[ It's a paralysis that reminds him of how he'd felt that first night seeing Aki after so long: Denji doesn't twitch, doesn't stammer, doesn't move. He can't do anything but concentrate on regulating his breathing, pushing oxygen through his nose.
Not due to Aki’s arms stopping him, though that’s part of the reason, but because he can feel it as if it were his own skin stirring alive, the familiar manipulations of flesh and bone inflating, stretching, smithing itself into a weapon to be wielded, a trigger to be pulled. And he’s the one sitting right in front of the muzzle. Fear isn’t the right word for what rouses in his chest, claws out into the light of his eyes — this thing, this wriggling that makes the hairs of his neck stand as cold as the gun-mouth kissing the back of his head, is probably more like self-doubt compounded into panic. There are dozens of wrong decisions he could make, ways he could disappoint Nayuta, paths that close out by choosing another, and if he closes his eyes, he can envision all of his options leading to — ]
Aki…?
[ Nothing like pain shoots through his shoulder when he feels teeth diving into his skin, but the sensation is just as penetrating. Electric. It shocks him out of the tangle of his thoughts, enough for him to turn his head and…
Once, in a golden room, he asked Makima a question, and she’d answered by pressing in close, her thighs scissored between his legs, gilded in light, haloed in it, like a saintly idol erected to be worshiped by ilk lesser and greater than himself, all on their hands and knees. Yet there he was, touching something he shouldn't, something he didn't understand. When he looks at Aki's face, the shine of what must be the moon sloping his cheeks, there's a similar sense of religion as back then weighing the air, he thinks. It isn't the kind where you know you're in the presence of someone graced with the favor of some all-supreme being, no, it's the opposite — that feeling where, because you know you've been abandoned, the umbilical cord feeding your faith severed, you realize you're free to create your own sustenance. Self-genesis.
Divinity and depravity aren't such different concepts. And what else were half-humans like them made for if not to enjoy the best of both worlds?
Every time Aki’s face has changed, he’s either looked away or made sure not to look too long. Like if Denji's gaze doesn't meet the place where he knows his eyes would usually be, he can ignore his part in how fucked up things are. So when he slightly shifts his body, just enough to softly brush his lips up against the metallic barrel, his breath warming the hardened veins that groove the underside of the opening — it's with the devotion, the desperation, of a wretch seeking penance. He can’t keep averting his eyes. ]
Yours.
[ That's what he is. He says it again, but without any room for misinterpretation. It’s not something he can make him into, not something Denji can even give to him anymore. It just is what it is, as predetermined and doomed as green prickling from the branches of a tree after a long, long winter. ]
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Not due to Aki’s arms stopping him, though that’s part of the reason, but because he can feel it as if it were his own skin stirring alive, the familiar manipulations of flesh and bone inflating, stretching, smithing itself into a weapon to be wielded, a trigger to be pulled. And he’s the one sitting right in front of the muzzle. Fear isn’t the right word for what rouses in his chest, claws out into the light of his eyes — this thing, this wriggling that makes the hairs of his neck stand as cold as the gun-mouth kissing the back of his head, is probably more like self-doubt compounded into panic. There are dozens of wrong decisions he could make, ways he could disappoint Nayuta, paths that close out by choosing another, and if he closes his eyes, he can envision all of his options leading to — ]
Aki…?
[ Nothing like pain shoots through his shoulder when he feels teeth diving into his skin, but the sensation is just as penetrating. Electric. It shocks him out of the tangle of his thoughts, enough for him to turn his head and…
Once, in a golden room, he asked Makima a question, and she’d answered by pressing in close, her thighs scissored between his legs, gilded in light, haloed in it, like a saintly idol erected to be worshiped by ilk lesser and greater than himself, all on their hands and knees. Yet there he was, touching something he shouldn't, something he didn't understand. When he looks at Aki's face, the shine of what must be the moon sloping his cheeks, there's a similar sense of religion as back then weighing the air, he thinks. It isn't the kind where you know you're in the presence of someone graced with the favor of some all-supreme being, no, it's the opposite — that feeling where, because you know you've been abandoned, the umbilical cord feeding your faith severed, you realize you're free to create your own sustenance. Self-genesis.
Divinity and depravity aren't such different concepts. And what else were half-humans like them made for if not to enjoy the best of both worlds?
Every time Aki’s face has changed, he’s either looked away or made sure not to look too long. Like if Denji's gaze doesn't meet the place where he knows his eyes would usually be, he can ignore his part in how fucked up things are. So when he slightly shifts his body, just enough to softly brush his lips up against the metallic barrel, his breath warming the hardened veins that groove the underside of the opening — it's with the devotion, the desperation, of a wretch seeking penance. He can’t keep averting his eyes. ]
Yours.
[ That's what he is. He says it again, but without any room for misinterpretation. It’s not something he can make him into, not something Denji can even give to him anymore. It just is what it is, as predetermined and doomed as green prickling from the branches of a tree after a long, long winter. ]