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Monoma Neito has done many fucked up things in his life.
“Please, ‘Toshi, you can’t leave me like this.”
Being a necromancer and flirting with dark forces is bad enough. He’s found ways to extend his own life, increase his power, even have people like him more, and force them to give him whatever he wants.
“You can’t die!”
He’d never thought that he’d have to use his own powers on his most beloved, the same person that he’d spent most of his recent years with.
Neito wipes his tears with the sleeve of his dirtied robes. His vision is so blurred that he doesn’t know if he’s drawing the sigils correctly anymore, but he doesn’t care. He needs this done now.
He tosses the chalk and starts rearranging the body in front of him. Soaked through, indigo hair frames an angular face, one that should be smiling. He barely had enough wherewithal to cover Hitoshi’s body with his tattered cloak, but the body is still a little warm. Neito’s lip trembles as he reaches for his knife and goes to offer his sacrifice.
Please, he thinks around the words flowing from his lips.
Please live!
***
Neito awakened with a start, his eyes wide and chest heaving. He recalled the dream as though he were still kneeling in the cold and waiting for his spell to work. So much had happened since then, making him feel as though it was a little foolish of him to be sitting here and thinking of something so tragic so long after it had happened—“Bad dream.”That voice snapped him from his thoughts, causing his head to turn to the side.Hitoshi was there, across the room. Cool, dark eyes bored holes into his soul, and Neito felt his mouth fill with cotton as he went to respond.“Yeah. Bad dream…”His spell had succeeded, yet a few nights a month, Neito had that same nightmare. He would see Hitoshi in pieces before him, the elaborate markings on the ground and the rain falling around them. His heart would pound, and it would feel as though the world were crashing around him. He’d never know that it was a dream until he woke up.And Hitoshi would be standing there, stating very obviously what had happened.Neito got out of bed, a sigh escaping from his nose. He was still tired, but he had to get up. When the sun rose, so did he. The morning was normal, with Neito taking his time making breakfast for the two of them. Hitoshi never ate much after he came back. Neito had always known that the spell had altered him mentally as well as physically, but he could never put his finger on what from the spell had caused him to change so much.When he sat down with his morning tea, Hitoshi was outside, tending to the garden of ingredients that they had started together. Well, it’d been Hitoshi’s idea, once upon a time. Now, Neito was sure that Hitoshi only cared about tending to it because it was something that Neito wanted him to do.Through the little window in their shared cottage, Neito watched as Hitoshi pruned the trees and short shrubs, picked flowers, and pulled up weeds until most of the garden was relatively clear.It wasn’t until Hitoshi had made his way to the various poisonous plants on the opposite side of the cottage that Neito had any means to be alarmed. The stems and flowers of most of those plants were harmful to humans, and many of them could transfer poison with just a brush of a petal or prick of a thorn. Neito had been sipping his second cup when he saw Hitoshi pull his hand away with an unamused expression before bringing his ring finger to his mouth. Was he bleeding? Neito rocketed from his chair, nearly throwing the piece of furniture to the floor when he saw Hitoshi suckle at the digit. He turned his head afterwards and spit onto the ground with a frown on his face.Ah, right. He couldn’t be poisoned anymore. Neito didn’t want to admit that he’d forgotten that, not with a seemingly annoyed Hitoshi turning to look at him through the tiny window. Had he heard the scraping of wood on wood? Or maybe even the sharp breath that Neito had inhaled?It was difficult for Neito to remind himself of these things. At first, they’d been so hard to forget. The discoloration of Hitoshi’s skin to a ghostly, almost sickly gray; the blood stitching that had curled around his body parts and held him together, leaving prominent pink scars on his limbs and neck; and even the lack of expression, his facial muscles practically frozen in neutrality, had all been impossible for Neito to ignore.That was until he got accustomed to them. They weren’t differences anymore, they were a part of Hitoshi that Neito had just come to accept. He mulled this over as he went to finish his tea and realized the cup was empty, turned over onto the table with the scent of barley filling the room.He cleaned his mess and went to take his third cup as Hitoshi gathered up the bits and pieces he’d cut and threw them to compost. Next came harvesting, something that he had always asked Neito for help with. Now, he took a single look at one of the plants and knew whether it would be good to harvest. He got to work, filling the giant wicker basket next to him with berries, roots, flowers and vegetables. Since he’d begun caring for the plants years ago, Hitoshi had learned to grow some of the largest plants that Neito had ever seen. He’d never had a green thumb before the accident, but now he was practically the only one that touched the garden. He’d bring in various plants for Neito to use in his potion and poison making, but he’d never let the necromancer out into the garden to pick his own herbs. He’d become so peculiar in the last few years.By the time Neito had finished his pot of tea, Hitoshi was coming back into the cabin with a basketful. He set a few aside for dinner but gave Neito most of it.That was when it was time for him to get to work. After cleaning his teapot and cup, Neito took the basket to the backmost room of the cottage, using his hip to ease the door open.Overhead, there were various plants drying. He’d been soaking a few dried flowers in cool water as well—an attempt to see if that would work the poison from them. There were even more plants being used to feed a few mushrooms that he had growing, ones that he’d very incidentally gotten the spores from stuck on one of his old cloaks. The room was mostly dark, save for a small window that Neito could draw a taut curtain over and close out all of the light. He sat the basket down on his table and was ready to get to work.That was, until he realized that Hitoshi was standing in the doorway.Neito lifted his head, looking up at Hitoshi curiously. It wasn’t typical of him to come and watch Neito work, so the necromancer fully expected Hitoshi to say or do something rather than stand and watch.Hitoshi lifted a hand and pointed to a little, pressed flower that was framed near the doorway. Neito’s eyes followed that digit and let his eyes fall on a daisy, petals having faded in the years since it was first given to him. Hitoshi had done it—his first and only venture into anything related to botany before his sudden, green thumb. He looked as though he wanted to know where it came from.“You gave that to me,” Neito explained as he returned his gaze to the basket before him. “Before… well, the past few years. You gave me lots of things. We added on to this cabin together, if you can believe it. I know I surely couldn’t.”Neito gave a soft chuckle then, forgetting who he was talking to. It was easy to forget that this was Hitoshi when he wasn’t looking. He knew every strand of unruly hair on his head just like he knew every stitch that kept him together. It was heartbreaking, to be speaking to the person that had dragged him from the hole he’d been surviving in to get him to thrive when that person didn’t even remember doing so.“Sometimes… I wish you could remember. There are so many things that you remembered that I never did. Sometimes, I try to recall what your laugh sounded like. Or how you sounded when you spoke to me, since that was never the same as how you spoke to everyone else.”As Neito went to grab a little sheaf of vines from the basket, Hitoshi took two steps closer. He was standing right next to Neito, which was only odd because he was doing so in Neito’s workspace. That didn’t stop nimble fingers from working the hard, outer casing from the vines to reveal the sticky center.“You’re still Hitoshi. Just a little different from what I recall from all those years ago. And that… isn’t your fault. I’m very happy to have you here with me—”A hand was on him then. It grasped the entirety of his chin, holding his cheeks and forcing him to look at Hitoshi as he loomed over him. It wasn’t even rough, just demanding in the way it commanded his attention. Neito stared up at the other man in shock. Had something happened?Indigo searched startled blue for a moment, sliding back and forth over Neito’s face. Neither of them spoke, so the breath leaving Neito’s lungs was even more audible in the silence.
“I love you, Neito.”
Oh.
That—that was Hitoshi. Not the scarred man before Neito now, but the one that he’d loved so many years ago. That was a whisper of his life being breathed into him at the thought that his lover was back. So many years of living without those words had convinced Neito he’d never hear them again. He wanted to respond with the signature, And I, you, Hitoshi. But he never got the chance. “Is that what you would have wanted him to say?” Neito jolted then, feeling himself yanked from the dream—nightmare?—with a sudden gulp of air forcing its way into his lungs. There was something between his legs, cool and strong, and it was stroking him. The firmness of the grasp and the slick glide along his shaft pulled a shuddering moan from his lips. He had to let his eyes adjust to the darkness before he saw a silhouette over him. “Hi-itoshi?” he groaned, trying to squint up at him and make out his expression. Was this the same one that had grabbed him? His hands were fisted in the sheets as he came against his own bare chest with a shout. There was twitching against him, a little sigh right after, and Neito gazed up with bleary eyes to see the man above him. “Sorry, love,” came that familiar whisper and soft laugh. “You were so cute, I couldn’t stop myself.” His Hitoshi. The one that he remembered and missed so dearly that it made his heart ache. He was moving to get something to clean Neito with when a hand caught one of those scarred arms. It was hard to see Hitoshi turn to him in the dark, but the movement of his body was enough for Neito to know that their gazes were meeting.“That dream again?” Neito’s nod and trembling sigh were all that Hitoshi needed as an answer. A clean, cool hand was at his face then, not gripping him as it had in the dream. It was gentle in the way it cupped his cheek before a nose brushed over his.“I’m sorry, darling. Here, let me get you cleaned up, and we can just lay here, okay?”He really needed that. The soft towel and gentle kisses that came after were the ones he wished he dreamed about most often. Instead, he recalled the times before Hitoshi’s memories came back as so bleak that they were a lingering stain on his subconscious. When that familiar body came to nestle in next to him, though, Neito thought about the years they’d had after. Hitoshi had remembered, slowly but surely, and the only part of his lifeless self he’d kept was that unnaturally green thumb. Everything else was Neito’s Hitoshi. The one he’d tried to save and the sole reason he was alive now.Arms curled around his middle, and he brought the blankets up to cover Hitoshi’s legs. He was pulled in closer, nose in Hitoshi’s neck, and he breathed in the faint sweetness of flowers on his lover’s skin. Neito let his arms come around Hitoshi, nails digging into his back just enough to tell that he was real. They were okay. Out of the metaphorical woods and back together like they were before. He inhaled one breath. Another, the sound of his own heart racing in his ears until it started to slow. Hitoshi was petting his hair then, and the sensation helped him begin to relax. It wasn’t that stormy night anymore, or that sunny day in spring. When the sun rose, it’d be a new day. One that he and Hitoshi would tackle together, just as they had before.