Thereâs something poetic about screaming before you die. In under-exertion, like a deer caught in the headlights, you fail to get away from your captor, but you cover yourself up nonetheless in useless armor of your own forearms, turning your head away in fear. You think itâll do something, but in the heat of the moment (or maybe your blood vessels, the hair on your arm standing on its ends) you donât think itâll do anything but.
Thereâs probably a policy for how that works. Science. Logic. The iron will of a hand flayed out, all the while the person doing so furrows their brows, the corners of their open mouth wrinkling against their cheek in a crude gesture of dominance. Shame on me for depicting that as something wrong, because Iâm doing it right now, right? Subtle, but not subtle at the same time. The gesture of raising your arm, up-up-up into the sky, and lowering your hands clasped together a knife wrapped around it down-down-down into your victim, all the while they yell for their lives, something utterly futile; but poetic too. One of mankindâs elegies in their final death throes, expressing it in the way they know best. Conversing, saying something - opening their mouth, wide, before it closes, and so do your eyes, and your legs altogether, collapsing onto the ground.
⌠Ha.
Has winter ever been this cold?
Tsugino stared down at the corpse beneath him, his back unable to hitch its owner up by the feet anymore now hunched against a garbage bag. He stared at him â it, or him? His face, so previously full of life the day before at school, chatting with a bunch of his classmates which surrounded him; eyes beady brown, glimmering in the specks of dust splattering from against the classroom window⌠now marble-like. His face was never this dark before, his bangs casting a shadow downwards his eyelids and into his cheeks. It was never this cold before, either.
With his right palm touching the corpseâs cheek, he blew an exhale into it a moment after. There was no use caring for a NO. If they didnât love him, whoâs to say he had to care for their wellbeing in dingy alleyways either?
Nobody.
Nobody at all.
_
⌠Though, now, he had somebody by his side.
Wasn't that enough for him? He didn't know at all.
Bleak days of cooking, walking to preparatory school, sauntering back home so as to review his notes, all the while met with a familiar face that greeted him each day â red bangs which curled into a small face, and into sharp eyes the same hue as his hair bounced each time Maeno tilted his head to the side, squinting due to his smiling widely â saying âOh, Tsugino, you've finished cooking dinner?!â only to scrunch itself up in disgust, realizing he had mixed vegetables in it . . . this was fine, after all. Tsugino had grown accustomed to it. In fact, he delighted in such normality, knowing that for once, he was content with this life. He smiled at the sky, and it smiled back at him.
If only it had just stayed the same forever.
For some reason, Tsugino couldn't help but turn his head away from Maeno, not in contempt, but neutrality, because he realized something was off with the way he viewed his roommate (friend, former doctor, former handcuffed-by-the-wrist-partner) and he didn't know how to deal with it. He'd had felt these feelings before, but now that he was more, admittedly, mentally stable, the influx of emotions came through into his brain, overriding its insides completely. He didn't know what to do in order to handle these emotions, because he knew what they were; he just didn't want to say them out loud.
He knew what it was. It was just at the tip of his tongue, rolling off of his mouth, swirling into his ears and back into his brain, mindâs eye trembling at the thought of it. He knew it was. Each thought he had about Doc intensified by the second, each tick of the clock creaking in a momentary steadying of itself before spinning in circles.
His own cheek in his own palm. A pursing of his lips. His elbow holding his face propped onto his studying desk. His eyes inclined to the wooden surface, for it had naught else to focus onto for the time being. Maeno grinning, his teeth crooked into the shape of a feline cat shining through his open mouth. His eyes closed, fluttered, eyelashes barely visible when opened were his eyelids now visible, specks of what seemed to be dust sprinkled about. His red hair, messy, strands coiling themselves back into his scalp because he barely brushed his hair, if ever, even though the braid which dangled through his right bang was neatly kept, moving, turning once he looked at the camera (Tsuginoâs imagination)
Snap. Maenoâs eyes. They angled upwards, the upper eyelid curving into an arc ever-so-slightly. His pupils were smaller than the average person, the bottom half of his sclera made visible by his irises shaped into an oval, though jouncing to the side each little glance he took at each little precious thing he wanted to focus his attention onto.
Snap. Maenoâs eyebrows. They were thin, long. Darker than his hair color. They were expressive. If you were to cover up his entire face, his eyebrows would still be something you could utilize in order to discern what he was feeling.
Snap. Each time his collarbones peeked out from under his shirt as he angled his torso towards you. Snap. His fingers, long, scarred. Even though they had bandaids littered about, right onto his knuckles or other more curious locations like the tip of his index finger, they were pretty to look at, veins protruding through the back of his palm as they posed for the camera or as they wrapped themselves around an object. Snap. His skin. Snap. His knees. Snap. His ankles. Snap. His wrists. Snap. His chin. Snap. His cheeks. Snap. His ears. Snap. His back. Snap. His nape. Snap�
His everything?
Was it the click of a polaroid camera, slowly lifted down in order for Tsugino to look at his muse in all of his glory, or a metaphor for Tsuginoâs desire to eat Maeno whole? Was it his forlorn to reach his hand out to Maeno as he placed his palm onto his, wrapping his fingers around his hand before gently tugging at Maenoâs wrist, afterwards pulling him forward, leaning his chin into his for a kiss, or did he want to sink his teeth into his lips, tearing through it for he lowered it down into his chin, lower and lower into his stomach stained with blood which trailed through the gaping hole in his stomach, crudely shaped into the edge of a knife? Was it about Tsugino's scrutinizing gaze, cold, soft, everything in between, or his desire to kill Aki?
It was both. It was two.
One.
Haru wanted to kill him. He wanted to see him dead. He wanted to see Akiâs guts spill out from outwards his stomach, the tenderness coming with a splurch and ending in a crescendo that was from in-and-out, dipping into the sausage-like organs. He wanted to reel his forearms back into the air, holding a knife in his trembling hands now gripping tighter onto the handle, only to stab Aki in the throat.
He wanted to see him in such a position he couldn't help but be killed by him, maybe yelling, or maybe not. Maybe tears running down his cheeks, down the corner of his sharp eyes now squinting, closing in impulse; he wanted to kiss his tears away. He wanted to see its translucence, sempiternal, somewhat vaguely stained with red coming from his stomach, or his throat, or his eye, any part of him. He would accept all of them. He would accept all of them gratefully, kissing them too, or cutting them up into tiny pieces, chewing each in his mouth with a crunch from his left and a crunch from his right, before leaning into his collarbone made visible by the tank-top unfolding to the side, sinking his teeth into his skin, deeper into the flesh, and deeper into the muscle. He would like that.
Two
Haru loved him. Aki had taught him cruelly the meaning of love, and gently the meaning of love. He wanted to wrap his fingers around Akiâs jaw, before sliding his fingers forward to his chin so as to prop his mouth in front of his, kissing him, the hot air pressing against their faces each breath they took through inside of the mouths, pirouetting, swirling into their humid surroundings as Haru tilted his head to the side so as to lick at Akiâs tongue, swirling it around the base, their salivas mixing together into one - maybe that was the sort of thing he sought out in eating him, because that too was Aki inside of him.
âŚ
âŚ
âŚ
âŚ
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Tsugino knew what he felt.
He was so embarrassed, he had to say it. There was no use running away from it any longer, anyways, because any more and he'd have been lying to himself.
He had a crush on Doc. Maeno Aki.