warnings for part ii: non-explicit sex

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part ii
they smiled like me and you

. . .

But when you left, a strip of reality broke
upon the stage through the very opening
through which you vanished: green, true green,
true sunshine, true forest.

-from Death Experience, Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Cliff Crego)

. . .

Sleeping by Nezumi's side was the most natural, the most right feeling Shion had ever known. They slept front-to-front that first night, the night of the typhoon, Shion's hands still up the back of Nezumi's shirt where he felt his fever-warmth and steady heartbeat between his shoulderblades. Shion used those same hands to clean the graze wound already sickly orange-red from early infection and to stitch it shut; there he first learned of the power in his hands to heal or harm, and when he placed his palms on Nezumi's bare skin he summoned that same strength from before to try and heal the deeper wounds unreachable by physical touch alone.

Children are perceptive. He was then unaware of the old network of burns marring the skin just below his reach, but on some level, ancient and instinctive, he knew of Nezumi's other scars, the hurt and anger festering below the surface, and he tried to heal Nezumi there, too.

When Nezumi spirited him out of No. 6 four years later and saved his life the night of the parasite wasp, Nezumi did not sleep. He remained awake at Shion's side until the danger passed. Shion's memories of those days were vague and half-nonsensical, a blur between fever dream and reality, but he remembered Nezumi's uncharacteristically gentle hands and voice, he remembered cool water and he remembered the occasional weight and warmth of Nezumi on the narrow bed beside him. Nezumi later told him he'd slept on the floor those nights, but Shion knew this was not entirely true – much of what he remembered was unclear, but the clearest moments, the dearest memory was Nezumi's arms wound around him, Nezumi's warm sleepy breath in his ear.

There were nights Nezumi was out late and Shion fell asleep before he returned, but he was always there in the morning. Some nights Nezumi kicked him (literally) out of bed, but aside from the night of the goodbye kiss, they slept together. They always slept in the same bed.

It was a constant. Nezumi laughed at Shion for planning ahead, told him nothing in the West Block was set in stone, but Shion quietly disagreed. He saw constants on the streets of the slums: hunger, fear, death, and cold. He thought of Nezumi alone and hurting for all those years: loneliness and loss. Nezumi knew those constants, accepted them as law. So Shion added one more: himself.

They always slept together, always. Even with the collapse of the wall and for all it stood, that constant remained. There was no questioning it. When they arrived at the bakery, still bloody and bruised and coated in grime and soot down to their pores, they both fell onto Shion's old bed together still wearing their hopelessly soiled clothes. Like Nezumi's bed in the underground room, this bed was small, but not so small it required sleeping as close together as they slept that first night. Shion reached for Nezumi, and Nezumi let him. Shion held him, and Nezumi held him back. They exchanged no words – there weren't words yet, or it was too soon to speak them, the specter of the Correctional Facility still too heavy on their shoulders. Nezumi trembled in Shion's arms, shook like some frail thing caught on the wind. He needed this, whatever "this" was. They both did.

Karan the next day smiled at them from the kitchen and in her smile she seemed to know some secret about them. There was question in her eyes but Shion did not know the answer. He wanted to do things to Nezumi he didn't understand, he wanted to kiss him again, deeper this time, on more than just his mouth. He wanted to run his hands and lips over Nezumi's scars, wanted to wake up every morning for the rest of his life with Nezumi at his side.

He'd long accepted that he loved Nezumi. Shion loved Nezumi like he loved the air – Nezumi was everywhere, everything, a force of nature, the sustaining force who kept him alive.

He loved him. He was not always sure what that meant or how to classify it, but Shion loved him, wholly and unrestrained, and that was all that mattered. He didn't need a name for what he felt because he lived it.

Nezumi served him coffee the morning after. "I'm surprised you haven't showered and used all the hot water yet," Shion teased when Nezumi washed his mug in the sink and the water washing off his hands dripped down brown as coffee for the dirt and dried blood still on his skin.

"I can't get my bandages wet," Nezumi said, matter-of-fact. He took Shion's mug and washed it too as he talked. "Seems I am once again in need of your services, doctor."

"Presumptuous of you," Shion said, but they both knew Shion was incapable of denying him much of anything. "Let me treat your wound."

Nezumi was faced away, but Shion still saw his smile through the rising steam from warm dishwater.

First Shion washed his own hands and arms up to his elbows in the bathroom sink. "You'll need to take your shirt off," he said to Nezumi, who sat on the edge of the bathtub.

"Obviously." Haltingly, he stripped out of his shirt with his uninjured arm, other arm held awkwardly to his chest. He winced when he peeled off the left sleeve. "It's still sore, so be gentle."

Shion unwrapped the bandaging across his bicep, and then across his chest, delicately hand over hand around Nezumi's front and to his back again, and revealed the bullet entry wound below his armpit still large and horrible as when it had been fresh. It would scar, an almost-mirror of the scar further up his left shoulder. Four years later and nothing changed.

"Here, you're picky about it so you should be the one to turn on the water and get the temperature right."

"How well you know me." Nezumi fiddled with the taps, and Shion watched him. And realized – how much smaller Nezumi was without his jacket and his superfibre bunched up around his throat. His shoulders weren't as broad as Shion expected, and the bones of his spine and collar jutted out sharp from his skinny stray cat frame.

Sometimes Shion forgot how young Nezumi was. How young they both were.

The metallic jangle of Nezumi undoing his belt and unzipping the fly of his cargo pants snapped Shion from his thoughts. "What are you doing?"

"In case you've forgotten, Your Royal Airheadedness, I have bandages on my leg, too."

"Oh, that, that's right – hey wait, do you really need to get naked?"

Smirking, Nezumi ignored Shion's stuttered protests and rolled his khakis and underwear down his hips and off his legs to pile on the floor with his shirt. "I might as well take my bath now, too. You always bitch about me using all the hot water, so I'm conserving. Isn't that thoughtful of me?" Shion occupied himself with staring at the ceiling and breathing hard through his nose, fighting down his blush and arousal. "Come on, we lived together for half a year, it's not like you haven't seen me naked before."

In the time they lived together, Shion learned this about him: Nezumi was not ever careless or stupid in his actions. He was cautious, and very deliberate; he was doing this on purpose, and he meant something by it, but Shion couldn't tell what. (Did Nezumi feel the same? Or was he only mocking him?)

"You can get your leg," he mumbled, and forced himself to meet Nezumi's challenge and look at him, naked and beautiful and grinning in triumph. Nezumi unwound the bindings on his right thigh and swung both feet into the half-full tub, then sat down fully in the water.

"Could you wash my hair, too? It's hard to do that one-handed, and this left arm isn't going anywhere without ripping the stitches out."

"For some reason I get the feeling you're taking advantage of my hospitality," Shion griped, but he didn't say no.

Nezumi kept his wounded leg elevated above the water line as the bathtub filled, then gingerly lowered it, hissing, "Fuck, the water's too hot."

"That's your own fault. Besides, you're not supposed to soak stitches anyway. You're better off keeping it out of the water."

"Have some sympathy, you tyrant. I'm clearly in too much pain to think properly."

"You can't be too badly hurt if you're still whining this much," Shion said, and pressed a wet washcloth to the bullet hole on his chest before he could retaliate. But Nezumi clenched his eyes shut and grimaced for more than just theatrics this time, so Shion murmured "Sorry, sorry, I know it hurts, I'll be fast," as he gently rinsed out the wound with warm water, and did the same for the gash on his upper arm.

From there he moved on to the rest of Nezumi's chest, running the washcloth over the dirt that had accumulated at the edges of the bindings. He rubbed over Nezumi's sharp collarbones, too, though he didn't need to, let himself linger longer than needed to just clean. Nezumi didn't seem to mind, though: he relaxed into Shion's touch with a small, almost imperceptible smile.

"Clean your leg, and then I can wash your hair."

Nezumi took the washcloth from him and gave the bullet wound there the same treatment, and made a show of slowly scrubbing the cloth up and down both legs, ankles to knees to hips. Shion watched, entranced, throat dry. Nezumi shaved his legs for his role as Eve, and though he'd fallen behind in the wake of the Manhunt, they still looked soft and smooth. Shion felt the most absurd urge to lick the backs of his calves, kiss his inner knee, rub his face on the inside of his thighs. The sheer want overwhelmed all logic and reason.

"Are you still going to wash my hair, or are you too busy ogling?" Nezumi said dryly. Shion sputtered and whipped his gaze away.

"Shut up. I was just waiting for you to be done."

"Of course you were."

Shion retaliated by pulling Nezumi down into the water by his hair. He yelped in shock but hadn't the time to resist and splashed kerplunk backwards into the tub, water sloshing over the sides and soaking the knees of Shion's pants where he kneeled on the slicked tile.

"You – you ass," Nezumi said as he rose up wraith-like from the deep, dripping and bristling like a wet cat, "Why must you always fight dirty?"

"At least I didn't bite you. This time."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

He considered for a moment. "Both."

"...You can be really scary when you want to, you know that?"

Shion made sure to show all his teeth when he grinned. "I learned from the best."

"Nah. It's not just my influence. You were always a creepy kid."

"Is this about when I gave you stitches the first time? You're still hung up about that?"

"Of course. It was a very memorable face, I think you underestimate that. Heh, I bet you looked just as twisted when you stitched me up this time in - " he cut himself off in realization, suddenly looking guilty. He sank back down into the water and looked away.

"In the Correctional Facility," Shion finished for him, quietly. Nezumi refused to meet his eyes. "I don't think I did, actually. I was mostly busy trying not to panic and not to cry. I was so afraid, Nezumi. I thought I was going to lose you too."

Absently, he ran his fingers through Nezumi's dark hair floating, billowing underwater like ink, or blood. Silence bled between them, interrupted only by the gentle dripping and ripples of water from Shion's wrists.

"...Sorry," Nezumi said. "Sorry, I didn't mean..."

"I know you didn't. It's okay. Now sit up, I need to shampoo your hair."

For once, Nezumi did as he was told without a fight. Shion lathered his hands with shampoo and smoothed it into Nezumi's hair from the ends up to his roots. When he scratched his fingernails into Nezumi's scalp, Nezumi sighed quietly and leaned into his touch. "You're good at this."

"It's not too different from washing dogs."

"Jeeze, you have to ruin every compliment I give you, don't you?"

"Yeah." Shion tugged his hair again – gently this time – and coaxed him backward until the back of his head was submerged. He was slow about rinsing Nezumi's hair, because Nezumi enjoyed the touch and Shion had an excuse, because he wasn't ready to stop touching him yet.

"I was afraid, too."

"Huh?"

"I was afraid. Of losing you," Nezumi admitted with his eyes closed and hair floating around his face a dark halo. "That's why I took that bullet. I didn't even have to think about it, my body moved on its own. I couldn't let you be killed because of me. You have a promise to keep, to Safu, to the city. You promised to kill the old city to save the new one, and ensure it never becomes a monster again. Only you can do that. I couldn't, I hate this place and I always will. I can't build anything new, I can only destroy. If one of us had to die, it had to be me. I don't have any place here."

"How can you say that?" Shion said, all at once very brittle and cold. Grief rose in his chest – he had yet to truly grieve for Safu, Safu – he pushed the feelings back, he swallowed the pain and boxed it up to feel later when the hurt was not so fresh he could taste it still, rotten on his tongue. "Neither of us should have died there, and neither of us did. I thought you wanted to see what No. 6 would become."

"I do. I never said I didn't." He shook his mane of hair briskly underwater and pulled away from Shion's grasping hands. "Never mind that now. I need to get out of the bath, my toes are pruning up."

Conversation decidedly over, he stood up, water cascading down his skin scrubbed clean and pink. He wrapped a towel around his hips, then scowled at the heap of dirty clothes on the wet tile floor. "Can I borrow some clothes?"

Shion's extra pair of slacks fit okay at Nezumi's waist but were too short and left half his shins uncovered – "I'm still taller than you."

"Don't rub it in. No need to be so rude to your gracious host."

He sat Nezumi down on the end of the bed and sat behind him with a leg to either of Nezumi's sides so they were spooned front to back. Shion had taken the first aid kit from under the bathroom sink and arranged what was needed on the bedspread, and Nezumi half-turned to partially face him and give Shion access to the bullet hole that almost killed him. Gently, Shion applied a medicated gauze square onto the entry wound – Nezumi hissed through clenched teeth and his shoulders tensed, Shion saying "Sorry, sorry," – and then began wrapping the bandages to hold the gauze in place, hyperaware of the radiant warmth of Nezumi's skin, the minute movements of tense muscles in his neck and back, the accelerated pace of his heart.

When Shion finished wrapping and fastened the bandages in place, he paused. The graze scar sat atop Nezumi's left shoulder, pale white raised skin in fine lines like railroad tracks along the old lines of the stitches. Shion's first touch on Nezumi's skin left that mark, burned it into him like the ragged spider eating up his lower back. Two of the spider's spindly legs and some of its web of ruined tissue crawled above the fresh bandaging deep red, the same color as Shion's snake scar.

Shion flashed back to the pain of his scar when it was first branded onto his skin, and when he thought of Nezumi, four years old and very small with the pain of the Massacre forever branded on his back, pain lanced through his heart and Shion closed both arms around Nezumi's shoulders to his chest and leaned into him, held him. He nestled the side of his face into the crux of Nezumi's neck and kissed the graze scar on impulse.

Nezumi did not pull away. He sighed, low and slow and shaking, and leaned back into the security of Shion's hold. "You're really weird. A real natural. It's a miracle you've managed to survive this long."

"Yeah, I know."

Nezumi's heartbeat evened out until it matched Shion's own thudding against his back. The irregularity of the burn scars stood out on his otherwise smooth skin; Shion felt the raised tissue against his chest through the fabric of his shirt. The bullet entry wound was less than a hand's length away from Nezumi's heart – Shion had been so close to losing him. But Nezumi was warm and breathing and alive, and Shion said, "Thank you for being strong. Thank you for surviving, and meeting me."

Nezumi was alive. Nezumi was alive, and Shion was alive, and Safu was not, and Shion would have all the rest of his life to feel that awful, gaping emptiness and loss – for now, Shion held Nezumi, and held him close.

Nezumi said nothing, but he did not push Shion away, and that was enough.

. . .

The next time Shion replaced Nezumi's bandages, he held him close again. He kissed the stitched scar on Nezumi's shoulder that first stitched them together and when he dragged his tongue along the seam, Nezumi gasped and called his name, "Shion."

"Your voice is so beautiful," Shion whispered hot against the shell of Nezumi's ear. "Let me hear you, Nezumi."

Shion closed his lips onto the side of Nezumi's neck, teeth pressed lightly into his skin, tongue pressed against his shuddering pulse point. Nezumi tilted his head farther back to allow Shion better access and moaned loud enough the vibrations reverberated inside Shion's mouth. "Shionnnn..." He swallowed heavily, hands clamped over Shion's rested snug on Nezumi's hips. His fingers clenched with each lick, little half-moon marks from his dull fingernails clawed into Shion's wrists.

"I want to touch you more...may I, Nezumi?" Slowly, Shion slid his palms up Nezumi's bare un-bandaged torso, over each indent of his abdominal muscles on his flat stomach, over each visible rib and the shallow dips between them. Nezumi moaned again, encouraging, when Shion skittered nervous fingertips across his upper chest. He gripped Shion's wrists tighter.

Please, Shion," Nezumi begged, and there was no stronger aphrodisiac in the world. Shion kissed where his jawbone arced below his ear and just that made Nezumi whine and writhe. Nezumi's voice rose in pitch when he was aroused, his breathing shallowed and quickened with his heart, he trembled and shook up the bowed length of his spine. He surrendered control like Shion had never seen him do before – all for him, all because of Shion's hands and mouth on him. "You fucking tease," Nezumi hissed as he shifted up into Shion's lap. "Quit fooling around."

"You like it." Shion scraped his teeth down Nezumi's neck to the juncture of his shoulder and bit down. He slid his hands down the smooth skin and hard muscle of Nezumi's sides and stopped at his hipbones to grip tight, tight as Nezumi's white-knuckled grip where his hands still rode on Shion's wrists.

He was so warm. Everywhere their skin touched burned and melted away, fusing them together. There were too many clothes between them, Shion dressed completely in a long-sleeve button-up and slacks and Nezumi only in his underwear but still not naked enough. He could probably slough all his skin off, shed muscles and everything else down to bare bone and he would not be naked enough for this, for how close Shion wanted him, how much he wanted to touch him, he wanted Nezumi wearing nothing but his soul and he wanted to touch and claim all of him. Shion wanted with a greed, a hunger he'd not known possible. Nezumi was so beautiful.

"Shion, fuck – move – your fucking – hands," Nezumi said between quick, desperate breaths stuttered like machinegun fire. He tugged on Shion's wrists until Shion relented and moved with him, and Nezumi moved both hands to the front of his boxers. He was even warmer, there, and –

Abruptly, Shion woke up, disoriented and still unbearably turned on. Nezumi lay on his side asleep on the bed beside him, his back pressed flush against Shion's front. Shion was still hard.

Oh no, oh no oh no oh no. Nezumi in his dream had been warm but nothing like this, his body heat seeped through his thin sleep clothes and kissed Shion's skin already painted hot red from shame and arousal. Shion wanted – wanted to pin Nezumi beneath him, wanted -

But Nezumi was asleep and unaware and Shion wrenched himself away, trembling. In his dream, Nezumi wanted him. In his dream, Nezumi grinded back into his lap and moaned from the feel of him. He flinched at the memory – how he wanted –

This Nezumi, the real Nezumi, was not a dream, had not given consent, and Shion would rather die than hurt him, especially like this. I'm terrible, he thought, gritting his teeth. How selfish to use Nezumi like that.

How selfish that I still want to use him.

From the darkness, low and growling and horrible, Nezumi spoke: "Enjoying yourself?"

Shion's stomach dropped to his knees.

"I'm sorry," he blurted, all too loud, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to, I was dreaming and I didn't realize and I'm so sorry - " Guilt choked him and he trailed off into a cringe at his useless, stupid words. Please don't be hurt. Please don't hate me.

"Hey," Nezumi said softly. The covers rustled as he shifted and rolled over to face Shion in the dark. "Don't worry about it. Happens to everyone." He smiled. He was – soft, sincere. Sentimental like he never showed when the sun was up.

"You were sleeping," Shion said, wretchedly. "You were sleeping, and I still..."

"You were sleeping too, right? I know you wouldn't mess with me while I was sleeping on purpose. You're not like that." The overwhelming fondness in Nezumi's expression hurt to look at, but Shion could not look away. "And besides, it's my fault, right? Sleeping so close to you, and you are a guy, after all. Can't be helped." His eyes flicked down to where Shion was still shamefully, painfully hard, and said, "Want some help?"

Shion closed his eyes to escape the intensity of Nezumi's stare. "You don't have to do that."

"I know I don't have to. Maybe I want to."

His eyes shot open again as Shion gaped. He said nothing, deer-in-the-headlights dumbstruck into silence. I'm still dreaming, he thought. Nezumi was silent, still watching, solemn and hesitant. "Okay," Shion said.

Nezumi reached out. He was slow, cautious, tentative. He moved like he was underwater, on the riverbed with the smooth and colorful stones where it was peaceful and safe. Shion did not mind sharing this dream with him, just the two of them together at the bottom of the river. [2]

Nezumi brushed his fingertips against Shion's inner thigh in question, then he slid his hand up farther to run along the waistband of Shion's pajama pants. Then he reached inside them.

Moonlight filtered through the shuttered blinds in thin slats of light across Nezumi's face. In the dark his eyes were thin outlines of grey moons in full eclipse by wide, mesmerized pupils, sparkling and wet, vulnerable. He licked his lips and those were also wet, and pink even in the grayscale of night, his face flushed, his breathing heavy.

And it was no different from what Shion did to himself in the shower – but this was different, Shion gasped and curled his whole body into the sensation in a trembling crescent moon, this was Nezumi touching him with his slender fingers and he touched with purpose and skill. Fantasies had nothing on the reality of Nezumi's warm, elegant hand, Nezumi's stilted breathing and hot breaths puffed across his face intermingled with his own soft sounds and "That's it, Shion, you're so good like this, so - "

All at once, Shion tensed, every nerve relayed pleasure in rolling waves, like water, like an ocean. The tide rushed in and overwhelmed him and with a tremulous moan Shion came in rough jerking thrusts into Nezumi's hand.

His vision cut out from the force of orgasm, and when he could see again he saw Nezumi watching him raptly with nothing short of wonder. "That was really something," he said, hoarse. His lower lip was red and swollen where his front teeth had bitten down and chewed.

Body still buzzing from afterglow, Shion said, "Let me do the same for you." He fluttered with nervous butterflies from his bold words, but he wanted – wanted Nezumi to feel everything he felt, the incredible tingling warmth and airy weightlessness and trembling aftershocks of pleasure. He wanted to do that to him, draw it out of Nezumi with his own body like he had in his dream, like Nezumi had so effortlessly done for him.

"You don't need to do that."

"I want to."

Nezumi flushed further and flicked his gaze away. "You don't understand. I mean, you really don't need to."

Shion almost protested but then understanding dawned. "You came...just from that? From watching?"

"Shut up." The tips of Nezumi's nose and ears bloomed bright red. "It was sexy. You were sexy."

And Shion realized he'd never thought of Nezumi as a sexual creature. He'd thought of him sexually, through dreams, guilty fantasies fueled by the rare times Nezumi wasn't secretive or quiet enough about jacking off, but previously he'd never wondered what Nezumi thought about when he touched himself, who and what he found attractive. He had difficulty thinking of Nezumi being sexual with anyone, he never let anyone touch him and he avoided other people.

But Nezumi could kiss a prostitute into blushing and bring Shion easily to orgasm with a few lazy strokes of his hand. His experience and skills came from somewhere, but suddenly Shion knew he did not want to know, not yet, he did not want to pull that darkness into the room that smelled like Nezumi and sex, did not want the pain in Nezumi's past to settle between them in the safe embrace of their shared bed. Selfishly, he craved ignorance. He wasn't ready to know what he already on some level knew, wasn't ready to hear Nezumi speak it aloud and give it shape and form. Not that night. Not yet. Think about instead –

Nezumi found him attractive, though. Fresh heat washed over Shion as he realized Nezumi might think about him while masturbating, that before Shion woke up Nezumi listened to his pillow-muffled moans and and he did not move away, he remained aligned to Shion, biting his lip, breathing hard, bearing it. Enjoying it, maybe.

His thoughts were much more sophisticated. What he said was, "You think I'm sexy?"

Nezumi huffed a sigh and rolled over to face away, the line of his shoulders tense. "Go back to sleep, Shion." The moment was over - his spikes were out again.

Shion shuffled closer to Nezumi's back until close enough he felt the heat radiating off him. (Living people are warm, right, Nezumi?) Carefully, he reached one arm over the low dip of Nezumi's waist and let it rest there. He moved the flat of his palm up to Nezumi's chest and laid it over his heart.

After a time, Nezumi's hand joined his and he laced their fingers together. Shion slept soundly the rest of the night.

. . .

In the morning, Nezumi said nothing of what happened in the dark the night before. Maybe it had all been a dream, but it was vivid enough to give Shion pause. The memory of Nezumi's hand on him burned strong, and when Nezumi woke first (as always) he ran a hasty load of laundry including his sleep clothes and refused a straight answer as to why he was using the washing machine at seven in the morning. Whatever happened, Nezumi was not ready to talk about it, so Shion did not push him. Nezumi would reach his own decisions in his own time.

Something changed between them. Something shifted with the changing of the seasons, on the precipice of spring, on the cusp of sunlight and the returning green in the trees. Nezumi grew warmer with the warming air, he aligned himself to the changing axis of the sun in the sky. He smiled more. He came back to life with the early chorus of birdsong, like he was suddenly awake after a long winter. [2]

Spring is a time of inbetweens and spring was the precipice of what they were and what they were to become. Maybe, with the wall gone, the wall between them would fall as well. Maybe Nezumi would let Shion kiss him – not goodbye, this time, but hello, or good morning, or an honest goodnight. Maybe Nezumi would kiss him in return. Maybe they would kiss for no reason other than to kiss, because they wanted to kiss, because it felt right and tasted sweet and their bodies fit together like two halves of a whole.

Sometimes Nezumi held Shion's hand under the table, or knocked their ankles together. Sometimes he'd run his hand through Shion's hair for no reason and with no explanation. Some mornings Shion would wake up with Nezumi nestled close against his side with his arms around him, smiling in his sleep.

This was right. This was how it should be. Shion believed that with every fiber of his soul and body. Whatever this metamorphosis created of them, that would remain true: they belonged together like springtime and rain, like sunlight and new leaves. They made each other happy.

This is where my heart is.

Nezumi stole his heart, and it would be okay if he never returned it. Even if nothing else came of this – even if they remained on this ledge forever, so close to becoming something more but never taking that final step – this, whatever was between them, was worthwhile.

So Shion did not rush him. This was enough, having Nezumi in his life and by his side, seeing Nezumi's smile and feeling the warmth of his body. That was all he wanted.

Even if the winter never ended. Even if true spring never came. Let this transition last forever. Because for all Nezumi slept closer to Shion, he watched the horizon, too, the distance in his eyes an ominous storm.

Some nights Shion woke up and Nezumi wasn't there. One night, he didn't return.

Nezumi's side of the bed was still warm from residual body heat – he had not been gone long. The window was open.

With spring still oncoming in the final stretch between winter and warmth, cold air chilled the bedroom from the draft through the open window. Shion wrapped his blanket around his shoulders like a cloak and stood up out of bed, cringing when his bare feet hit the cold wood floor. "Nezumi?" he asked.

"I'm here."

Shion peeked his head out the window but saw no one on the patio. "Where?"

"Up here, Your Grace."

Shion looked up: Nezumi's long legs dangled above Shion's head, toes almost touching Shion's hair. "Sitting on the roof? Really? There is a patio, you know."

"Patios are boring."

Shion rolled his eyes and sighed, but he was smiling. "You call me the weird one." Nezumi shifted, and peered down at him with his trademark smirk, a little lopsided, a little wry.

He reached down. "Want a hand up?"

The wind outside was strong and sharp with cold, and Shion clasped Nezumi's hand surely in his own without hesitation. He held on for balance as he clambered out of the window and onto the narrow ledge of the sill, then Nezumi hauled him up onto the flat roof to sit next to him on the edge, their sides lined up comfortably and touching from their ankles up to their shoulders. "I brought a blanket," Shion said and unwrapped it from himself enough to cocoon Nezumi in it too.

Nezumi mumbled a thanks and curled the edge of the blanket fully around his back and over to seal in the front with Shion's loose end. Under the blanket their hands brushed together by chance, and held.

The wind kept the night sky clear of clouds. The moon already set, the stars glittered unhindered from the dark river of space like polished stones underwater. "It's a good night for this."

"It'd be nicer if it weren't so cold and windy."

"The wind is why we can see so many stars, though. And I'm not cold if I'm with you."

Shion glanced to his side to watch Nezumi watching the stars; even in the dark his eyes burned with radiant light, first-magnitude stars. His lips moved soundlessly: living people are warm.

Shion tried his luck. "When I woke up and you were gone, I thought you left."

Nezumi didn't look at him, gave no inclination he heard Shion's confession. Enough time passed Shion thought he would never respond, but then he said "I wouldn't do that to you. I wouldn't leave without saying goodbye. And I wouldn't lie about it, either. I'm not like you."

His words were cruel but not unwarranted, and Shion flinched at the memory. And marveled that, all these months later, Nezumi still hurt from that betrayal; the thorns in his words tore up his own throat and voice to a pained rasp. He held that much power over Nezumi's heart, and it terrified him: they both knew too well from the fall of No. 6 that power corrupts.

I never want to hurt you again.

"Do you know much astronomy?" Nezumi suddenly asked. A distraction to avoid any talk of emotions, clumsy and obvious so unlike his usual unreadable mask, but Shion let it pass, let Nezumi pretend he didn't care. Nezumi kept his line of sight heavenward and Shion saw reflected in his eyes the silver starlight, his soul shining out through the molten grey ripped open and vulnerable and exposed to all the universe, his soul and body and all his components born of stardust.

"It wasn't my focus, but I learned some things about it when I was about to go into the Advanced Track. There's connections to ecology in that everything in the universe is composed of the same matter, and all living creatures on earth have all the same base elements as stars, hydrogen and oxygen and - "

"Yeah, I know all that," Nezumi cut him off dismissively. "I didn't ask you for an entire lecture."

"What were you asking for, then?"

"I was just curious whether you did or not, but I should know better by now than to expect a simple yes or no answer from you. Besides, I was more thinking about constellations."

"Oh. No, not really, maybe a little from mythology references in some of your books, but not a lot. Do you?"

"Some. More than you, at least. I had a book of old star charts somewhere in the underground room. I was just thinking about it and wishing I had it with me now."

He seemed on the brink of something – about to tell a story, offer an explanation – so Shion waited for him to speak, but he did not.

I want you to teach me about the stars, Shion thought desperately, give me an entire lecture about the stories written there. Tell me about Cassiopeia and Polaris, the star who wanders and the star who stands still.

I want you to talk to me.

"Why did you come up here, Nezumi?"

"Couldn't sleep. Figured this was a better way to spend the time than lying awake in the dark for hours, staring at the stunning view of the back of your head."

"I supposed this is more interesting," Shion said, tried to keep his tone light to match the false ease of Nezumi's voice, but he couldn't keep his worry from leaking through. Nezumi finally spared him a questioning sidelong glance, so he said, "You had another nightmare, didn't you."

Nezumi looked to the sky, his silence answer enough.

"They're getting worse. Mine are, too. You don't need to hide it."

"I'm not hiding anything."

Liar. When Nezumi woke up from a nightmare, he would push Shion away, pretend he was still asleep. He was quiet but his breathing was wrong, sharp and pained. Sometimes he cried in his sleep and grimaced at the dried tears still streaked down his cheeks come morning.

Before the Correctional Facility when they'd lived together in the West Block, Nezumi's nightmares never made him cry, at least not that Shion saw. He didn't thrash as violently or tremble as much, and he was rarely loud and restless enough to wake Shion up, instead of now waking him almost every night.

His control was slipping. Some dam in his heart finally collapsed under the weight of the hurt he carried. And Shion shared some of that hurt now, they had traveled to hell together and made it back alive. They shared the same nightmares now - so let me help you, Nezumi. Let me carry it like I carried you. You don't need to suffer this alone.

"In my dreams, you die," Shion said, and it hurt to say as the memory hurt like knives under his tongue. "We're back in the Correctional Facility when it's burning down around us, in the hall where you took a bullet for me, or the infirmary where I pulled it out of you, and you – you don't stop bleeding, you die in my arms, again and again every night. We escaped, we survived, but part of me is still trapped there. We burned that hellhole down together, but in my dreams, it's still standing, and I still lose you."

(Let this not be prophecy. I don't want to suffer alone too.)

Their hands still entwined, Nezumi lifted Shion's up and towards himself and delicately laid the flat of Shion's palm over his heart. He did not look at Shion, but he said, "I'm alive, and I'm here." His sleep shirt was warm from contact with his skin, like the empty bedspread retained the warmth of him after he'd left. Nezumi's heartbeat fluttered as bird's wings beat in a panic, wild birds trapped in his skeletal cage.

You're warm and alive, but are you really here, Nezumi? Or are you already far away, somewhere I can't follow?

We're closer than we've ever been, but still so far apart.

This is what it means to fall in love with something feral: they will claw at you and fight against your hold with all the terror and ferocity of a drowning swimmer fighting against the waves, they will bite deep into the bones of your hand when you set the bones of their broken wings in a splint; and when you have come to love them for all their beauty and selfish, careless cruelty, and when they have learned that your presence brings warmth and food and a kind of comfort, when their wounds are healed and you pull their bandaging away, they will shake out their feathers and outstretch their mended wings and fly away without a single glance back. And you will be left with the scars and the memories and the emptiness of the loss, and you will wait every spring for their return, for just one last glance, one last embrace.

Kiss him, Shion thought, steal his soul through his mouth the way he captured yours in the grey of his eyes. But Nezumi still looked at the sky, and not at him, so he did not.

"In my dreams, you kill me."

"What?"

"Exactly like I said." Nezumi pulled Shion's hand away from his heart and shifted uncomfortably on his perch. "My nightmares are all about you. You stroke your fingers down my neck and then you grab on and squeeze until it snaps. You hold a hand over my nose and mouth so I can't breathe and hold me down and suffocate me. You cut me open with a scalpel and rip all my guts out."

He spoke so nonchalant, unconcerned, like a mild comment on the weather, like such horror was inevitable. This was the inside of Nezumi's head. This was the form his demons took: red eyes and white hair, a man-eating serpent that swallowed him whole.

Shion felt sick. "I would never - "

"Don't sound so offended, I know you wouldn't," he snapped irritably, and let go of Shion's hand altogether. "But...that doesn't stop me from dreaming about it. Part of me is...afraid." He slumped, wilted into himself. His end of the blanket slipped off his shame-bowed shoulders.

Nezumi was so strong that Shion forgot, sometimes, the fragility of his heart, the animal fear there. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's not actually your fault. You've done nothing wrong."

"I must have done something wrong, if your dreams are like this - "

"I said it's not your fault!" Finally, Nezumi looked at him, his eyes wild and dangerous and flashing like a thunderstorm. Good – let him be angry, let him be Nezumi, Shion loved him all, even the knife's edge of his talons. "I didn't tell you to make you feel guilty. Cut it out."

"Why did you tell me, then?" He reached for Nezumi's hand again to tether him down. Nezumi's fingers skittered nervously across the rooftop, but did not pull away.

Nezumi faced away again and did not answer. And Shion saw beneath the starlight Nezumi's profile turned away in silhouette, the ragged edges of his superfibre trailed behind him tattered wings in the breeze, an omen.

You're like the swallow.

The swallow always meant to leave. He stayed the winter over, for his Prince's sake, and died of the cold. The swallow was in love and he died for love, for his Prince and for their shared loneliness. [3]

You're the opposite, though. It's the springtime you fear, the blossoming of whatever it is between us. The sun's warmth will melt the ice that guards your fragile heart.

You're a lost bird of paradise blown into my life by a storm, by chance or by fate, I still don't know. But somehow you survived the winter here.

I don't want you to die. But I don't want you to leave, either.

(Was it selfish of him? Maybe, but love is selfish, as much as it is unconditional. Shion loved and Shion wanted.)

He roughly pulled Nezumi's hand to his own heart. This is yours, he thought helplessly, this is yours, so talk to me. "Nezumi, why?"

Why won't you talk to me? Why are you afraid?

What are you afraid of?

Shion held tight to Nezumi, their fingers laced intimately together, but Nezumi slips through his hands like water. "You already know, don't you? I can't stay."

Shion breathed, slowly in and out, he breathed, and he breathed, and he breathed, and he breathed to ensure he was still breathing, still alive as his world crumbled and his sky fell around him. "Stay," he choked out, "I want you to stay. I want to be by your side. That's all I want." He shuddered like some frail thing caught on the wind and fell into Nezumi, tucked his face into the side of Nezumi's neck and gasped in cold breaths of the scent of his hair and skin, held their linked hands close to the vulnerable hollow where his heart beat and curled tight against Nezumi as if he held on tight enough their bodies would melt together, and Nezumi would not leave.

"I know. I know you do." Like a tender goodbye, Nezumi held him, threaded his other hand through the spun silk of Shion's hair. He bowed his head and kissed his Prince's crown.

Stay, Shion thought. Stay.

But words cannot halt the changing of the seasons, and Nezumi was a force of nature like any other.

Nezumi unfurled his wings.

. . .

When he left, Nezumi kissed Shion the way Shion had always wanted to be kissed by him. Tender, passionate, and fierce: Nezumi's tongue in his mouth, their lips sliding together wet and hot and smooth; Nezumi's hand cupping his chin, then his cheek, then clawing at his hair, other arm coiled low and snakelike around his waist as close against him as a scar. Nezumi gripped him so close their bones knocked together and ached from the harsh contact. He was warm, everywhere they touched was warm and they were touching everywhere, Nezumi's white-knuckled grip on a hipbone, the sharp edge of his teeth nipping at Shion's lips, their legs interlocking and fronts aligned chest to chest. Shion cried, his tears wet on their faces and between their wet lips, Nezumi breathing heavily like he was trying to breathe him in with his stilted, desperate gasps and swallowed words of remorse. Nezumi tasted like leaving, and he was gone before he pulled away.

Reunion will come.

Nezumi swore to him it was a kiss to seal a vow, a promise to reunite.

So why did it feel so much like goodbye?

When Nezumi left, he did not look back. Was it callousness, or cowardice? Would he have lost the will to leave had he looked back at all he was leaving, and the tears in Shion's eyes? Shion did not know. The north star of his moral compass was gone and he did not know what he believed.

The first time he returned, alone, to their underground room, Shion sifted through the stacks of books until he found the book of constellations Nezumi had spoken of. He carried it with him back to the bakery and that night he tucked the book under his arm and climbed out the window to the roof by himself.

Shion sat alone in the cold and dark reading by moonlight until his fingers were too numb from windchill to turn the pages of the book. He opened his eyes to all the universe until his eyes burned and tried to take it all in, every distant pinprick of burning light, tried to understand just this small stretch of sky stretched out above him and the once-demon city it was his task to tame. On the edge of the night, slowly rising to the ceiling of the world, he found Lyra.

Orpheus looked back, and lost everything. Nezumi twice traveled to hell and back and made it back alive: maybe he took his cue from there.

And so Shion waited, and he waited, and he waited until he was certain that waiting would kill him. He woke up every morning with his arms and legs splayed across to the other side of the bed seeking warmth no longer there, he fell asleep each night to the choking quiet of a single heart beating where once there were two. He drowned himself in his work, and that was how it felt: drowning, drowning at the bottom of the river between Vega and Altair, dragged down below the surface by the nightmares in the river's depths.

Shion waited. Some days he hurt too much to think about Nezumi. Some days he hurt too much to think about anything else. When Nezumi left he took a part of Shion with him, he ripped it away from him down along his seams and left him unraveled and torn apart. Nezumi had been right: attachments were dangerous. Being attached meant partings tore you in two. They were attached as one, and they parted, but the cut wasn't clean, the tear frayed at the edges and ripped away uneven and ragged with pieces missing and pieces left behind. Nezumi stole a part of Shion and took it with him; had Shion been left with any of Nezumi at all in return?

If Shion still had any claim over Nezumi's heart, he couldn't feel it. He felt like he had nothing left of him. Shion moved all of Nezumi's books into his residence in No. 6 to keep them safe, but the sight and smell of them only served as reminders of Nezumi's absence. Shion reread books obsessively, then less and less, and then not at all.

I was in love with you, he admitted to the underground room the last time he visited, cleared of books, bereft of life. Dark and cold as the river. I still am. I'm in love with you. You can laugh at me, insult my vocabulary, but it's the truth.

This hurts too much for it to be anything else.

He was prepared for Nezumi to hurt him. Hurt was inevitable when you fell in love with something feral. Sometimes Nezumi didn't know how not to hurt him, hurt was so much of how Nezumi interpreted the world, and Shion was okay with that. But Nezumi leaving was a different brand of hurt – the hurt of missing limbs, phantom pains. The hurt of absence, emptiness, the dull ache of being alone.

I miss you like I'd miss an amputated limb, a lost tooth, a faded scar. I miss you because once, you were a part of me, and you're not anymore, but you still are, if only through your absence.

He'd rather take a knife to the throat.

A year passed, then two, then three. Shion clung to hope and longing like a lifeboat. He refused to believe Nezumi would leave him, adrift and alone, after everything: they were not strangers. They never were strangers. Nezumi would return. Nezumi kept his promises.

Time passed. Everything changed. Shion did not forget. He remembered, and memory weighed him down as iron manacles on his wrists, cement blocks on his feet. This was why Nezumi had wanted to remain unattached: this was torture.

His 20th birthday, eight years to the day from their first meeting, Shion stayed awake all night by his open bedroom window to close the circle. But it didn't rain, and Nezumi wasn't there, it was a clear warm night, and Shion called in sick to work the following day.

Shion closed the window.

Four years passed. Shion mourned for Nezumi as if he were dead, and he may as well be – alive or not, he was out of Shion's life, existing only in memories. (And still his memories did not fade, they burned still bright and strong, and it was both a comfort and a curse.)

He never fell out of love. The hurt ebbed and flowed, but the love remained as strong as ever, a beacon, and Shion resigned himself to spending the rest of his life in love with Nezumi, even if they never again crossed paths. He slept around, he dated, but all of it was loveless, and sometimes he wondered if he was even capable of loving anyone else. Maybe he would learn how, in time, just as he learned how to live without Nezumi by his side (a half-life, living with a missing lung, half a heart, but he's alive, he's still breathing.)

The fifth spring after Nezumi left him alone on a hill at the mercy of the wind and sun, Shion came to terms with the fact that Nezumi was not coming back. Shion never doubted that he'd meant to, but Nezumi – for all his charm and cunning and mystery – was only human. He was imperfect. He ran away, and maybe Shion hated him a little for that.

Did you ever love me, Nezumi? I think you did. I think you fell in love, and that scared you, so you ran. And I'm trying to forgive you but I don't know if I ever will. I was in love with you. I still am. And when you left, you hurt me more than I've ever been hurt, and probably more than anyone will ever hurt me again. I love you. I'll always, always love you.

But I need to move on with my life.

. . .

Four days after Shion's 22nd birthday, someone knocked at his window.

. . .

.

endnotes: end chapter 2 of 5, ~9000 words. Next chapter is a long one – all this is setting the stage for rocky reunion. Nezumi kind of fucked it up big time with how long he stayed away, but more about that next chapter. Both Shion and Nezumi's motives will be explained more later, I promise! There's rhyme and reason behind Nezumi being especially stupid and Shion growing disillusioned, so please don't give up on me for ending this chapter so cruelly!

[1] In reference to Shion's dream in the second chapter of No. 6 Beyond

[2] "suddenly awake after a long winter" lifted from the alt text of a softer world comic #661, apologies to e horne and j comeau

[3] From The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde. There's a reason this story is specifically mentioned in the canon – Nezumi and Shion are in many ways a direct homage