Work Text:
the last time we kissed the car was in drive
and I wondered if we had
anything still
exhilarating until
fingers burnt on blown out tires
nose bleeds in the morning
novelty by the mouthful
you’re destruction,
that’s holy in hindsight.
– emma jane, could it be anything else
Sougo is idling, slouched lethargically in the driver seat of the patrol car, content in the chokehold of stationary traffic.
It’s Wednesday. Sometimes Sougo eats in the car, the one Hijikata is using, just to piss him off when he finds the crumbs on the seat later. Today he’s licking salt from his fingers, staring at nothing—when the window shatters.
Glass rains over his shoulder, pressure rolls through him, sudden and brutal, the world tilting as the car rocks. The passenger door wrenches open and a body slams against the driver’s side like a meteor.
Sougo is suddenly trapped under a foreign and too familiar body as something rages outside; trouble, no doubt.
From above him, Kamui grins, a slow curl of the lips.
“Need a hand?”
Kamui’s voice slices through the ringing silence, lazy as a cat stretching in sunlight.
“Not from the likes of you.” Sougo grits out, chest caving like thin ice under a boot.
It’s Kamui’s fault—he forges earthquakes in Sougo’s ribs without warning.
٠࣪⭑
He’s on the early shift this morning.
Crazy to think that since 5 a.m. all he sees is blue—Kamui’s jacket slung over the passenger seat, Kamui’s hair catching the first weak light, Kamui’s eyes flicking over with that half-smirk that makes the dawn feel personal.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpses Kamui running absent-minded, slow fingers through his hair; the motion is careless and perfect, and it carves want straight through Sougo’s gut.
٠࣪⭑
“How old are you?”
Sougo raises a brow at the unexpected question.
“Forty-six.” He says on the spot, the number spontaneously tumbling out.
Kamui stares at him, unimpressed. “I'm serious, you know.”
They’re playing cards in the backseat—Kamui with his sleeves rolled up, Sougo with his knees pressed tight against Kamui’s thigh—when Kamui asks again.
Well, it’s not like it's a secret or anything.
“Eighteen.”
“Huh.” Kamui tilts his head. “So am I.”
Sougo blinks, surprised. He knew Kamui was young; but twenty-something, maybe, all sharp edges and sharper smiles. Not this. Not close enough to breathe the same air inside each other’s lungs.
They compare birth dates, and find out that Kamui is only one month older.
The (slightly) older boy grins like he’s won something priceless. “They do say soulmates are the same age.”
“...what are you even saying, idiot.” Sougo mutters while his heart does a stupid somersault in his chest.
Kamui just laughs, low and warm, and the sound settles under Sougo’s skin like it belongs there.
٠࣪⭑
For better or for worse (much worse), Kamui keeps finding his way into the passenger seat.
They’re bickering when Kamui’s nose starts bleeding without warning, a bright crimson drip sliding over his lip. He pinches it, tilting his head back against the headrest.
“You pervert.” Sougo says, eyes fixed on the blood.
“I’m dying here.” Kamui answers flatly. “But sure, mock me.”
Sougo watches the red bead and fall, fascinated. He doesn’t hand over a tissue. He just watches, something hot and possessive coiling in his gut; just the hunger to taste the wound.
٠࣪⭑
It's Mitsuba’s death anniversary.
Sougo drives away from Kondo’s overwhelming concern and Hijikata’s suffocating guilt, away from the regret that hounds him like a second shadow.
Anger gnaws him hollow, sharper than the spicy senbei he grinds between teeth just to feel fire on his tongue.
He doesn’t expect the vacant passenger sit to house somebody, but the door slams shut in the blink of an eye.
Sougo blinks as Kamui takes the cracker from his fingers and has the audacity to eat it in one bite.
Sougo glares, something biting through the anger and sadness, and wraps his hand around Kamui’s wrist like a handcuff.
“Those are not yours.”
Kamui plucks the bag from his fingers anyway, pops another into his mouth, chews thoughtfully.
“Say…” Kamui leans closer. “Why do you look like you’re about to cry?”
Sougo is so thoroughly shocked his grip clenches—hard enough that if Kamui were human, the wrist would have snapped in half.
But Kamui doesn’t flinch.
He never does.
Kamui just takes Sougo’s pain like it’s nothing and everything.
“Hey.”
Sougo bites his lip until he tastes blood, just to squeeze a bit of the anger out.
“Hey.”
Sougo distinctly remembers Kondo’s fist acquainting itself with his face the day his sister was torn away from him; he doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive him for that.
But Kamui doesn’t punch him while he’s in pain. No, Kamui does the exact opposite.
With his free hand, Kamui reaches out to cup his cheek, thumb gently brushing his soft cheekbone and the delicate, swollen-warm skin under his eye.
Something fragile in him breaks.
The first time Sougo leans over the console to meet him halfway, it’s raining.
Kamui doesn’t seem surprised when their lips meet, indulging him for a few, blissful seconds, the kiss softer than any affection Sougo has ever known.
Too soon, Kamui is gently turning his head away, snapping the connection between them.
“Not like this.” Kamui says softly. “Not when you're…”
Grieving?
It stings like salt in a cut, but he’s right; Sougo doesn’t want to sully Mitsuba’s memory, and he doesn’t want to use Kamui as a distraction to get through the worst pain of his life; Kamui is more than that and deserves better than that.
So Sougo folds, he curls forward and sighs into Kamui’s chest, eyes leaking. He feels hollowed out.
“M’hungry.” He muffles into the dampening fabric of Kamui's clothes with open eyes, the tears streaming relentlessly now.
Kamui feeds him the crackers, one by one, he’s gentle. Kamui soothes him by petting his hair like Mitsuba used to do when he was upset, and Sougo’s heart gives a painful squeeze.
The taste of relief burns all over his mouth.
٠࣪⭑
The next day, Kamui is already in the car when Sougo slides in, holding a single flower out to him.
It’s beautiful: pearly white petals with scarlet accents bleeding from the center like a secret. Sougo doesn’t know what it’s called. Kamui doesn’t say.
Sougo keeps the pretty flower to himself, tucked close against his chest where no one else can see.
٠࣪⭑
It’s pouring, sheets coming down hard enough to blur the world outside the windows. Cold seeps in through the cracks, but Sougo can only feel the warmth he’s drowning in, Kamui’s mouth on his, slow and deliberate.
The rain is merciless. Kamui’s eyes are particularly bright, swallowing the dead of night.
٠࣪⭑
It’s typhoon season, so the rain is vicious, drumming the roof like it wants in.
“So where are you taking me for our date!” Kamui yells over the wind.
“This is not a date.”
It’s definitely a date.
At a red light, Kamui tangles his fingers through Sougo’s hair and pulls him in.
“Pretty.” Kamui breathes against his lips, and captures them.
Sougo’s heart is a wild thing in his chest, beating like it wants to drum out; the moment lingers like a song when it first begins, and he doesn’t want to let it end.
٠࣪⭑
From a bird’s eye view, Sougo watches his own body slouch into a fiddling little boy.
He’s straddling Kamui in the backseat, fumbling with awkward hands, an unsure mouth.
Why do space pirates wear such needlessly complicated clothes anyway?
A sound tears through his nerves, melodic and beautiful.
Even Kamui’s laughter is attractive. What the fuck.
“Are you laughing at me?” Sougo asks, offended.
“No.” Kamui grins gently, cupping his cold, trembling hands in his warm ones. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Oh.” Sougo exhales. “...me neither.”
“It always just seemed uninteresting to me.” Kamui shrugs. “I think murder is much more exciting than sex anyway.”
Sougo loses the tension in his shoulders, relief slips out of him like breath. “You know you’re admitting that to a cop, right?”
Kamui squeezes his hands.
“We don’t have to do anything.” He says, eyes gone soft in that way he only allows around people he loves. “I like you either way.”
Sougo didn’t realize how badly he had needed to hear these words until they’re hanging in the air between them. He exhales, head falling forward, forehead pressed to the slope of Kamui’s shoulder. Kamui brushes a kiss against his temple.
“But...”
“But?”
“I really—” Kamui swallows. “—really like kissing you.”
He cups his face, thumbs gentle as Sougo lifts his head, giving him all the room to pull away if he wants.
Sougo doesn’t.
“May I?” Kamui whispers.
“Yes.” Sougo breathes. “Yes, you—”
Kamui kisses him, and Sougo’s head grows fuzzy with the rush of affection; each one is softer than the last, like a promise caught beneath the golden smear of a streetlight.
٠࣪⭑
“Can’t this damn thing go any faster?!” Kamui shouts toward the front.
Hijikata yells back something, breaking every speed limit in Edo.
Sougo huffs a strained, stifled laugh. “S’just…just a flesh wound.”
But the blood loss is pushing him closer to his sister, Mitsuba’s pale face gently floating to mind, Sougo’s eyes fluttering closed, the light becoming brighter.
Sougo startles awake, consciousness clawing back as he fists Kamui’s shirt in his blood-streaked hand.
“...don’t wanna leave you.”
Kamui cradles him even closer, devastated.
It’s the very first time Sougo sees him cry.
The picture he makes—tears cutting tracks through blood and rain—will remain scarred in Sougo’s mind for a long, long time.
٠࣪⭑
“I love you.”
Kamui smiles through tears in his eyes.
Outside the car, the hurricane will take its turn, raging until dawn breaks through, as Kamui whispers into his tousled hair, “I love you too.”
٠࣪⭑
I want this, Sougo thinks, watching Kamui run slow fingers through his hair, thumb brushing Sougo’s cheek, smiling that devastating smile.
Kamui leans in again, and Sougo meets him halfway.
I want this.
i turned towards the driver’s seat.
there,
with thick-rimmed sunglasses,
those hands holding a freshly lit cigarette out the window,
you were; exactly the same.
– emma jane, the comedown