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It's mid-afternoon, sunny, one of those days when the heat is tolerable with the garden door open and the fan pointed at them. They're sitting in the back room of Hikaru's house in front of the TV, playing Smash Bros, when Hikaru says, out of nowhere, "You should try putting your hand in me again."
He says it so casually that Yoshiki doesn't register it at first, only makes a non-committal sound in response. Then his brain catches up to the words. He tears his attention away from the screen to stare at Hikaru. Hikaru isn't even looking at him, eyes still fixed on the TV, his tongue stuck out in concentration. The controller rumbles in Yoshiki's hands as Hikaru punts him off the edge of the screen.
"I win!" Hikaru crows. He tosses his controller onto the table and turns to Yoshiki at last. "So, how about it?"
Yoshiki just looks at him for a few seconds longer. He says, forming each word carefully, "I thought we weren't supposed to do that kind of thing anymore."
"I'm not gonna mix with you," Hikaru snorts, like it's obvious. "It's just touching. It's not like the old lady said anything about that."
"Kurebayashi," Yoshiki says automatically.
"Yeah, her. So it's fine, right?"
Dust motes float in the sunbeams over Hikaru's head. Yoshiki watches them twirl, his stomach aching. The controller is suddenly heavy in his hands.
"You think I need to build up more resistance to impurities?" he asks, even though he knows very well that can't be the reason. He narrows his eyes. "Or is it just cause you like it?"
"Well, yeah?" Hikaru lets out a small laugh. "You don't ever do stuff just cause you like it?"
Yoshiki frowns at him. Hikaru ignores this, peering sideways at Yoshiki from the corner of his eye, and adds, "Anyway, I thought you liked it, too."
Yoshiki looks down at Hikaru's shirt - faded green from a million washes, the sleeves falling loose around his bony arms - and thinks about the last time he put his hand in Hikaru's chest, in that empty classroom after school. He can feel his cheeks starting to turn pink.
"Fine," he says, looking away. "I guess."
Hikaru's face breaks into a smile. "Okay," he says, and starts pulling off his shirt.
There's a solid three seconds of frenzied panic in Yoshiki's head before he manages to grab Hikaru's arm. "What are you doing?"
Hikaru pauses with his shirt half-off. "What? Mom and gramps are in Kibogayama, and no one else is gonna come in here."
He looks perplexed - totally unconcerned with the wide open door looking out into the back garden, where literally anyone could just wander in. Yoshiki stares at him for another moment, then gets up without a word and goes to slide the door shut.
"Aw, I like the breeze, though," Hikaru says.
He doesn't even dignify that with a response. The door rattles shut. Yoshiki stands there with one hand on it, listening to the music of the game menu still playing on loop from the TV behind him, surreally loud and cheerful. He takes a breath and turns back around.
Hikaru scoots over to him as he sits down again, their knees bumping together. "Okay?"
Against his better judgement, Yoshiki nods.
Hikaru tugs his shirt all the way off over his head. The hole in his chest stretches up from the navel to the sternum, impossibly dark within, but Yoshiki can almost swear that he sees things moving there, shadows curling over each other, the pulse of something nearly alive. A frisson of heat runs down his spine. His eye drifts to the scarless place on Hikaru's chest where Yoshiki stabbed him. He bites the inside of his lip.
Hikaru notices him looking. "You do like this," he says with that smug fox grin. "Your heart's going real fast."
"Shut up," Yoshiki hisses.
His face is hot. He's trying so hard not to think about how many dozens of times he used to wake up from dreams like this, back when the real Hikaru was alive - Hikaru leaning over him, undressing - only to shove them violently down upon waking. This doesn't feel real, like he's watching himself from the other side of the room. Watching his hands move, touching the smooth skin of Hikaru's stomach, hesitating there. This must be a dream, or someone moving his body that isn't him, because Yoshiki can't be the one choosing to do this. He just can't.
The squirmy feeling of Hikaru's insides on his hand snaps him back into himself. Yoshiki flinches, flooded with that feverish mix of disgust and elation. Hikaru makes a pleased noise and pushes Yoshiki's hand in further, the stuff inside him cold and slippery, offering little resistance, winding through Yoshiki's fingers in a nauseating motion.
"That's good," Hikaru says. "Can you reach in a little more?"
Yoshiki does without allowing himself to stop and consider it. The cold swallows his arm up to the elbow. Hikaru makes another sound and grabs Yoshiki's shoulder. A tremor goes through his insides, squeezing around Yoshiki's arm. There's a new sensation in it that Yoshiki hasn't felt before, something humming in his skin, like static electricity, or the fizz in the air just before a lightning strike. His stomach drops through the floor with inexplicable dread. Then the feeling dissipates. Hikaru lets go of his shoulder, his hand falling back down.
Yoshiki eyes him. "You okay?"
"Yeah," Hikaru says. "Just making sure I don't bite your arm off, is all."
Wait. He can't have heard that right. "What? You...?"
Yoshiki yanks his hand back out of Hikaru's chest. Hikaru startles, his eyebrows going way up in bewilderment. Yoshiki stares at him, then looks down at his fingers, absurdly, almost not expecting them to be there.
His mouth is dry when he finds his voice again. "What do you mean? You can...?"
Hikaru blinks at him. "Yeah?"
"But -"
Yoshiki's gaze flits down to the hole in Hikaru's chest. There must be a coherent thought left somewhere in his brain, but all he's getting are flashes of meat and blood and stunned, incredulous horror.
"I've never felt, like... teeth, or anything," he says, stupidly, and then feels the heat creep up to his cheeks as soon as the words are out of his mouth.
"Got teeth right here," Hikaru says, flashing his in a smile.
Yoshiki cringes. "You know what I mean."
Hikaru chews on the inside of his cheek for a second, then shrugs. "It's not exactly biting biting," he says. "If something's in me, I can take it apart. It feels nice to do. But I'm not gonna do it to you," he adds, very pointedly. "I've never done it to you yet, have I?"
"But you could have?"
For some reason Hikaru is looking at him like he's the unreasonable one. "I just said I won't."
This is too much. Yoshiki starts getting to his feet, his head spinning. Hikaru yelps and grabs his hand.
"Yoshiki," he pleads. "I really won't take your arm off. If I thought it might happen I'd tell you to stop, and then it wouldn't even happen anyway, right?"
Yoshiki doesn't say anything to that. Hikaru looks up at him, wide-eyed.
"I wouldn't hurt you," he says. "Really. I promise."
Fuck, Yoshiki really should just leave. There isn't any reason that he needs to do this - he could just go home, spend another afternoon lying on his bed, staring at his phone, trying not to think about flesh and death and monsters. About Hikaru dying all alone out there in the woods. Or the thing that looks just like him, staring up at Yoshiki with those big, hopeful eyes.
The real Hikaru didn't look at him like that, not since they were kids.
He shakes Hikaru's hand off of his arm and sits back down with a grimace.
"Fine," Yoshiki says. "But don't even pretend it's going to happen if it's not" - because that's definitely the sort of thing that Hikaru would think is funny - "or I'm never doing anything like this ever, ever again."
Hikaru's expression turns serious. "I won't."
Yoshiki stares at him for a few seconds more with his hands clenched into fists. He cannot face the thought of how very fucking stupid this is, or what must be wrong with him for going along with it anyway. Hikaru just looks at him expectantly, waiting. A gust of wind blows outside, setting all the garden chimes off in a bright chorus.
Yoshiki squeezes his eyes shut, and slides his hand back into Hikaru's chest.
No matter how much he prepares for it he still isn't ready for that initial sensation - the revulsion, the sick relief, the wet, fleshy way Hikaru's guts move under his fingers. They wrap around his wrist, working his arm back in in a gentle peristalsis. Yoshiki bites his tongue and lets it happen. His whole body is tense. Not like teeth, Hikaru said, but he can't help bracing for them anyway, half-expecting that at any moment his hand will touch something sharp buried there amid all the soft tissue. If it does he thinks he might actually throw up.
His fingers find nothing but more membrane. Yoshiki lets out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. It's okay. He's done this before, hasn't he? It's going to be fine.
He musters up the strength to open his eyes, and nearly jumps out of his skin when Hikaru's face is right in front of his, watching him in that strange, unblinking way.
Yoshiki flushes and turns his head away. "Don't just stare at me."
"Hm? What am I supposed to do, then?"
He presses the knuckles of his other hand into the floor. "I don't know. Just - not that."
Hikaru tilts his head to the side curiously, like he's considering the idea. Then he scoots even closer, his knee against Yoshiki's thigh, and leans in. For a wild, frantic instant Yoshiki thinks that Hikaru is going to kiss him - a thought so abrupt he doesn't even have a chance to wonder if the surge of noise in his ears is shock or fear or want - but then Hikaru's face turns, narrowly avoiding his, and comes to rest on Yoshiki's shoulder.
This, maybe, is almost as bad: Hikaru's cheek pressed against him, so terribly near, his breath light on Yoshiki's neck, not warm the way a living person's breath would be, but cool and dry instead. It takes a couple seconds for Yoshiki to remember how to move again. Hikaru shifts impatiently, and grabs Yoshiki's arm to slip it deeper inside him. The cold inches up Yoshiki's skin, past the elbow, making his stomach lurch.
"You could try moving your hand a bit," Hikaru offers. "It's nice when you do that."
Yoshiki ignores the twist of nausea in his gut and obliges. The stuff of Hikaru's insides squishes against his fingers as he wiggles them back and forth. Hikaru makes a pleased little humming sound. He nestles his head in closer, close enough for his mouth to brush against Yoshiki's neck.
What overtakes Yoshiki then is not surprise or simple fear, but a shrill, piercing note, screaming through every cell of his body: a deep animal instinct that the thing that wants to kill him has its mouth at his throat and is about to bite down. For an instant it seems so certain that he can't even fight back against it - just sits there paralyzed, all defense stripped away, waiting for Hikaru to tear him apart. Nothing happens. Yoshiki chokes in a ragged breath, and the terror subsides as fast as it came, washing out in a red tide, leaving him a tangle of raw, buzzing nerves.
He is suddenly very, very warm. His free hand twitches, almost rising of its own volition to grab Hikaru's waist. It makes it off the floor before the thought fills Yoshiki with such an overwhelming burst of shame that he crushes it down at once. He presses his fingers down onto the ground, hard, so they won't escape from him a second time.
Hikaru pulls away, looking baffled. "What, I'm not supposed to touch you either?"
Yoshiki squeezes his eyes shut again. His throat is too tight to let him speak.
"So I shouldn't look at you, and I shouldn't touch you?" Hikaru says. "What is it I'm supposed to do?" His voice turns entreating. "Why can't you just tell me?"
But Yoshiki doesn't know, and even if he did, it isn't that easy. He isn't like Hikaru, so freely capable of asking for whatever it is that he wants. All the desires in Yoshiki are too sticky and awful - sick, repulsive things - and if he lets them out even once then they'll be out there forever, impossible to bury back down. He can't allow that. He can't let himself like any of this. The only thing worse than him doing this in the first place would be if he enjoyed it.
"It's not - " He cuts himself off, clamping his tongue between his teeth until he trusts himself to speak again. He exhales, strained. "It's fine. You can lean on me if you want."
Even with his eyes closed he can feel the question in Hikaru's gaze boring through him. He doesn't look up.
Eventually the weight of Hikaru's head settles back onto Yoshiki's shoulder. Yoshiki hates how readily his own body reacts to it - the immediate rush of fear, the fizz left in its wake, filling his limbs and the hollow of his throat with a shifting, fluid warmth. Hikaru's breath on his neck again, cool. He isn't going to like it, he tells himself. He won't.
He pushes his hand up through Hikaru's guts to somewhere up behind the shoulder blades, letting the coils of the stuff slither through his fingers. Hikaru sighs contentedly. His arms circle Yoshiki's chest, palms pressed flat against the small of Yoshiki's back.
Neither of them speaks for a while. Hikaru's insides are warmer now, or maybe Yoshiki is just getting used to them. He isn't sure how to feel about that idea. At least they aren't making him feel sick anymore - just strange, a sensation his brain can't quite pin down. He risks a glance at Hikaru from the corner of his eye.
Hikaru looks exactly like a cat getting its chin scratched: his eyes narrowed, head lolling to the side. Yoshiki lets out an amused huff. He presses his fingers into the soft tendrils of Hikaru's insides as if he really was a cat, back and forth, feeling them flex around him. Hikaru's breath speeds up a bit. His arms cinch tighter around Yoshiki's waist.
A small bubble forms in Yoshiki's chest, one he can't look at directly or it's going to collapse. Without letting himself think about it he curls his fingers and runs them through Hikaru's guts so pieces of the stuff slide, serpentine, through his grasp. Hikaru murmurs something and presses closer to him. A thin ribbon of membrane works its way between Yoshiki's fingers. He touches it, feeling it fold in on itself, unexpectedly delicate. On impulse he squeezes it against his thumb.
Hikaru squirms a little against him. The bubble expands, a pool of heat in Yoshiki's stomach, growing feelers through his ribs. His cheeks are hot again. He is suddenly dizzy, both in his body and out of it at the same time, sitting there with his arm in Hikaru's chest, and also there on the other side of the room watching himself, and also on the ceiling watching himself watch himself. Fuck, what is he doing? This has to be wrong, too much all at once, his body buoyed up in a current of sensation and heat and hunger that's going to flood in and drown him.
He almost doesn't realize that his other hand is moving again until it's already cupping Hikaru's face.
Yoshiki freezes. But Hikaru just leans into the touch, for once not saying anything at all. Yoshiki's thumb is just below his bottom lip. A ravenous longing shivers up through Yoshiki's body. He threads the fingers of his other hand through Hikaru's insides, pressing, harder, until Hikaru squirms again, his mouth opening just enough for Yoshiki to slide his thumb between Hikaru's teeth.
Hikaru makes a surprised sound but doesn't open his eyes. His teeth press into Yoshiki's thumb experimentally, not hard enough to break the skin - no pain, just pressure, a sharp point that sends a bright electric jolt through Yoshiki's spine. The full realization of what he's doing hits him, and he jerks his hand away, mortified. Hikaru stirs, blinking up at him. One of those stupid, smug grins starts to form on his lips. Oh, god, Hikaru is going to say something, and whatever it is is going to make Yoshiki melt into the floor and die there. Yoshiki glares at him, his face burning, and shuts Hikaru up before it can start by shoving his arm the whole rest of the way into Hikaru's chest.
Whatever Hikaru was going to say turns into a spluttered choke. The cold of his insides swallows Yoshiki's arm all the way up to the shoulder. The movement has put Yoshiki at an awkward angle, his face much too close to Hikaru's bare skin. He grits his teeth together and doesn't think about it at all.
A ripple goes through Hikaru's insides, contracting around Yoshiki's arm. Hikaru lifts his head. At this angle Yoshiki can't see his face, only the curve of his neck, the rise of his chest as he inhales to speak.
"Yoshiki," Hikaru says. His voice is shaky. "I think you gotta take your arm out now."
Yoshiki's pulse stutters a couple beats. He pulls away slowly, snaking his arm out through Hikaru's guts. Careful not to move too fast, in case something (not like teeth) clamps down. The stuff inside Hikaru holds onto him like it's unwilling to let him go. In increments he works against it, feeling the tendrils slide over his skin, dark and viscous, slipping against him as he wriggles his hand through its grasp.
As he starts inching his wrist free Yoshiki straightens up enough to glance back at Hikaru's face. The beginnings of that smirk are gone, replaced with a vacant, almost blissed-out look, Hikaru's eyes half-closed and fixed on something in the unknowable distance.
It's here that Yoshiki has the worst idea of his entire life.
After, he'll wonder what in the utter living hell could have possessed him to do it. Even right then he knows it's stupid - really, truly, monumentally stupid, the kind of stupid that ends up with people getting killed - but in the space between one moment and the next it's in his head, and once it's there it's too large and loud to tear his gaze away from. For a few seconds he just sits frozen, his hand still half in Hikaru's chest, testing the shape of the thought around the edges of his mind. He looks back at Hikaru's face, Hikaru's eyes heavy and luminous, his head tilted lazily to one side.
Oh, fuck, this really is the worst idea that Yoshiki has ever had. What he should do is just pull his hand out the rest of the way and be done with it. He knows that, yes. He's thinking it. But mostly he's thinking about the way Hikaru moved under his touch, reflexively, mouth open, like something vulnerable.
He doesn't take his hand out. Instead he grips the seam edge of Hikaru's skin.
Hikaru's eyes snap all the way open. "What are you doing?"
Yoshiki doesn't respond. He's staring at the place where his fingers disappear, the impossible cavity with its liquid shadows moving within. A high note rings in the back of his skull.
"Yoshiki," Hikaru says. "I'm really not joking. I told you I wasn't gonna joke about it."
Yoshiki's mouth is numb. "You also said you wouldn't bite my arm off while it's in you, right?"
"Yeah, but, it's getting kinda - " Hikaru's voice breaks. He shivers, and says, "I really don't wanna hurt you -"
"You won't."
"But -"
"You won't," Yoshiki says. His heart is racing fast. "Hikaru. You promised."
Hikaru is staring at him, his mouth open in surprise and maybe something like fear. Yoshiki stares back, holding his breath, feeling his pulse rattle all through his body. Hikaru's eyes close. After a moment he runs his tongue along his teeth, and inclines his head.
"Okay," Hikaru says, and without thinking about it any more Yoshiki pushes his hand back into Hikaru's chest.
Hikaru's head falls onto Yoshiki's shoulder again. His insides are warm now, definitely warm, a heat that spreads out through the veins of Yoshiki's arm and up into his ribs. It shouldn't feel this good. Yoshiki should be afraid. He is afraid, but the fear only makes him vividly aware of everything at once, every detail made sharp in lurid, terrifying clarity: the brush of Hikaru's hair on his ear and the smell of Hikaru's skin and the soft sounds Hikaru makes whenever Yoshiki moves his hand inside him. Oh, god, Yoshiki really should not be doing this. This is so really, really, really fucked. But he can't stop - his body is burning, alight with the horror and intoxication of dancing on the precipice edge, unable to drag himself away to safer ground.
Coils of stuff loop around his fingers. He pulls at them, letting them twist and spool through his palm. One of Hikaru's hands slides up to the nape of his neck and stops there, hot against the skin.
"Yoshiki," Hikaru says again, ragged. "You really probably should - "
"Not yet," he says.
There's a hiss from somewhere in the back of Hikaru's throat. His left arm curls tight around Yoshiki's waist, pulling him in even closer. His chest pressed to Yoshiki's, and Yoshiki is trying not to think about that, not about the proximity of Hikaru's body, or all the squishy stuff inside him. And definitely, absolutely not thinking at all about how good it feels that, for once, Yoshiki is not just some weak prey thing trapped in the claws of a monster. That, this time, Hikaru is the one defenseless against him.
He slips his hand up through the seam of Hikaru's chest, to the place at the top where the flesh rejoins. It resists for a moment, then gives way, unzipping all the way up to the chin. Hikaru makes a high-pitched sound and digs his fingernails into the back of Yoshiki's neck. His guts furl around Yoshiki's hand, tight - then yanking, suddenly, painfully hard, like the stuff inside him is trying to drag Yoshiki in deeper.
He wrestles against it, unable to keep his arm from sliding another few centimeters in. There's that static feeling again, stronger now, setting Yoshiki's skin crawling with a frantic, bone-deep dread. He tries to pull his arm out, more insistently this time, but the stuff is holding onto him too tight for him to break free.
"Hikaru - " he says, or starts to. Then Hikaru's mouth opens again, and everything becomes one bright flash of pain as his teeth sink into the place between Yoshiki's shoulder and neck.
It hurts. In the first instant it's so unexpected that Yoshiki's body confuses where the pain coming from - nowhere, everywhere, everywhere at once - he thinks, deliriously, that maybe his arm really has been taken apart into bits of cell and blood and tissue. But no, it's just in his shoulder, only his shoulder. Oh, fuck, Hikaru bit him. It's so absurd that Yoshiki starts to laugh. Then immediately chokes as Hikaru's jaw releases and latches on again, this time on his throat.
He stops breathing. There is nothing left in his head except the terrified anticipation of the moment when teeth will pierce his skin. What was he thinking? He isn't special, to face up against a monster and think he could have any sort of hold over it. He really is just a prey thing. And now he's going to die for it, either with his throat torn out, or his arm severed. He can feel the gathering tension in the coils of Hikaru's insides, the ozone fizz of something fast approaching that will break him apart. Either way he'll bleed out right here, on the floor of his dead friend's home, in the middle of the afternoon with the goddamn Smash menu music still playing on loop in the background. Stupid. Just another body for the village to bury.
There's another sound from deep in Hikaru's throat, a low keening noise, inhuman. He shifts his weight. The pressure of his teeth on Yoshiki's throat lessens, just slightly, and in that fraction of an opportunity Yoshiki gasps and wrenches his hand back as hard as he can, out of Hikaru's chest.
An instant later the world goes sideways, knocking all the air from his lungs. It happens so fast that he'll only piece it together later - Hikaru has shoved him away, hard, slamming him down onto the floor. Fresh pain stabs through Yoshiki's shoulder. He wheezes for air, stunned and immobile, as Hikaru pins him down, staring at Yoshiki with a panicked look in his eyes.
Hikaru's body convulses. A slurry of viscera spills from his chest, splattering down over Yoshiki and across the ground, writhing apart into a swarm of guts and tendrils. It wraps around Yoshiki, cold and squirming, a mass of void crushing him down into the floor. The pieces of the thing scrabble at his skin like they're searching for a way in. Yoshiki suppresses another gasp. He can't move. He is suddenly, horrifically certain that if he does move at all it will burrow right down into his stomach and shred him apart from the inside.
What's left of Hikaru on top of him has gone deathly pale, one eye oozing out in a dark, sinuous swirl. Then Hikaru's head jerks up. He blinks very fast, attention focusing inward, someone waking up from a dream.
"Yoshiki?" he slurs.
The membrane of his insides retracts. Hikaru shudders, once - and then he is just Hikaru again, boy-shaped, crouched on top of Yoshiki's chest. Yoshiki doesn't move, unable to quite understand that he's really still alive. Is he? He thinks his heart might have actually stopped.
The ringing in Yoshiki's ears is so loud that he doesn't even realize at first that Hikaru is speaking to him. Hikaru grabs at his shoulders, shaking him with a small wail. "Say something," he pleads. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"
Yoshiki scrapes enough of his mind back together to hold up his hands. Hikaru presses his fingers to them, like he's checking to make sure they're really there. His eyes close in relief, and he slumps forward, a ragdoll, onto Yoshiki's chest.
"You really shouldn't do that again," he says. "I could've killed you, easy."
"Yeah," Yoshiki breathes.
He still can't really move. The pressure of Hikaru's head tucked under his chin is too heavy and warm. Hikaru scrunches up a fistful of Yoshiki's shirt in his palm and looks up at him, then straightens up with a startled noise. "You're bleeding."
He reaches out, but stops with his hand in the air, hesitating. Oh, right. Yoshiki touches the place on his shoulder where Hikaru bit him. The tips of his fingers come away red.
"I did hurt you," Hikaru says. His voice wavers.
Yoshiki looks away. He prods at the bite again, and winces. "I don't think it's that bad."
"But you guys heal so slow, don't you? You gonna have to see a doctor or something?"
That thought is too horrifying to even consider. Yoshiki grimaces and sweeps his hair back over his eyes. "It's fine," he says. "It'll probably stop bleeding soon anyway. I'll go clean it out."
But he doesn't get up. Not yet. He's still looking up at Hikaru - Hikaru leaning over him with one hand planted on the center of his chest, watching in that uncanny way of his. Yoshiki's gut twists. He's thinking again of the texture of Hikaru's insides, smooth around his fingers. That moment where it felt like Hikaru was almost helpless in his arms, weak, about to fall apart. Because of him.
His face is burning again. He shoves Hikaru off of him with a scowl. "I told you not to stare at me," he mutters. "And put your shirt back on, you dumbass."
And Hikaru looks at him, blinks, and smiles.