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Kevin takes like he isn’t willing to give, lips burning when he runs his teeth over Riko’s collarbone. He’s thunder across the scars that have etched themselves into Riko’s once-delicate skin, marred with the emblems from childhood, the symbols he’s kept all these years. He’s a waterfall, cascading over the ridges and bumps and the rocks that make up Riko’s chest, the burns, the broken bones, the dying breaths. He’s everything Riko wishes to be and everything he can’t be.
His fingers are like birds, fluttering from every patch of Riko’s skin, tightening around his hip, digging into his waist, an ever perpetual reminder that no matter who Riko seeks next, he will always be the one he returns to.
Kevin digs his grave in Riko’s embrace, lips dipping into every crevice he can find, every cave he can make. It would be almost infuriating if it wasn’t so addicting, lulling Riko with every whisper, every noise he can draw out of the other, listening to the quiet chirp of the night and the ticks of their clocks.
He is close to reclaiming what could never be his, Riko finding his way back to the court. He is the rainwater that drenches a bird’s feather, the shackles on a captive animal, the warm scraps of fabric a crow might take to make its nest. He is the clock watching over a city, the streams that cut land in half, the stars that race across the sky. He is nothing but he gives everything, kissing Riko like his life depends on it.
Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does, to the point they’re so tightly wound around each other like they were knit together, born together, drawn together like some horrific force that finds every cruelty it can take and give and ties it together, unforgivingly, irredeemably, irrevocably.
It is the gold string that tethers two souls together, so partial and so whole and yet they cut jagged edges into each other just to fit. Just to carve out a single hole that the other may bury himself in, like corpses in a grave, skeletons in the closet, like remnants in a photograph.
God, it’s intoxicating, this foreign feeling, this frustration that binds them wholly to one another even though they may never be together again. Even if Riko will never touch Kevin again, even if Kevin finds every reason to touch Riko again, if only to take, if only to desecrate. Maybe this is it, this is the end, this is what it means to be alive.
Kevin swipes his tongue just over Riko’s belly button, his fingers sinking into his thighs. Riko gives him everything, gives it willingly like he forbids anything else, always following what he wants. He’s spared himself, pale skin blemished with the tale of a thousand others and the lies of a thousand more. He cries, invisible tears with every rageful glare he gives to Kevin, choking on the pure feeling of vehemence that lies in his soul.
Riko is silent, always rendered quiet in every possible best way when Kevin holds him like that, fingers working like he’s done nothing else, his lips hot and his tongue wet, like a naive beginner, like a fading master.
He’s good like this, he always has been, trembling and withering away at every touch Kevin may give him, losing his mind like every soul before him. Kevin relishes it. Thea had never been like this. Thea would never be like this.
I think I love you, comes Riko’s unreadable gaze, so passionately broken, clinging onto every will and spirit he may have. He holds the sheets under him like a lifeline, and when Kevin touches that which should never be anyone else’s, he jerks away, just like he always does.
Kevin’s quick, as he always is, quick to play the game, quick to master it. He’s there when Riko needs him the least, his fingers tight, holding onto him like a lifeline, letting Riko cling onto him harder. Time unravels like sand in a child’s hands, the waves lulling him to sleep before they crash into the rocks on the shoreline, like a baby’s cries when he first is held to the light.
It is like he suffers and takes joy in it, every weep he makes, every furious, scathing chance he may have, biting his wrist until Kevin tears that away too, forcing him to give up any freedom he may ever have and giving him eternity, something that will never be enough.
Give it to me, Riko may say, an echo of Kevin’s mind, always intrinsically together. They are linked, forever connected, as punishable as that may be. He may kiss Kevin, may bite his lip, may nip at his throat. He may try to kill him, fingers wrapped around his throat, hissing when Kevin moves, an ever-present reminder he will not be able to kill him without killing himself.
Today he is docile. Today, tonight, he is here, not as Riko Moriyama, but as Riko. Not as the Raven Prince, not as the king of the court, not as Kevin’s forever untouchable partner, forever lost best friend. No, he is Riko, just Riko, Kevin’s friend, Kevin’s lover, Kevin’s forever.
You’re so good to me goes wordless between them, one the sayer and the other the receiver. It doesn’t matter which: the words are interchangeably desperate, sullying any chance they had at hatred. All anger that once drowned Kevin’s heart has faded, lost to the fade of eternity and promises, either fake or real. He is the angel that wears the fallen’s crown, and Riko the one who has crowned him.
One may call it fake veneration, the way even as Riko’s curls are jostled and his eyes flutter, he traces his fingers ever soothingly, ever steadily along Kevin’s face. He is good like this, good at this, steady in the climax, steady in the waves. Kevin clings to him like he is the lifeboat, like he isn’t the one dragging him down, holding him by the ankles.
And Kevin presses further, unbidding and prohibiting, soaring and aching to find just that murky spot in the clouds, desperate to find the storm within. He yearns to take its eye, to grasp it with his fingers and rip it out of Riko’s body so that he may never harm someone—or worse, himself—ever again. That his words may find no use but to spring back at him in the mirror, like his throne of lies is a punishment.
But it will not be, for it is not meant to be, and it is never meant to be. Riko crashes into the shoreline first, the sand damp with the sweetest tears, conniving when he holds Kevin tighter. It is like they were never apart. Like they will never be apart.
Kevin supposed that is true. He follows not long after, breathing in the afterglow, his arms quavering like he is the one being granted elysium.
And still Riko strokes him, touches his face like he is a work of art, like he has not been the one to desecrate his church all those months ago. Like the time in which Kevin has bitten his tongue and chewed the inside of his cheeks has been enough to atone for all the sins Riko has thought of and has etched into Jean’s skin. As if hearing Riko say his name truthfully, softly, lovingly will fix everything: and it has.
Riko smells like the undergrowth after the rain. He smells like petrichor, so sweet, so faithful. He is certain that Riko will come again, ever gracing Kevin’s presence with his own, because this is how it’s meant to be. The boots trod on the flowerbed and the rain returns to fix them, like it always has, even if it is the one that has unrooted them during the great Flood.
Perhaps that is the mystique of it all, words etched into the underside of a table. No one else will find it, because no one else is looking. No one else will surely, sorely, see and understand those letters and numbers that Riko had taken his knife to sharpening. Like those long lines he dragged like scars in the wood, like the scars down his back and the tails of comets in the skies, like they meant nothing.
Give me your scars, Kevin longs to say. Give me your scars and allow me to love you like I should remains loyally on the tip of his tongue from where he kisses stars into Riko’s pliant lips. He has come home, at long last, though Kevin cannot say he had not anticipated it. He is triumphant at last, victorious in the greatest game of them all, conquering a forbidden one’s heart, taking it as a trophy to home, for long, and naught for peace. He is the ruler, the queen of the court, the caress that Riko seeks in the coldest nights in the winter, the real victor in all these harsh lands. Even in the driest droughts and the deepest floods, he is the miracle that stands, waiting to welcome Riko to their desolate island, filled with only the scum of their worst, tainted lies.
Riko has allowed him to love him, has given him his scars, and he has done nothing in return. This is how it should be: allowing pain and accepting it, kissing your lover’s great sorrow away, just as if his sorrow is yours. Perhaps that’s how it should be, deep in the trenches of the war that he has imposed on you, knowing the only opponent is yourself on the other side.
And perhaps that is it, that is the truth that Kevin has been searching for. It is not exy, it is not Riko, it is just himself, gazing in the recklessness of the void and seeing only the worst reflections of himself. He yearns for them, knowing it’s Riko on the other side, should he break these pitiful illusions.
God, if there was one, Kevin considers the lie that is Riko Moriyama and the truth that is Kevin’s love for Riko Moriyama. It is such a sacred thing that he laughs, like he always does, the softest murmur that tickles Riko on his shoulder, their bodies still intertwined, parallel lines still just barely grazing one another.
And goodness, if Kevin could ever love another, he hopes it is someone worse than Riko. Perhaps then he would find the safety and peace Riko has never been able to give him when he runs back, as he always would, his arms reaching for that of which is constant. Because change is the singular constant in the revolutions, and perhaps that is the greatest miracle of them all.
And if Riko could never give him peace, at least he could give him this: this sweet sanctity of disillusionment, with Riko’s lips on his brow, a thank-you in his ear, only the barest of smiles curling on his lips. Perhaps it is his lover falling asleep in the Sunday sun, illuminated by the flowing curtains over the window, light with the silhouette of a dead man’s shadow crested over him.
But those are all dreams. If Kevin looks at him now, looks at him forever in this immaculate and beautifully holy image of him now, he knows this is the truth, that Riko is his as much as he is Riko’s, forever to hold and to maim, forever to kiss and to forgive. And if there is any angel ever looking over him now, he hopes they leave, because his is already here, his bloodiest wing dipped into the greatest purity of them all.