He had never noticed how loud the silence is, until he was drowning in it.

Weight like lead; feeble fingers grappling at wrists and laboured breathing and there is a smell lingering around them and if he knew any better or he would say it was misery, so saccharine it blisters like the embers of a dying sun; and it hurts, it hurts like you wouldn't believe, like he wouldn't believe, like he doesn't.

They don't look at each other; they cannot, for entirely different reasons, both as pitiable as the other.

There are welts at his neck - at the shade of collarbone which hitches above the neckline of sweater, in the pits of his flesh and the rising and falling of his bones but not his lungs- and they are memoirs, inscriptions left without tenderness because what is love if it doesn't kill you, doesn't eat you inside?

It is killing him now.

It is killing them both.

He can't breathe; he can't move.

The weight on his chest – stretched around him, across him, ankles crossed at spine and pressed into lap – shifts; fingers loosen their grip until they are pleated, limp at his sides. He doesn't know what to say; what to do (that hasn't already been done, that will fix this) and there is something like a bullet in his stomach and he wonders if it is guilt.

"Open your eyes."

He does not answer.

He does not open his eyes.

xxxx

"Can you do it?" She asks, and there is something like a challenge in her voice, and in those few seconds the air has never tasted so stale in his throat, and his hands ball into fists and they weave falsities into his skin that say he can, he will, and he snags his chin upwards and he looks her in the eye (eyes that are not golden like the sun but cold and blue and not beautiful, not like his) and he says:

"Yes."

Yes, yes, yes, yes,and he can feel it in his flesh like a blood-oath or a disease and it brands him the blistering taste of lead.

When he leaves his heart is beating so feverishly he is sure it will leap out of his mouth. The sound is lurid like the predator cleaving the skin of prey and it enlivens him in ways it should not, guiding sparks through sepulchre bones and in the pit of his belly, further down and further still, in places he has touched and he has thought Misaki, Misaki,until the world has powdered around him like ruins in a blaze and startle of white.

When he is alone (where is he, where is he? in a room full of shuttered windows and a carpet blue and dark and reeking of detergent and cleaning merchandises) he inclines against the wall with his eyes to the roof and his fingers moving in a steady cadence and on his lips isMisaki, Misaki,and it ends with a white thrill and a pacing heart.

He will do it.

He will do it because of love, because if it isn't love, it is hate.

Is there a difference?

xxxx

He remembers -

they are young, in the before, before HOMRA and kings and secrets they promised they would not keep. Hair in eyes and hands in pockets or clenched around the bottle of whatever soda the vending machine spat at them; their eyes do not stray and why should they, when there is nothing else to see that can equal the feeling?

Misaki turns to him, looks at him - reallylooks at him, like he used to, with eyes so bursting with life it scalds - and he smiles, and Fushimi's heart is beating in a rapid fire rhythm like the pounding of a drum.

"Do you trust me?"

Yes."Huh?"

"I said, do you trust me?"

Of course. Of course.He would lay his life in Misaki's hands without doubt; he would close his eyes and face the world because they were together and what more does he need to see if he has Misaki beside him, leading the way?

"Why?"

But Misaki takes his hand anyway. They are perched at a lamp post and there are people in all directions but neither of them care, caught in the space of a moment, lifelines touching and feeling the dimples of skin and knowing it is right.

xxxx

They find each other at night.

They are a block away from Misaki's apartment and it is raining, not much, but enough, enough to dampen his eyelashes coax shivers from his spine.

And in the first moment, it is like Misaki knows.

The street is empty and they are watching each other, Fushimi (the beast, the boar, the reaper) grinning, grinning in untold thrill and smudges of hysteria and Misaki is mirroring him with a revulsion so thick he can taste it, skateboard perched and side and fists curling at his hip.

Traitoris on his lips; in the air; in their throats like stones or lies.

"Why are you here?"

He moves forward and Misaki moves back, a dance kindled years before with fire alight in their eyes and hatred on their tongues. He doesn't answer. Instead he is thinking – mine, all mine,and when he moves forward again it is his pride that roots Misaki to the spot.

They touch.

Death and life in overwhelming tandem.

He can't breathe.

They can't breathe.

xxxx

It began like he knew it would; Misaki would fight, oh he would fight, and Fushimi would coax the hate from him like venom or blood. They're lips are bleeding with the words left unsaid and the kisses, blooming bruises, tender skin pressed flush and tongues fighting, urging for compliance neither are willing to give.

When Fushimi's hands have gathered at his waist and they touchhim, and there are gasps and whimpers which he can only narrate to as triumph, Misaki still fights.

But when they become one, Misaki grappling at flesh and the stark material of Fushimi's collar, stiff and open, he fights no longer.

They are bound in a white haze of movement and whispers and words they dare not say anywhere but here, closeted in the mouth of an alley, and they can taste odium in each kiss but there is something else as well.

When it ends, and they are breathing like never before, and Misaki (lost in his temptations, in his last realities) has forgotten himself and has his arms looped around Fushimi's shoulders with his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling like a tide.

"I -"

I love you.

I love you.

But instead -

"I'm sorry."

xxxx

It doesn't hurt.

Not at first.

It is just – cold. Like snow or sadness or Fushimi's eyes, bitter and lonely and for a moment he thinks there is regret, but does not have long enough to see it before colors mold and mesh and he can't keep his eyes open, but he struggles enough to watch Fushimi's colours until they close.

And he sees - must be imagining it, dreaming it, like all those dreams Fushumi is in, dreams he wishes he never had to wake from - in his skin and his eyes and his veins a beating, broken red.

Seconds.

Minutes.

Hours.

Fushimi does not move and neither does Misaki -

open your eyes, open your eyes

- and suddenly there is a blinding white behind his eyes and a metallic taste in his mouth. It cannot be regret (cannot, cannot) because now Misaki is his, really his, and now he can't leave, disappear in a blur of wheels without goodbyes or explanations.

It has started raining again.

Not much, but enough.