Re: "Elastic", 3/3
The elastic snaps again, harder this time, and Subaru’s gasp fills a gap in the music, soars over the swollen whispers of the people staring at him, they’re watching him hang on a St. Andrew’s Cross in nothing but his underwear and all he can think about is how—how good it could feel. How good it could feel if it was right. Because it’s not. That hand closes on his shoulder again, thumb under collarbone, pressing steady and hard. Someone asks what he’s asking for and Subaru doesn’t know, wants without reason, how can he ask for something he can’t define, how can he beg for something he’s never had? He does anyway. Doesn’t know what he says but just keeps saying it, like words are the only thing about him that’s not restrained. The wet blade keeps tracing, pushing up his shorts, and the pressure on his shoulder edges—inward—that’s closer, how does he say that it’s closer? He curls his fists around nothing, pulls in arms that won’t drag the touch to where he wants it, unbuckles his knees and rolls his hips and—
—too rough and too heavy, but there, on his neck—
—the sweat on his hands sears a crippling white—
And someone not Seishirou makes a sound like “oh.”
Something’s changed. His breathing’s heavier but it’s doing nothing, it’s all futile—the world behind his eyes is red like the coil of a stove—that pressure, it was pressure but isn’t now. He’s lightheaded and groundless like a deep meditation, but there’s only rank sweat on the wind where incense should be, rank horrible sweat and the sickly smell of pollen, cloying in his ears and raking down him like a million of those knives, in every scar. There’s nothing for him to breathe anymore so even when the weight’s gone, even when that bar across his neck goes limp and the point of the knife stops tracing up under his shorts there’s still that promise of—that threat of nothing, of pain, of end and of spite—
Someone’s screaming, “no, no, stop, please,” and it’s not Subaru. And—and would that matter?
-
Light blasts back into his eyes like a spell. Heat washes wet over his skin like shame. The music’s either gone or drowned in the chatter—not just chatter but concern, crying, call a doctor, give him some air—give who some air, Subaru wonders, because he certainly doesn’t want any, not right now, he—
Where’s the knife? Where’s the—the sound, the atmosphere—why is Manmoto kneeling, and why is—Chitsu—
Subaru can’t collapse, not with the cross holding him up. Can’t apologize—there aren’t words. A crushed, veined sakura petal is plastered to his wrist, in the cuff’s red imprint. It slides down his arm, catches in his elbow—falls limply into Chitsu’s still, gaping mouth, around Manmoto’s hands trying vainly to slap a dead man awake.
His scars are still burning, up in the restraints.