Mercury

The music trickled from the speakers, speckled by the adjacent noise of static and electric frenzy. The band was chopping up the song and throwing its pieces into the river; killing it to its very core.

'...swaying room as the music starts, strangers making the most of the dark...'

He ground his teeth, his canines an ill fit to the rest of them. There was moisture on the glass he held in his hand, which was showcasing scratches on its surface, little cracks in reflection from where his talons were seconds away from bursting it. The ice rattled, condensed by liquid the color of nectar, dangled with a stupor like congealed drugs.

'two by two their bodies become one...'

He fixated slitted eyes harshly at the swaying forms on the dance floor, dim lights cascading on their shoulders like molten, pallid, too-warm wax. He didn't need any of his senses to know that someone from the other side of that room was looking at him, and neither did he intend on ever acknowledging such an existence.

'I see you through the smoky air; can't you feel the weight of my stare?'

But then a gap opened, its line of sight placing him directly in front of those eyes. Eyes like two ovals of abyss on that pale, passive palette of a face; eyes that were visible with the absence of the sunglasses that used to hide them; and eyes that brimmed and hurt with unseen smoke and far too long a silence.

'you're so close but still a world away...'

He almost slammed his drink on the bar top, jolting from his seat with inexplicable rage heating up in his veins. Sandaled feet raced one right after the other in scathing haste, hands flailing around for space amidst the dense mass of the crowd. He could smell him coming, the tang of the forest after a rainstorm, swaddled in sweat, all too familiar and all too overwhelming. He had always been the quicker one, but he was halted in his stride enough for the other's fingers to clutch at one of his sleeves, cloth smearing over fiery skin.

'and what I'm dying to say, is that I'm crazy for you...'

He realized, then, why the song seemed so hideously splintered; miles away from the original because of something ugly and off... The guitar notes were a scattered melody, the singer's voice wavering and strangled, stepping in all the wrong moments, stinging and horribly real. It filled up the high swells of unbridled harmony, which brought with it a certain semblance of humanity to longing, to regret, and to unfinished endings. Of course, he only thought of this to ignore the urgent pressure of a palm closing around his arm, keeping him where he was.

'touch me once and you know its true...'

A beat, and he waited for the other to begin his usual deep, stoic rumble, but it passed and still nothing came. Nothing ever did slither from that sheltered mouth; nothing but parasites of destruction and apathy. He flexed, then ripped free from that grip, as hard and as frozen as the heart of its owner, beating evenly beneath that stone chest.

"Get away from me." He built edges around his tone, tearing it from his pursed lips in shreds, futile attempts to rid himself of the bitterness that marked a lingering flavor on his tongue.

'I never wanted anyone like this...'

He forged a way through all the disgruntled and ignorant people, who cast disdain at the force with which he tried to get away. But he was caught once more, within a grasp from the exit, trapped in the elaborate web that had entangled him for years, for all he was worth. Strangely, this time, he felt that the other would not let him go so easily.

"Please." It shocked him, like a lethal strike of electricity that made perspiration emerge from his nape, cooled by the breath that was hovering so close; so close that his flesh was protesting from the proximity he had always been denied. "Kiba..."

He never really could stand his name, spoken that way. In a tone he used to be able to interpret, and, he found out, still could.

'...you'll feel it in... crazy for you...'

The song played in fragments, shattered little parts of something that had once been so whole. He broke the hold again, and mustered courage from a thousand battles with a million opponents, this time not armed with blades or explosives or clan techniques, but the weak miasma blurring his vision and the words he wished would pierce as deeply as they had pained him.

"You... you didn't answer me..." he rasped, even then, still terrified to meet those eyes, because he knew that if he did, he would stop caring about explanations or the past or what now stilled the wave of tension between them. His strength was no match for the longing that stirred inside him; and that... just wouldn't do.

"I just... I wanted to know," he continued, a notch above a whimper, streaked with cries that settled only in the tremble of his frame. "I've been... I've been waiting, and you never told me."

He raised his bowed head, his chin defiant even if his gaze was littered with the most furious of tears.

'trying hard... to where you are... we need no words at all...'

"Shino," his voice was strained, sunken low to the floor to mingle with dried puddles of spilled alcohol. Then it shot up, aiming for misplaced hysteria, joining the fist that was all too eager for a well-placed blow.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" The punch connected, and the other boy lost a slight of balance from surprise, only gaining leverage as he touched the aggravated collarbone gingerly. It earned them both wary and disapproving glances from wallflowers, but soon they were recognized for the deadly warriors they were, and the bystanders thought it best to remain blissfully and purposely unaware.

'every breath, I'm deeper into you...'

Shino was quiet, looking at him with an expression of mild offense paired with that unbearable calmness, and the second hit he had been planning faded in his bones.

Kiba angrily dragged the back of his hand across his traitorous eyes which leaked saltwater, though even that failed to make the fire in his stare blaze any less dangerously.

"Don't you care at all?"

'standing still in time, if you read my mind, you'll see...'

That throbbing nub of instinct in his thoughts told him that he should have gotten over this months ago--shinobi were not supposed to beg for anything, not even their lives, when all it came down to it. The drama should have been left to dwell in the awkward spaces of conversation that pervaded the atmosphere of team lunches; in the most careful of sparring matches where both refrained from grazing the other; in that disaster of a mission that they just couldn't put behind.

They had lost too much, in slivers of mistrust and sadness, in mute lips and scornful glares, in all that they can never get back.

There was too little of his pride left after that outburst, and he would have been content to salvage what he could right then; after all, he had said what needed to be said. Even if he never got what he tried to be patient for, it was okay, it was okay, he should have known when to stop looking for something that had never been there anyway--

'I'm crazy for you, touch me once and...'

But he made the mistake of brushing against that gaze as he turned to walk as far from that place as physically possible, and an instant was all it took to stumble upon all the things that he never heard spoken aloud.

There it was, under the wafting paper-like blankness that permeated the other's facade, and suddenly everything else that didn't matter was gone. There was only him and the untouchable mercury that reached within him like no one else ever could; the boy who had made him feel so alive just by being there.

His stomach churned with something imperceptible, his senses burned and were rendered useless for a moment, and he nearly collapsed from the knowledge that he had never yearned for anything more than what was in front of him right now.

His throat was parched and his limbs were immobile from the languid blood that flowed through them, but just this once, he didn't have to make the first move.

'I never wanted anyone like this...'

A rueful, pleading smile ghosted upon Shino's mouth, and he lifted his arms in some kind of pathetic surrender.

Kiba's expression crumpled then, his features twisted by violent emotion as he roughly closed the distance looming between them, elbows thrown haphazardly in imperfect angles around that neck. He shivered, rocking against the embrace, and choked on the wreckage of sobs that attacked his hoarse lungs.

He struggled for comprehension, desperately tightening his hold on those jutted shoulders; because it was his dream, and he knew that if you touch a dream it vanishes. But he had always been one to defy the rules; the last one to let go of something that everyone else had already forgotten.

"Kiba," the other whispered into the curve of his ear, blowing upon the velvet down on his skin. "Kiba," the voice called out to him, softly, as if afraid that he might break.

'you'll feel it in my... I'm crazy for...'

There was a tired sigh, as if Shino stopped trying to find the right words and opted for the only thing he had ever known. "I think... I think I care too much."

The taller boy pulled back slightly, face drawing nearer to his, and the song collided to an end just as Shino's nose dug into his wet cheek, pushing up against his own. He let his lids descend and his head tilt back as he searched for the euphoria of that mouth pressing onto his.

And then there was nothing but loneliness, dry in the crackling air and the ever-winding spin of memories too-far gone, but they tasted the same in heartache; the texture of hope on chapped lips that told them that one kiss won't make it all okay, but perhaps a thousand more might be enough.

'I'm crazy for you.'