- this thing, but…” He sniffles, takes another desperate breath, growing tense as he tries to calm himself down and Yoshiki’s jealous. So jealous of how Hikaru can even try to regain himself while Yoshiki comes apart in slow splinters beside him. “It… It loves ice cream.”
Yoshiki swallows, letting out a breath that ruffles Hikaru’s hair as his head rests below Yoshiki’s chin.
“Loves food in general, actually… Likes how the wind feels when I’m on my bike, and… I don’t think it- it knew what sleep even was until I was finally too bushed ta stay awake anymore, and…” Hikaru chuckles, lifts the hand not gripping Yoshiki’s palm up; little crescents in his skin where his nails dug in. “It likes that, too… Swims through my dreams like it can’t believe somethin’ can dream…”
Yoshiki hears the thready sound of air sucked in through Hikaru’s teeth. He watches as he brings that hand, full of crescent moon imprints up to his ducked face, and covers some part of it that sends prismatic tar; liquid fracticals trailing down his arm the same way it trails up Yoshiki’s.
Hikaru’s voice cracks.
“It likes you, too…”
Something inside Yoshiki untethers.
His wide eyes finally give a damp, slow blink as his spine sags a little.
He doesn’t…know what that means, but…
Hikaru, at long last, pulls back just enough to look at him, and for a moment, Yoshiki’s eyes snap closed as tight as possible. Galaxies bloom in the darkness as his retina strain under the pressure, and it looks like… Like whatever it is that lies beneath Hikaru’s skin, that moves in unseen waves over Yoshiki’s now…
“Yoshiki…”
That single call of his name is so soft, pleading, and he’s completely helpless.
He opens his eyes, and somehow, the half of Hikaru’s face that hasn’t been displaced by the amorphous something leaking out of him is enough.
“Please… Please, don’t leave…” Hikaru leans into him, wraps his arms around Yoshiki with a palpable desperation and nestles close against the taller boy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry that I- I didn’t tell ya sooner… I’m sorry that I’m so scary…”
He’s sorry?
He’s sorry. For keeping secrets too terrifying to share with anyone, and yet… Here and now, with him, he’s…
“But I promise, it’s still me. I’m still here, ‘cause of you I can…” Because of him. This is all happening because of Yoshiki, because he begged something he couldn’t understand to save Hikaru…
He doesn’t regret it.
Even worse, Hikaru doesn’t blame him…
“So please…” Hikaru grits out, fingers digging into Yoshiki’s back as though on a precipice, and Yoshiki is the only thing keeping him from going over the edge. “Please… Don’t stop bein’ friends with me, Yoshiki… I-I…”
Yoshiki’s hands come up, sweaty and shaking, hovering uncertainly for a handful of moments until Hikaru’s voice flows into him and settles in his cells.
“Stay with me… I… I don’t wanna be alone like this…”
…
Hahh…
What else can I do..?
He wraps his arms around Hikaru. Feels him tense up, then ease into him.
I’ll take responsibility.
“It’s alright…” He whispers. It’s as loud as his voice will allow itself to be, and he cards his fingers through Hikaru’s short hair as the shorter boy trembles against him. He watches the gentle sway of tall grass, and the tears finally fall. “I ain’t goin’ anywhere…”
Something came back with them from that mountain.
It’s all Yoshiki’s fault.
But so long as Hikaru is still here, he’ll gladly accept his debt, and pay for whatever his wish has cost the both of them.