Uh Huh, Honey

Starve my heart of touch and time

And now—Giyuu's in his bed. Next to him. Sleeping.

His lips are pale but swollen, parting every now and then on a little exhale of breath. In the scant light, they look gray, and if Sanemi tries hard enough he can still remember the way they felt against his own. Soft in the first butterfly kiss that brought them here, then harder, desperate and messy in that shameless way Giyuu can get when he stops overthinking.

With those pale lips, the smooth curve of his cheek, the loose hair framing his face, he looks more like a painting than a living person. Looking at him, Sanemi doesn't think he would mind if Giyuu stayed there forever, a watermark pressed into his sheets.

As he comes to this realization, Giyuu's eyes crack open. They look as dark as his hair, growing lighter and lighter as he emerges from the confines of sleep.

When they find Sanemi's, everything grates to a stop. Time, air, and space, all held down in the instant where Giyuu looks at Sanemi and Sanemi looks right back at him with bated breath.

Then Giyuu blinks once, slow and lethargic, and he smiles. Slight, scant, a smile more present in his eyes than in his mouth.

Good morning, Sanemi means to say. Feels his mouth part around the 'g,' ready to vocalize it, when Giyuu realizes exactly where he is. Would've said it, too, if not for the way Giyuu's eyes snap wide open and horror spreads over them like oil spills over the ocean. Dampening that smile, extinguished without a spark.

Then his neck snaps up, then his entire upper body, upsetting the covers in one flurry of motion.

"No," he says, more to himself than to Sanemi, fingers shaking where they grip at the sheets.

"No," he says, "no no no," over and over, repeating it in a mantra that shreds the morning to tatters. Letting go of the sheets, Giyuu grabs at his head instead, cradling it between his palms, nails sinking into the hair below.

No.

No, what? No, don't speak? No, don't ruin the moment? Or—no, I don't want to be here?

Sanemi gets his answer when Giyuu finally frees himself from the prison of Sanemi's bed and tumbles out of it so sudden and so frantic he nearly falls to the floor. The second he regains his balance, teetering in the dimness of the room, Giyuu heads straight for Sanemi's dresser, for the clothes sitting on top. In his hurry, he knocks the entire pile to the floor and has to kneel down on unsteady legs to pick it up again. He must hurt all over, from the pounding headache of a hangover to the places where Sanemi fucked him into the wall, but Giyuu just grits his teeth and rifles through the clothes in desperate search of his own.

Sanemi sits there, shocked, the drowsiness of sleep still stuck to him. He tries to shake it off, tries to say something—anything, anything—but all he can hear is no, no, no.

Can only sit there, passive, and watch as Giyuu's skin disappears under his clothes. His hands are still shaking, hair tumbling over his shoulders in the same waves Sanemi traced when he was asleep.

"Shouldn't be here," he mumbles, the whites of his eyes flashing as he shoves a foot through the leg of his pants with excessive force. "I shouldn't be here."

He looks like a caged animal, cornered, backed into a dead-end alley.

Except he isn't. Sanemi's still under the covers, struggling to catch up, unable to comprehend how Giyuu's moving so fast so soon after waking up. He can't understand the sheer panic in Giyuu's face, the regret etched into every line of his mouth. What he's so afraid of. What he's running away from.

It's him, of course. He's running away from Sanemi.

Looking at him, Sanemi realizes he's never seen Giyuu's emotions so unguarded before. Save for last night, when Giyuu stared up at him with stars in his eyes and told him I want you.