[ Ear to his chest, Denji hears it: Thump, murmurs that important artery. Thump. Thump. And like this, Aki says enough. Says what he needs to in a way that an idiot like Denji can't mistranslate. Didn't he taste it earlier, too? That warm blood traveling where it needs to go, making a sudden pit stop, snagged and glimmering between his jaws. Which had been okay, he thinks. A bit of Aki's life force for him to borrow, to hold inside of him until that also goes away one day.

…Augh, this is depressing. He just had great sex! So why is it that he can't get his own head screwed straight?

Gaze scrunched close, he buries his face between his pecs, and pulls him in just as closely, arms fastened as tight around Aki's waist as a jammed seat belt trying to keep someone from going flying through the windshield. Feeling the waves again, but trying hard not to get dragged under. ]

You said you'd come to understand me, whatever happens.

[ His husky voice trickles out, tight and crackling around the edges. A sound not unlike wood snapping under the heat of a fire. ]

I wanna understand you, too. She used to tell me that all this would feel better and easier, the more you know the other person. [ Makima. At the time, it'd been advice regarding intimacy and getting closer to someone. But maybe it'll help with these other, more complicated emotions. With saving him from a different kind of hell, or with letting go of him — whichever of the two comes first. ] So teach me that first. And then the creampies can come next.