Work Text:
i.
from their first swaddle they’ve been two sides of an unfair coin, two circling koi, a moon and its shadow.
halved. listless.
they grow together in an expanding universe that starts with the giving shade of a mikan tree—
no—
the border of a blanket beneath that tree, soft for babies’ clutch.
in grandpa’s backyard, yuji makes a paradise with his hands and gives it away, muddy & warm. he doesn’t need a father, doesn’t need a mother, just would like a partner in skinned knees.
too young to be forgotten, forgotten nonetheless, megumi finds himself there, eyes holding unspun silk, tawny green and hardened before anyone could have known. grandpa places him in the crib and yuji yawns, nestling.
light & dark tucked in tight.
it’s a competition to walk. yuji finds his strength first, pulling megumi up just to topple together like blocks.
lacking the concept of coveting, yuji shares his treasures—dried horned dynastid, luna’s wing, his faded explorer hat pierced by lures. grandpa adds megumi's height to the wall, and the boys fight for millimeters.
when one falls the other acts as counterweight, omnipresent and understanding a simple truth before words can marr it ugly.
megumi settles with fists only one time; stilled by the plop plop plop that falls over his ruddy skin, the blood and tears and
gumi, that hurt, that hurt gumi.
yuji’s nose does not break and they take to the futon to curl to each other and sleep away misgivings.
but megumi’s fist does not forget that first taste of blood.
ii.
the middle school uniforms are stiff and yuji rolls and unbuttons. his collarbone loses baby fat. he’s missing a tooth. megumi knows it’s in a jar (somewhere hidden, somewhere secret) and that knowledge expands and incenses him.
he caps rage with a lid, grooves wearing to smooth edge. turning. turning.
grandpa takes the school’s calls toji isn’t around to hear. megumi goes to him for punishment because the old man has a softer way with it.
because megumi punishes himself, and it's brutal, it’s shrapnel. anything else a salve. twin scars, stretching; a bent butterfly net.
these years stone him with uncertainty, yuji a blindspot of gold foil and shining enamel. he holds megumi’s shoulders sharing the bicycle like they’ll never get too old to pedal each other uphill.
any other boy megumi sees is a rung. he teaches them what was taught to him what was taught to his father and climbs a windy peak for solace, his hands split open.
pink trails like vapor.
megumi wonders if something’s wrong with him. when they share a futon, he burns. when they collide, his mind strays from forewings and exoskeletons collecting dust under yuji’s bed.
and yuji touches his battered knuckles and makes it worse by knowing him.
you're out to get everyone, aren’t you?
no, not you.
and he dreams of peonies, of carnation fluff and something sickly sweet.
iii.
highschool eats their remaining boyish days, the bugs, the make-believe kept crisp in twilight. the first time he sees yuji kiss a girl megumi waxes with bottomless, fathomless cruelty, his roaring appetite a full moon.
flipping pages to sate it like a marionette. someone else must work his strings. he didn’t ask for this. megumi makes meaning from syllables to quell the scream for one particular touch.
when was their way ever easy?
when was it ever this hard?
wishbone thin over fire.
yuji’s hands scramble to fix. if he’s not mending, he’s broken.
hey, remember that quarry we used to go to? the stones we used to find?
i don’t want to find anything else with you.
megumi looses the reins on his feeling, molten stardust cauterizing his lungs, cilia swept clean in the blaze.
this something thrust upon him, it buries, it sticks, it’s cloying and leadens his words.
when did the world decide they had to be something more than swaddled little things searching for each other.
all those dead husks collected. a kindling of the heart.
megumi wants to strangle softness dead. wants to collapse in on himself. he’s exhausted his nuclear fuel. he’ll ruin the boy beside him, the one thing he can’t ruin.
i’m leaving this place.
he’s decided, for preservation instead of want. that’s been in the fine print all along. since birth. since before he could breathe.
why?
because it hurts to touch you.
megumi roars through an afternoon, under their tree, tensing those fists eager to break.
why?
yuji’s hand smarts where it’s been slapped away. he begs to know. they’ve been touching since babies, practically born to it, two souls anchored by the roots of this tree and wrinkly hands, his question a blade of grass whistling between lips, innocent and sharp.
people like me aren’t supposed to have people like you.
people who borrow, who trade in blood. when yuji stays giving & unstained.
don’t you get it?
megumi opens, red giant on the cusp of its elasticity. his gravity starts to return. it will wreck everything near it.
yuji won’t get it.
i want —
to have you to hold you to devour you whole, to lick my fingers clean when i'm done with you.
no, you don’t get it.
they are fighting, a language that megumi finally understands, swelling over trepid meniscus.
there are no people like you,
yuji says, taking his face gently as newly discovered bones.
and then a violence, a pain, because yuji kisses him and it’s so much worse than a broken jaw, than a split lip, because it overturns every pebble between them, lets free something they can’t reseal.
it hurts and grows and cleaves the monster within megumi. he wants to temper—something—with fists—his feelings, static, but they are kissing under that mikan tree reminded of bandaids and grass stains and pushing on swings and yuji's once small hand leading his own to the shell of a cicada.
where did those hands go. they grip megumi hard. they mean business now, and not in a bug-collecting way.
and that kiss feels like an unfurling piece of string tied between two cups. thrumming with vibration. with their voices from years ago, ears straining to hear the other across some distance, self-inflicted.
you’re the only person
yuji says,
that i want, too.