Prompt: 7/14 -- X/1999 - Seishirou/Subaru - asphyxiation - the dying of the light
Analgesic x/1999 Mithrigil Galtirglin
“You could always stay on campus with us, you know.” Arisugawa’s grin is wide, his posture is inviting. “I mean, if you’re signing up for University classes and all, you might as well stay close, right?”
Subaru shakes his head sideward, just once. “Even when I was here for high school, I lived off campus. I have more commitments in the city itself than I do at the school. But I thank you for the offer.”
“No problem! Just come by for dinner once in a while? I can tell just by looking at you you don’t get nearly enough good food in your system, and my cooking? Some of the best you’re ever gonna taste!”
There’s some sigh in Subaru’s answering nod, too much for him to hide—but it should come across as modesty, if Arisugawa wants to see it that way.
And he does. Claps a hand onto Subaru’s upper arm, even, and tilts back proudly, eyes closed in that jovial version of smug. “I’ll make sure to keep you posted, then.” His fingers tighten and wrinkle Subaru’s overcoat a bit, enough to notice but not enough to mean. Through so many layers of cloth, nothing like that touches him. And then he lets go, steps back. “Sorry to keep you so long,” he says.
“It’s fine,” Subaru lies.
-
Something rips the pin out of the buckle like it’s just a petal off a flower, he loves you not—the frayed metal scrapes on the collar’s notch, just like a gasp. The hand pinning Subaru’s against the corner of the bed is steady, gentle. It’s too dark and Seishirou’s too close for Subaru to tell if he’s smiling—but—but his breathing is even, his hips are still, he’s not even hard—
—the tongue of the collar draws—tight—jabs the knit of the shirt into Subaru’s neck. What he can still feel of it is—is crippling. He arches his neck, thickens it, dares the leather to shrink, to hold him closer.
The low, considerate noise Seishirou makes in his throat spears through the red dark.
-
“I didn’t know you took this line, Sumeragi-san!”
For a moment, Subaru has to fight to remember the man’s name. He’s only heard it once, aloud. Every other time, and there haven’t been many of those either, it’s been just ‘the Windcaster’. “Aoki-san,” he does say, though, finally. “I don’t, usually.”
“Ah, in transit between jobs?”
“Yes.”
The Metro car tilts on a turn—plainly used to it, the Windcaster nods stably and thoughtfully, still with an open smile across his face. “I’m glad I got out of work so late, then, haven’t seen you since the funeral. How is everyone at the school?”
Subaru doesn’t know, really. “All right.” He holds the bar overhead a bit tighter.
“I’m thinking of coming by with Shimako and our daughter, once she gets over this spring flu. Sorata-kun mentioned that you all manage a big group dinner twice a week—do you know when the next one is?”
“I don’t,” Subaru says as the train pulls to its next stop. “Excuse me.”
-
Just his hands tonight, it was too warm for that sweater with the buckle and it’s broken now anyway so it’s just Seishirou’s hands, just the heels of his palms crushing Subaru’s collarbones and his fingers, his fingers are throttling him so tight that Subaru can feel the blood rushing through them. Can hear it. Can hear how it’s not his own. He sucks on Seishirou’s tongue because there’s no air there either but his body needs to pretend—that somewhere in that void and that heat and that—that—that solidity, there’s one malicious breath that wants Subaru to live.
And then Seishirou laughs, just once, just slightly, and there’s a huff of air behind it. It forces its way down Subaru’s throat and makes him live a minute longer.
-
She calls his name a second time before skipping over, dog-spirit trotting at her heels with its tongue hanging out. “Subaru-san!”
He straightens his knees, brushes the dirt and grass off, not that it’ll stain and not that it really matters if it does. He probably won’t have to say anything.
“Aren’t the flowers so beautiful?” —Trapped on three sides, it seems—the dog-spirit behind him, the tree to his left, and Yuzuriha in front looking up with pert and saccharine expectantness. Despite this, she doesn’t let him answer. “If I’d known you were coming out to look at them I’dve tried to get everyone else here too!”
“No need to trouble yourself,” he says honestly, when the edgewise space for a word is clear.
The dog-spirit cocks its head and whimpers inquisitively. Subaru turns around to look it in the eyes, to tell it, at least, part of why. It blinks, once, slowly, and recoils its tongue back into its mouth.
-
It’s the—the first time they’ve—been face-to-face while—this, whatever this is, the verb’s gone and no, forget it, it’s fuck, the first time Seishirou’s fucked him and let Subaru see his eyes. Eye. Eyes. Even the dead one can still smile. It’s the only white in a world of pounding red, the color of swollen skinless muscle and bulging veins and void, dizzying void. There’s—an arm on his neck, to keep him where he’s wanted—Subaru holds that, digs his nails in, enough to feel the space between the bones. Subaru’s bent double, no support, only half of his back is touching the bed at all and the rest, his legs, shaking so—so horribly every time Seishirou drives into him, so—steady—precise—complete—
—he could—with his legs, he could strangle Seishirou back—like this—
He does, tries, lets go of the arm that’s forcing him down and drags Seishirou by the hair into a brutal—kiss, the same way the word for this is fuck, this is a kiss, and holds him—crosses his ankles and slams in with his knees and feels the shock, the cold, the open red-gold eye change.
-
Kishuu just looks at him sideways, passing by when he’s leaning against the gate. “A little warm for a turtleneck,” her eyes seem to say. He’s gotten that look before.
-
He can’t even tell if his lower body’s on the mattress, or the floor, or nothing at all. Can’t even tell if Seishirou’s pulled out or let go. The world’s black but he’s still conscious of it, and that’s the cruelest part of all—analgesic, not anesthetic. Hollow, not nonexistent. The feeling never ends with this, just pretends to, leaves him numb instead of dead.
And it’s never dark enough not to see—this close, Seishirou gleams with sweat, with the residue of an amused, shadow-toothed smile and a smoke-glass eye.
“So you do want to kill me,” Seishirou says, running a semen-slick hand up some part of Subaru that the feeling’s starting to come back to—the stabbing ache of reallocating blood.
The pain climbs through Subaru, makes everything clear. And the answer, of course, is no.