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❛ you’ve broken me. all i can think about is you. ❜ (sugimoto at ogata)
a piece of you for every piece of me.
pain is what he feels first. like the first intake of breath at birth. second comes remembrance, the recollection of moments fluttering in repetition: the arrow, razor-sharp cuts on his face, the vacancy, sugimoto’s voice calling his name and grounding him to reality, to life. ogata’s chests heaves in a desperate attempt at regaining full consciousness and control of his body, limbs gone weak with misuse and the feverish haze blurring every corner keeps him nauseous enough to remain pressed to the makeshift bed.
his throat goes dry, voice rasp and low like sandpaper. “enough.” is all ogata manages to say.
there’s something… something odd in the words that made ogata’s hair stand on end. he’d felt this general unease before: bile accumulating in his mouth, the chill of a ghost in-passing, crawling through their feet.
they’d faced the ruthless winter in Hokkaido, storms that devoured everything that crossed their path. rampaging wolves, ravenous, a wounded beast with a mouth covered in fangs. sugimoto isn’t so different from it. he’d sunk his teeth deep into flesh, rip apart anything that made him hungry enough, and in that manner, ogata could find a strange affinity for whatever this static was, between them. but anything beyond that mirroring ambition — for the gold, or the appetite for destruction —, turned every passing second into a reminder that he should’ve killed him, that he should’ve made sure that sugimoto wouldn’t come back and root himself in the back of his mind.
the warmth of sugimoto’s body half-pressed against him floods him with unnerving, pristine clarity: their proximity, the way silence seems so loud and piercing when all he can hear is the pounding in his head, sweat gone cold.
he can smell sugimoto, the scent of blood and deer innards, the scent of a monster, the same as he is.
not this, what he’s pretending to be, what he’s pretending they can be as though the mere hint of normalcy can strip away every sin that keeps him awake and haunted.
the asymmetry of sugimoto’s scar comes into clear view, air gone thick and heavy; ogata’s hand moves by reflex, wrenching sugimoto’s jaw away from his face, gaining him the opposite effect: sugimoto is wide awake, eyes flashing gold in the dark, arm pinning down ogata with as much ceremony as taking down cattle.
ogata laughs, mirthless, head thrown back and eye rolling back to his skull, delirium and exhaustion ebbing at the dregs of his consciousness.
“i said enough. i don’t know what kind of game you think you’re playing, but creeping up on people in their sleep is foul play even for someone like you.”
words drag on sluggishly between rasps and morphine, what’s left of it in his system, weak. it’s not as threatened as it is pitiful, the mournful cry of a wounded animal. ogata attempts to focus his attention back on sugimoto’s scars, his amber eyes, the crease of his eyebrows drawn up in confusion. this is what he prefers, this is what he knows best. anger is easy, predictable. “we’re not in the trenches, i’m sure you can ask someone a little more lively to take care of your needs for you. unless this is the kind of thing you’re into.”
@lustraveil