Work Text:
It's a Tuesday afternoon, which means the library is closed. Instead, Yoshiki is sitting on the floor against his bed next to a pile of checked out books, flipping through one about harvests in Kansai for the last few hundred years.
The AC is set to 25 degrees, with the rotating fan blasting at full power to try to make up the difference. The buzz fills the room, almost stuffier than the humidity. Every minute or so, he can just barely hear Hikaru turn a page on the bed above him.
Not only is Yoshiki's book dry, but it's mostly full of irrelevant information that at best merely corroborates the vague outline of the history of suffering in these villages that he has pieced together. He had been hoping that one of these books might mention something about Unuki or Nounuki or give any sort of hint on what the being possessing his best friend's corpse is, but he has already gone through the others. At least the book on paranormal stuff was more interesting, even if everything in it seemed entirely unrelated.
"It might be easier to find out more about who you were if I knew what kind of thing you are," Yoshiki tells Hikaru, leaning his head back against the bed. He puts the book face down on the floor. If he has to stare at it any longer, he will go mad.
"Probably a god, right?" Hikaru says. "That's what we're thinking?"
Kurebayashi had described him as being something outside of the cycle of life and death and rebirth, something that had never been human to begin with. But with all their answers and theories, they seem to know far more about what Hikaru is not than what he actually is. Something that isn't a ghost and isn't human and isn't like anything else anyone knows about.
"No, I mean like what you're made of. I don't even know what state of matter you're in. What's that stuff that comes out of you?"
When he put his hand inside Hikaru, it had felt solid, but other times the stuff flowed out of him like a liquid. Yoshiki knows better than to try and define something so otherworldly, but there has to be something helpful.
"I guess…" Hikaru says. "It probably isn't like anything in this world. But it's like everything and nothing."
The description isn't really useful, but Yoshiki wasn't really expecting more anyway. With all his knowledge culminating from thousands of years of science, he still isn't sure he would be able to describe what humans are made out of to someone who was made of an entirely different substance.
Suddenly, Hikaru rolls over and drops off the bed practically into Yoshiki's lap. He is sitting on his knees, right on top of one of Yoshiki's legs, and he leans his face in just a little too close.
"Do you wanna try feeling inside me again?" Hikaru asks, eyes bright. "To get a better idea?"
Yoshiki tries to will his heart to calm down. He isn't afraid of Hikaru anymore, but sudden movements from him still startle him more than from anyone else, and the proximity isn't helping.
"Would I learn anything new, doing it again?" Yoshiki asks a little skeptically, leaning back a little. He has tried it twice already, and if anything, he understands Hikaru less.
"Probably not," Hikaru says, but he hasn't moved, and his eyes remain fixed on Yoshiki.
Yoshiki knows that it would be colossally stupid. He's messing with things he doesn't understand, and he doesn't really need Kurebayashi's warnings to know it's dangerous for himself and those around him. He worries that with each brush against whatever lies beneath Hikaru's skin, he loses more of his humanity, that someday he'll be corrupted beyond recognition.
And yet, a part of him wants.
"You won't try to pull me in?" Yoshiki asks, a little warily. It isn't that he doesn't trust Hikaru, exactly, not after Hikaru tore half of himself out to prevent himself from killing anyone. He just wants to make sure that they are on the same page. "Or, uh, 'touch me back'?"
"I'll only do what you want," Hikaru promises, and perhaps it is just the lighting, but his eyes are tinted red. "Whatever you want."
"Okay," Yoshiki says.
"Okay!" Hikaru's grin isn't toothier than normal, isn't wider than normal, but somehow it's just a little inhuman.
Hikaru slips out of his t-shirt like an eel, and Yoshiki hadn't exactly thought this far ahead, that the last two times had been at school where Hikaru was wearing a shirt he could unbutton.
Yoshiki forces himself not to swallow, not to let fear—or anything else—show too visibly. He stares at the crack forming down Hikaru's chest, and he isn't sure that it's better than looking anywhere else.
It's not that he's afraid of Hikaru. If there is one thing he can be sure of, it's that Hikaru has had every reason and more to want to kill him, but he has always tried to protect Yoshiki. Nor was he lying when he said that he no longer holds those feelings for this Hikaru. He isn't bad looking, of course, but Yoshiki no longer feels that same giddy thrill he felt when he looked at his Hikaru.
But there is something making his heart pound, his blood pulsing through his veins. It is only human to be affected in this kind of situation, he thinks.
"Just…?" Yoshiki jabs his hand in the direction of Hikaru's chest, somehow feeling so much more awkward knowing what's coming than when it had all been weird and new or out of his control. It hadn't been too bad that second time, he reminds himself. He doesn't know why he's trying to talk himself into something he knows he isn't supposed to do.
"Go for it." Hikaru's eyes feel just a little too intent, watching him too closely, and Yoshiki thinks that must be able to read every reaction that he's trying so hard not to give.
Yoshiki closes his eyes and braces himself.
His fingers catch on Hikaru's skin for an instant before slipping in.
When he had first done this, Yoshiki had desecribed the feeling as marinated raw chicken, but it's not that exactly. Touching Hikaru is beyond physical sensation, outside of anything he could ever compare it to.
It feels smooth; solid, but also something he could move his hand through, like honey. Yoshiki isn't like Maki, who in their Home Ec class got so grossed out touching meat that he vowed never to cook with it at home. There is something unpleasant about the feel of it though, something wrong. It feels like he needs to be wary of contamination in the same way, taking careful note of all the places it has touched his skin so he can be sure to wash it all off later.
Not that he thinks any amount of water or soap could rinse this off him.
Yet despite all the reasons he shouldn't like it, it's somehow sort of nice. Like plunging into the river on a scorching day, or getting in front of a fire in the dead of winter. Almost too contrary to be comfortable. He could call it morbid curiosity, try to blame that for why he keeps seeking this out, but he would be lying.
He wonders what it says about him and the extent to which he has gotten mixed up with Hikaru, that whatever elements of repulsion have long been overshadowed.
Yoshiki pushes his hand further in, and it keeps going, past the point where it should reach Hikaru's back. Somehow that isn't surprising. It would be fitting for this Hikaru to have something of infinity inside of him. Or maybe, Yoshiki just hasn't reached the edge yet. He can't bring himself to put any more of himself in to find out.
"That feels real nice," Hikaru says softly, and Yoshiki looks up to see him watching him.
"That's good," Yoshiki says, and he feels a little stupid saying that, just sitting there with his arm inside Hikaru.
Whatever this is, it isn't like sex, at least not anything he's seen of it. Mostly classmates making out in quiet corners they think no one will look in, and the gay porn he looked up one time. He hadn't even been trying to get off, just driven by some horrible curiosity. Both the making out and the porn had seemed so frantic, panting and hungry and barely even human.
In contrast, it's almost absurd how casual what they're doing is. They're just sitting on the floor, neither moving as Hikaru watches his face expressionlessly. He isn't even all breathless and loose like that first time, just relaxed. If not for where Yoshiki's hand is and the racing of his thoughts, they could almost just be hanging out.
There's something about it though, as Hikaru sits shirtless on his leg, with Yoshiki's arm elbow-deep inside his chest. Something that feels almost obscene.
Try explaining this to his parents.
"You said it felt good when I went up." Yoshiki says, embarassment prickling his face as he remembers the way Hikaru had gone limp on top his head.
"Yeah!" Hikaru wears the exact same expression he does when Yoshiki suggests getting ice cream, and he doesn't know how to feel about that.
"What happens if I go down?"
Hikaru's gaze has not left his face once, except for blinking, and Yoshiki feels trapped in it. He wonders if he is an ant caught in a pitcher plant, not yet realizing that he is about to be digested and there's no way to get out.
"I'm not sure. Why don't you try it?"
Where his hand is now, it's about where Yoshiki would expect a rib cage to end. He lets his hand fall, Hikaru's skin splitting as if Yoshiki is tearing him open. Even though Hikaru's insides feel solid against his hand, there's no resistance as he moves it.
When Yoshiki reaches just past his belly button, Hikaru twitches.
"Not good?" Yoshiki asks.
"Not bad, just—ticklish, I guess."
Hikaru wraps his hand around Yoshiki's arm, just above his elbow, gently drawing his hand up. Obligingly, Yoshiki bends his arm reaching up to where the throat would be, that spot Hikaru had said felt so good before.
Again, Hikaru slumps forward with a sigh, his weight pressing a little more firmly on Yoshiki's leg. He leans in to drop his forehead against Yoshiki's. His grasp on Yoshiki's bicep is relaxed.
Reflexively, Yoshiki rubs his thumb across Hikaru's insides, as if petting the head of a small animal. It shifts under his fingers, fluid yet solid.
"Hmm," Hikaru hums, sounding content. He droops further into Yoshiki's space. With Hikaru so close, he somehow feels even more aware of everything his body is doing, every sense on high alert. Every breath in and out is monstrous in this small quiet space they have created under the roar of the fan, and Hikaru moves with each rise and fall of his chest.
"Is it, uh, is it better if I move my fingers?" Yoshiki wiggles his fingers inside. His heart is pounding, and for all that it should be fear, it isn't. He is too aware of how exposed Hikaru is like this, flowing around his fingers. He wonders if it would be easier to hurt Hikaru like this, if he is holding something fragile and precious.
Hikaru squirms and laughs a little breathlessly. "Hey! Not like that."
Yoshiki slows his fingers. It isn't quite stroking, not with whatever indescribable state of matter that is Hikaru, but it's something like it.
"Yeah, that's it." Hikaru's voice is a murmer. "You feel so alive inside me."
His fingers push a little further upwards, and as he does, Hikaru tilts his head back, eyes closed, and all Yoshiki can see is the long stretch of his split throat going down to his collarbones.
This is too much. His every cell is going to vibrate itself into oblivion. He cannot possibly keep looking at something like this, cannot possibly keep touching the slick insides of his best friend.
Yoshiki stops, slowly pulls out his arm so that it's just half of his forearm in now.
Just as slowly, Hikaru lowers his face back to a more normal position, and when he opens his eyes they are full of something black and fractal.
"And this feels like a headpat to you?" Yoshiki asks, because he has to say something, even if the words feel like rocks in his mouth.
"A headpat from you," Hikaru corrects, but Yoshiki doesn't understand what difference that makes. He doesn't think anyone else pats Hikaru's head. "And it's a lot more than a headpat, just similar. Just—warm, and like you'll stay with me."
"Huh," Yoshiki says. So perhaps the similarities are more of an emotional kind rather than physical?
"What does this feel like for you?" Hikaru asks, low and steady, his hand still holding onto Yoshiki's arm.
It feels like raw meat. It feels like coming home after a long day. It feels like looking up at the vast expanse of the stars on a clear night. It feels like holding a newly-hatched chick in his hands.
"It feels nice," Yoshiki says, and he doesn't know if he manages to keep the tremble out of his voice.
"I wish you could feel it like I do." Hikaru places his free hand against Yoshiki's chest as if his skin might split open too. "I want to be inside of you like that."
"Uh," Yoshiki says because he isn't sure what else to say, and Hikaru takes the opportunity to stick his finger in his mouth.
Instinctively, Yoshiki closes his mouth, and now he has Hikaru's finger there, in his mouth.
Before he manages to get himself together enough to do anything about it, Hikaru has already begun running his finger along his teeth. Yoshiki jerks his head away, and Hikaru's finger slides out.
"Not really the same," Hikaru says with a sigh, as if that was the problem with any of that.
"You know…" Yoshiki knows his face is burning, and Hikaru is watching him, waiting for him to finish saying what he has started. "It wasn't that bad. When, uh, you know."
"When what?"
Yoshiki tilts his head forward, letting his bangs cover his sight so he doesn't have to look Hikaru in his face. Now all he sees is Hikaru's bare stomach meeting his pants, and this might actually worse than before. He closes his eyes.
"When I yelled at you for not being Hikaru in the classroom that one time. And you lost control, and you, you know…"
Yoshiki wants so badly for Hikaru to pick up on what he means, to finish saying what he can't bring himself to say.
"I'm really sorry about that," Hikaru starts, his face falling, but Yoshiki has had enough of that. It was neither of their finest moment, and they have already exchanged enough apologies.
"No, I just mean, if it was more controlled, less overwhelming, it might—" his throat closes around the word, "—be nice."
"You mean it?"
Yoshiki finally lifts his head to see Hikaru looking at him with anxious eyes.
"You'd wanna try, even though I almost—" Hikaru leans back a little, and Yoshiki can feel it in the way his hand slides out a couple more centimeters. It's barely in past his wrist now. "What if I lose control?"
"Do you think you will?" Yoshiki asks. He won't press it if Hikaru thinks it's dangerous. But he trusts him.
Hikaru hesitates. "I think… since I've split myself in half, it should be fine… If you're sure?"
At this point, Yoshiki has nothing left to lose. Surely he's left his dignity behind long since. Surely he's mixed with Hikaru past the point of salvage.
"Yeah." Everything feels so intense, and Yoshiki is sure he must be shaking as he says, "I wanna try."
"Okay." Hikaru sits back, moving off Yoshiki's leg so that his hand is now entirely out of him.
Yoshiki almost wants to wipe it or something—it feels wrong to let his hand that was submerged in something so alien just touch the floor—but he doesn't.
"Here, let's—" Hikaru stands up and reaches down to help pull Yoshiki up.
His legs are wobbly, and it's almost a relief that Hikaru manouevres him to his bed, folding the half-read manga to put on the shelf at the head. Nothing about this feels real. Hikaru gently nudges him until he lies down, and then clambers on top of him, slipping one leg in between his. Yoshiki's hands come up to hold onto Hikaru's back because it feels right, but the moment he touches bare skin, he yanks them away. His hands drop to his side, like the most awkward corpse in the world. He doesn't know how to move, where to look, and his body has never felt more beyond his understanding than now.
"What's the best way to do this?" Hikaru asks, but Yoshiki doesn't think he could answer any sort of question beyond a simple yes or no, not if his life depended on it.
"Maybe…" Hikaru brings his finger to Yoshiki's mouth again, but this time it melts as it touches his lips, that raw chicken and honey feel.
Yoshiki opens his mouth slightly, but he isn't even sure if he's letting Hikaru in or just trying to breathe. If he goes cross-eyed, he can almost make out where Hikaru's finger stops looking like flesh.
It flows inside his mouth, dripping past his teeth to his tongue. It doesn't taste like anything in the same way that water doesn't taste like anything or that white light is made up of every color. Slowly, it traces the sides of his tongue, gathering in a small pool at the back of his mouth.
"You feel really interesting," Hikaru says, wide-eyed. "I don't think I've ever been inside anything living. How does it feel?"
There aren't words to describe the sensation. He should be choking, but he isn't. Every single one of his thoughts is circling the feeling of Hikaru in his mouth like an asteroid around the sun. Definitely better than before, when he had been drowning in Hikaru and it had felt forced up his nose and mouth, except that he almost misses how all-encompassing it had been back then. But he doesn't know how he can express any of this.
Instead, Yoshiki just nods and hopes that it's enough.
Hikaru continues inward, and Yoshiki has never been more aware of anything inside his body as he is of Hikaru. He had always envisioned sensation to be a thing of the outer body to interact with the world. But he is fully aware of every move Hikaru makes, the way he spreads out before coming back and heading down, exploring the crevices of his cheeks, the gaps between his teeth.
He moves down Yoshiki's throat, and this should activate his gag reflex, but it's almost more like drinking something. His throat moves around him in a swallow.
When Hikaru enters his lungs, his abdomen tenses in a weak cough, but it isn't like water coming down the wrong way. Still, Yoshiki can't say he likes the feeling of his lungs filling up, each breath smaller and faster.
"I can't—" he says through the stuff in his throat. "—breath well…"
"Ah, sorry."
The next breath Yoshiki takes, it's deeper than before, and the one after that is almost normal. Soon, Hikaru is fully out, going back further down his throat and gathering in his stomach.
"I can feel you really well," Yoshiki says around the finger in his mouth. Logically, he knows that the stomach is pretty high up in the body, partially covered by his ribs. He's never given it much thought before, always sort of imagining it in the center of his belly despite knowing otherwise, but he can feel it now, with the way Hikaru traces the outline of the walls. He wonders if Hikaru is hurt at all by the acid, but if a knife didn't give him reason to blink, surely this wouldn't.
"You're amazing," Hikaru says so easily that the sting of it draws Yoshiki out of it a little, because the Hikaru he knew would never say it.
For a second, he feels disconnected from the moment. How would this look to an outsider? Surely they would find this disgusting. Wouldn't the old Hikaru, the real Hikaru, think this was a strange perversion?
"Sometimes," Hikaru says, centimeters from his face, "I want to eat you."
Yoshiki freezes. It's not that he thinks Hikaru wants to kill him. For some reason, the only life Hikaru seems to value is his. But even though Hikaru has given him half of himself tucked away in Yoshiki's pocket right now to keep him too weak to kill, Yoshiki has never willingly been this vulnerable to anyone.
"Haha, scared you a bit, did I?" Hikaru asks. "I mean, I want to keep your soul inside of me forever. It's so beautiful, and I want it. But then I think… You'd stay with me even if I didn't. …Right?"
This isn't a threat, not like that first time Yoshiki uncovered what Hikaru was and he said, Please don't tell anyone. I don't want to kill you. It's not an ultimatum—stay with me or I will eat you. There's a slight tremble in Hikaru's voice, and neither of them are moving anymore.
Yoshiki brings up a hand to cup the side of Hikaru's face. He loved his friend and he loves this new being, and he isn't sure for which one of them it is that he nods. "Always."
"I bet it would feel real nice if you put your hand back in me," says the Hikaru who is currently on top of him.
Yoshiki worms his arm between their bodies, feeling his way across Hikaru's skin to the gap, slipping his hand inside. As he starts to understand the curves of his own small intestines, his hand finds the area that Hikaru enjoys, and is rewarded with a small gasp.
None of this makes any sense, Yoshiki thinks. He shouldn't be able to feel the shape of his own insides like this, when there aren't nerve endings or anything. Yet it feels impossible to not be fully aware of everywhere that Hikaru is. Hikaru on top of him and Hikaru around his hand and Hikaru in his mouth and Hikaru several meters down his digestive system.
He tries to move his fingers like how he was before, but he doesn't think he can concentrate enough to really get it right.
Everything had been so intense and overwhelming, but now that they are in the middle of it, he finds himself calm. Having Hikaru inside of him like this is surprisingly relaxing. Nobody else in the whole world will ever know him like this, the shape of his esophagus and intestines, not even if they take him apart to examine him piece by piece. And even though this Hikaru is so alien and unknowable to him, Yoshiki wonders if he could ever know another human in the way he knows him now.
There are certain types of pitcher plants that have a symbiotic relationship with small mammals like shrews or bats, Yoshiki thinks. They can climb in and out with little difficulty, and both the animal and the plant are enriched by the arrangement despite how wholly different they are. It wouldn't be the first time Yoshiki has been compared to a small mammal.
"Sometimes," Hikaru whispers so quietly that Yoshiki can barely hear him over the fan. "I want you to eat me."
Under normal circumstances, Yoshiki thinks he would probably laugh awkwardly and ask Hikaru what 'eating' even means to a being like him. But he can't laugh at the way Hikaru looks down at him, half his face a mess of colors dripping down the side of his head.
The half that still looks human under Yoshiki's hand wears an expression so heart-wrenching that he strokes his thumb across Hikaru's cheek, the motion somehow more intimate than his entire arm inside of him.
"Yoshiki," Hikaru breathes out, and then Yoshiki feels the finger in his mouth slide out a little, replaced by Hikaru's lips.
Somehow of all the things he was expecting to happen when he first touched this Hikaru, it wasn't to have his first kiss, Yoshiki thinks with something like panic.
Hikaru's face melts down around Yoshiki, pouring down his cheeks and pooling under his neck, wrapping back up into his hair. This is exactly what Yoshiki has been afraid of, that Hikaru will get swept up and start to devour him. The worst part is that he doesn't even find it unpleasant anymore.
But it isn't like the last time, when it seemed like Hikaru was consuming him. In a way, it is almost like being held.
Hikaru continues to press his open mouth to Yoshiki's, still pouring himself in and around him, and Yoshiki thinks that this must be about as much of a kiss as CPR is, but no less tender for it. He cannot even feel the firmness of lips on his anymore, Hikaru's whole head melting around his hand. Yet despite the way he overflows and wraps around Yoshiki, he carefully avoids covering his nose or eyes.
Maybe he is being consumed, and when Hikaru is done, there will be nothing left of the person he once was. It isn't such a bad thought. He thinks he understands what Hikaru was saying about being eaten.
On top of him, Hikaru lets more and more of his weight onto Yoshiki until he is fully collapsed, sprawled out over him, nothing but Yoshiki's shirt and arm between them. No solidity remains to his head anymore; it is just a mass of flowing substance cradling Yoshiki's face and mouth, moving lazily against his skin.
Yoshiki's eyes close, or maybe they have already been closed. It feels like a dream, the way that nothing around him feels real and all of his thoughts blur together.
He clutches the writhing mass that is Hikaru closer to him, as if he can combine them into one person if he just brings him close enough.
The moment hangs suspended like a fly dangling in a spiderweb, and Yoshiki does not know how long he lies there, running his hands through Hikaru and Hikaru caresses his face. Slowly, his hands slow, sinking through the viscous material, his body relaxed in a way he didn't think it still knew how to do.
He doesn't think he dozes off, but he does feel a bit of a jolt as Hikaru begins to withdraw himself from inside of Yoshiki.
This whole process goes much faster than the other way around, and he feels Hikaru slide up his throat as all the loose waving tendrils of him tuck themselves back into the shape of a teenage boy lying on top of him.
Yoshiki pulls his arm out from Hikaru, and the stuffy air is too empty and warm around it.
"That was pretty nice," Hikaru says, and he sounds a little sleepy as he tucks his head in between Yoshiki's shoulder and neck.
"Yeah," Yoshiki says, because that's really all there is to say to it. He wraps one arm around Hikaru's bare shoulders, the skin a little cool and sticky in the heat. Soon Hikaru's full weight on top of him will start to feel uncomfortable and suffocating, but for now it is still nice. If he could, he would hold Hikaru like this forever.
Hikaru hums drowsily into Yoshiki's neck.
Even though Yoshiki feels as if he could close his eyes and drift off too, he shakes Hikaru. "Don't tell me you're falling asleep on me."
"Ah, but I'm so comfortable," Hikaru says. "Yoshiki, I wanna do this with you everyday."
Yoshiki swallows, his heart twisting. He feels too sleepy and relaxed to really get that worked up, but his brain has never needed much encouragement to worry away at possiblities and thoughts. There's a hundred reasons why doing this even once was a bad idea, and a hundred reasons why logistically they could not continue it. Still, he wants it too.
"Yeah," he says, not a promise, just an agreement. At least, no matter what comes in the future, they shared this moment together. Nothing can take that away.
It doesn't feel like enough.
Hikaru is warm against him, and Yoshiki is suddenly aware of the awkwardness of their position.
"Let's get up," Yoshiki says. It is far too hot to be this close to another person, even if he is pretty sure Hikaru could turn off his body heat if he asked him too.
Soon, it will be dinner time, and Yoshiki will be forced to face the real world again, where there are mysterious threats to the town and dangers against himself, where he needs to watch the way he acts and talks. There are a million things to worry about, and this brief respite has done nothing for them, even if he could forget about them all for a moment.
Hikaru sits up off him and reaches down to pick up his shirt from the ground. He puts it back on so casually, as if he were just getting dressed for the day, and Yoshiki watches, wondering what it would be like to be so unselfconscious.
"Do you think that helped you figure anything out about me?" Hikaru asks, and Yoshiki blinks, remembering what had started this whole thing.
He laughs. They had given up all pretense of that before they even started. "No, not at all."
"Well, I'm sure we figure it out somehow," Hikaru says, seemingly unconcerned.
Yoshiki sits up, hanging his feet off his bed to touch the ground. The book he had been flipping through still lies face down, open on the page he had left off on. He is almost positive that there is nothing in there that is at all helpful or relevant.
"Eh, enough of that for today," Hikaru says. "It'll be dinner soon. Do you know what your mom's making?"
Yoshiki stands up. "I don't know. You could go ask her—she should be back from work by now."
"Alright!" Hikaru bounds out of the bedroom door, and Yoshiki follows behind a little more slowly.
As he closes the door behind him, his eyes catch on the marks around his forearm. They are darker than before—the only sign that it all really did happen. And a reminder that as much as he wants it to, this cannot go on indefinitely.
Back to reality, Yoshiki thinks, and walks into the kitchen.