[ It isn’t a difficult climb. Little is, these days.
His hands find holds, his feet certain where they rest. The path gives itself to him, the topography of stone like the topography of home – it weaves, as those once long paths wove down to the sand, the salt, the ocean. Back then, they’d tethered themselves to each other. Back then, Ryo had placed his hand in his countless times, directing Akira this way and that. More to the left, he’d tell him above the sweep of the ocean. Do you feel that one?
He remembers the occasional topples, the collapsed heap of too long limbs. He remembers that Akira would still follow despite it all, but it had been only them. It’d had been only the long, humid hours on slow, summer evenings – school shirts quick to fold over the crest of their broadening shoulders, baring still pale flesh beneath. It’d been so long now since he’d seen that narrow alcove, had swum the warmer currents with Akira beside him. It’d been even longer since the scent of the sea would impart itself warm and damp against their sun-flushed skin, brush Akira somehow even more gentle, vivid.
But, Akira had always been that way: clear and sharp, a means of focusing all that Ryo no longer could touch. He was delineated, brilliant against the inconsistency of the human heart. He’d always been more than Ryo ever could permit, the shape of his vulnerabilities like the shape of his name on his tongue, the fall of his footsteps neat into his own. For all that Ryo guides, Ryo too follows. And follow he does.
He’d follow him anywhere, just as certainly as Akira does.
Against the sun, Akira’s wings are like the sleeping red of eyelids, the soft web between fingers and toes. He could trace all that blooms bright and vital beneath the leather of them, but there is nothing that comes, but this:
Ryo’s hand settles about a claw that reaches for him, his hand dwarfed by the enormity of what he is. What this body is. Akira, at the end of it all, is still the one he chose. He is still the one who wrests control from the demon that coils beneath the skin, present in the blood that dries upon the fur that brushes against him as Ryo allows himself to be pulled up.
He isn’t frightened. Of Akira, he never was.
His pulse hums. ]
There you are, [ he says, more breath than not. It isn’t for exertion, but rather the relief that feathers from him, that folds about the lines of his body like a flare. The rest can come later, once his cursory inspect confirms that Akira is together, whole. His eyes travel, without thinking. They touch upon the gore, assess and dismiss it as not Akira’s own in quick measure. His hand keeps hold of his claw, almost as if he’s forgotten.
And still, his lips tip up. ] You’ve kept yourself busy.
[ He tips his head up, eyes bright, the corners crinkling just enough to be perceptible. It’s more than he’d hoped for. It’s more than enough. ]
no subject
His hands find holds, his feet certain where they rest. The path gives itself to him, the topography of stone like the topography of home – it weaves, as those once long paths wove down to the sand, the salt, the ocean. Back then, they’d tethered themselves to each other. Back then, Ryo had placed his hand in his countless times, directing Akira this way and that. More to the left, he’d tell him above the sweep of the ocean. Do you feel that one?
He remembers the occasional topples, the collapsed heap of too long limbs. He remembers that Akira would still follow despite it all, but it had been only them. It’d had been only the long, humid hours on slow, summer evenings – school shirts quick to fold over the crest of their broadening shoulders, baring still pale flesh beneath. It’d been so long now since he’d seen that narrow alcove, had swum the warmer currents with Akira beside him. It’d been even longer since the scent of the sea would impart itself warm and damp against their sun-flushed skin, brush Akira somehow even more gentle, vivid.
But, Akira had always been that way: clear and sharp, a means of focusing all that Ryo no longer could touch. He was delineated, brilliant against the inconsistency of the human heart. He’d always been more than Ryo ever could permit, the shape of his vulnerabilities like the shape of his name on his tongue, the fall of his footsteps neat into his own. For all that Ryo guides, Ryo too follows. And follow he does.
He’d follow him anywhere, just as certainly as Akira does.
Against the sun, Akira’s wings are like the sleeping red of eyelids, the soft web between fingers and toes. He could trace all that blooms bright and vital beneath the leather of them, but there is nothing that comes, but this:
Ryo’s hand settles about a claw that reaches for him, his hand dwarfed by the enormity of what he is. What this body is. Akira, at the end of it all, is still the one he chose. He is still the one who wrests control from the demon that coils beneath the skin, present in the blood that dries upon the fur that brushes against him as Ryo allows himself to be pulled up.
He isn’t frightened. Of Akira, he never was.
His pulse hums. ]
There you are, [ he says, more breath than not. It isn’t for exertion, but rather the relief that feathers from him, that folds about the lines of his body like a flare. The rest can come later, once his cursory inspect confirms that Akira is together, whole. His eyes travel, without thinking. They touch upon the gore, assess and dismiss it as not Akira’s own in quick measure. His hand keeps hold of his claw, almost as if he’s forgotten.
And still, his lips tip up. ] You’ve kept yourself busy.
[ He tips his head up, eyes bright, the corners crinkling just enough to be perceptible. It’s more than he’d hoped for. It’s more than enough. ]