( Eat your dead, eat their ghosts. Eat til your teeth erode like mountain mantles, thin, eat til your gums bleed, yoked by slow grind. Keep eating.
Hauntings wake the starveling in him.
Incense mutates his blood to a simmered boil, an easy, flagrant virulence. He inhales it between spasms of wet, and his feet slipping in the slosh of midnight condensation. Leather shoes, the sole delicately constructed for the tame appetites of a Toyko stroll. The casual, negligible paraphernalia of a man who cannot be troubled to exert himself with several train exchanges, when simple apparition names the task done.
Facsimile is juvenile, farcical. Obscene. They are not men without means, without a deeper private understanding of the perverse humour reality weaves inextricably around them. It pleases fate to tussle and spit him, limb-loosed, on an unidentified vessel, in an unidentified land, to unidentified purpose.
It pleases fate and cloud-consumed stars to sit Sumeragi Subaru before him. An absent migraine clutches his temples like a child's fist closes on fresh marigolds. When the hurt breaks, his eyes flash white-gold.
Only, sleeping beauty persists before him, and he never did learn the benefits of studied, appraised rest. When Seishirou draws close, the familiar, visceral metallic trappings of saltpetre and coal cutting through his lungs — he does not acknowledge the sailor who nearly cuts his path. Does not excuse tripping him over. Does not remember to murmur more than tenuous, absent apologies.
He eases himself near Subaru-kun, one knee bent and the other shivered by the great belly-ached tremors of a ship at sea. Like this, he is perilously young, a cat without command or care. Like this, when Subaru-kun opens his eyes, Seishirou will think to steal them.
He blinks awake. Seishirou watches the careful resuscitation of a body recalling itself, the moment between defencelessness and alert. Smells the provocation. Smiles, long like cleaving. )
iii.
Hauntings wake the starveling in him.
Incense mutates his blood to a simmered boil, an easy, flagrant virulence. He inhales it between spasms of wet, and his feet slipping in the slosh of midnight condensation. Leather shoes, the sole delicately constructed for the tame appetites of a Toyko stroll. The casual, negligible paraphernalia of a man who cannot be troubled to exert himself with several train exchanges, when simple apparition names the task done.
Facsimile is juvenile, farcical. Obscene. They are not men without means, without a deeper private understanding of the perverse humour reality weaves inextricably around them. It pleases fate to tussle and spit him, limb-loosed, on an unidentified vessel, in an unidentified land, to unidentified purpose.
It pleases fate and cloud-consumed stars to sit Sumeragi Subaru before him. An absent migraine clutches his temples like a child's fist closes on fresh marigolds. When the hurt breaks, his eyes flash white-gold.
Only, sleeping beauty persists before him, and he never did learn the benefits of studied, appraised rest. When Seishirou draws close, the familiar, visceral metallic trappings of saltpetre and coal cutting through his lungs — he does not acknowledge the sailor who nearly cuts his path. Does not excuse tripping him over. Does not remember to murmur more than tenuous, absent apologies.
He eases himself near Subaru-kun, one knee bent and the other shivered by the great belly-ached tremors of a ship at sea. Like this, he is perilously young, a cat without command or care. Like this, when Subaru-kun opens his eyes, Seishirou will think to steal them.
He blinks awake. Seishirou watches the careful resuscitation of a body recalling itself, the moment between defencelessness and alert. Smells the provocation. Smiles, long like cleaving. )
Shhhhhhhhhhh. I won't tell a soul.