snaggleteeth | Saltburnt Inbox

[koby makes a small, throaty sound at the nuzzling, the shameless press of qimir’s nose, mouth, everything into the pooling sugary-glitter in the hollow of a collarbone, the place where koby swallows and hollows out, vulnerable, tender.]

Oh! [immediately fond, a tangible warmth, anianiani, and koby goes calmer, less stiffly anxious, because he’s right, because ani will make it safe, make koby safe, she does that without even trying. and he’s messy-drunk snuggly, squirming his overheated, sparkly body up against qimir, cheek warm and plush against his shoulder, teeth in his full lower lip.] Okay. I’ll ask Ani.

[the arm around koby squeezes, and he turns, muffles a squeak by mouthing at qimir’s shoulder, dress shirt smearing with pink and purple glitter, on an open-mouthed laugh as cotton-candy-fluffy hair goes frizzy with contact, heat.] Bo-oth? Both. [a nod, more smeared make-up, then the energy in the small under-table space goes focused, sharpened like the adjustment of lenses. something in koby shifts, ripples with powerpowerpower, and when he holds up his hand, painted nails, pale skin, there’s a ripple of something like dark, metallic scales along his wrist.]

And for this. [matter-of-fact.]

Thought you were a seal. Not a fish. [this, said from the nest of koby's hair. the scales on that wrist, the flex of unfamiliar new power, regarded from around the hazy, sunset-colored horizon of koby's scalp. it's too dark to get a proper look, but the same is true now as it was ten minutes and a jacket removal ago: the stranger does not need his eyes to see the overlapping, chitinous segmentation traveling up koby's radius and ulna.

nor does he need sight to guide his fingers down to touch. fingertips examining the outline of individual scales, lightly, lightly, as if he were trying to feel the too-faint shape of unfamiliar lace through saber calluses. as if these external bones, this strange armor, might snag or scuff just like the weft of gossamer-thin silk. 'qimir' is always intrigued by power. most of all, when it sprawls in its container and breathes and and grows across terrain, alive and curiously unconfined to a narrow functional domain—so rare, as pearl observed—like his connection to the force.]

Who's teaching you those parts?

[real curiosity. he's greedy about that. about everything. can't remember the last time a selfless thought beset his head. there are certainly none to be found in the hazelnut half-sweetness with smell of koby's sweating hair, and then, an inch lower, the tactile velvet backing the shell of koby's left ear. koby will ask ani. ani will take care of it. 'qimir' manages, somehow, to tell himself this triumph—and secondhand body glitter—are self-serving, too.]

I am. [a little huffy, holding his hand up so qimir can touch, the “scales” covering most of koby’s wrist, lower arm, like a partial gauntlet, covering the calluses of his knuckles with something that feels iron-clad, like metal. the concentration of power to maintain it doesn’t last long, not when koby’s tipsy and giddy and silly, not when focus
ing his energy isn’t priority number one. just long enough for qimir to touch.] Armament haki.

[a sudden, rushing exhale, and the focus slips, turns off like water from a tank, the armament dissipating and vanishing with nary a trace left behind. even those handful of moments were exhausting, draining, and koby’s head flops heavily onto qimir’s broad shoulder, like a puppet with strings cut.]

Shanks. [even drained, the word is weighty with something warm, something adoring, a smile flickering over koby’s sparkly, sleepy face.] He was teaching me even before we were – together, anything. [there’s another scar, paler, shallower, across one palm, and koby traces it reflexively when he speaks.] He’s better at haki than anyone I know of. Anyone alive, maybe. He makes my power look like – a firefly.

[a pleased little purring sound, both at qimir’s nuzzle to the back of his ear and the topic at hand, perhaps, preening with pride at even the slightest mention of shanks’s abilities – koby’s not needed to proclaim them, but the concept of not boasting about someone he loves is impossible.] He’s wonderful.

[have you seen your power? the stranger doesn't ask out loud. he remembers a girl in a galaxy far, far away, bringing with her an unspeakable miasm of force, what her mother had called the thread. who thought herself abandoned by her strength because she had 'abandoned' it first, too weak to close her fingers around jedi scruples and keep them locked. like a fish in water. a seed in soil. it's hard to perceive the medium of your being.

but then, he's never met shanks. maybe there are infinite colossi, their power swollen up inside this house, which ought to be groaning at the seams. 'wonderful.' how many semesters did that take?] You're infinitely capable of wonder.

[serious tone of voice. not necessarily making fun. he can feel koby making moist patches in his shirt, but there's no more drinking water to boss him around with. slow cadent breathing is easy in the throbbing, subwoofer dark. easy enough that he isn't worried about blocking the little wind of koby's drowsy inhale or exhale when his finger bridges the scar across the small bones of koby's throat—again. here again, here again, this human irregularity of tissue that he had not, in fact, 'cheated' to see with his eyes that aren't eyes.

the question is a reverberation of sternum, more than words aloud.] How wonderful does your teacher have to be before you ask to kiss him? [this time, yes. wry.]

Oh. [it’s a soft sound, more the shape of koby’s mouth against qimir’s shoulder than anything audible, a thoughtful comma in the sleepy, tipsy litany of thoughts filtering through one cotton-candy-colored head. he huffs out a laugh, drained in the places where he’s used to having power, made softer, vulnerable. his throat swallows, works against the tip of qimir’s finger, something oddly calm in him, even having the scar touched.

koby instinctively arches back, bares his throat, eyes half-closed as he considers this.] Maybe. Someday. I’m not – like Luffy or any of the people in this house with powers. I’m just a regular person that had something wake up inside me and I don’t really know how it works. I have to work harder. Ten times harder.

[the question gets a little laugh, koby straightening up, eyes warm and bright in the dark.] It took nine months, for Shanks. And twice that until we talked about it. [a shrug, reaching out blindly (but not, feeling the pulse of warmth, of heat, here here here that means qimir) and setting his callused palm on a knee, a thigh, somewhere close, somewhere to say i’m here too.] But that’s – he’s not just a teacher. He never has been.

[then, tilting his head, birdlike, eyes bright and mouth smeared pink:] Why? Do you want to kiss me?

'Just' a teacher, [is very, very dry in the stranger's voice, enough to suck the stickiness off koby's brow for a half-second before the cups of his pores refill. this is disagreement, but without real argument. receives no further substantiation.

one cannot wake up halfway across the multiverse and expect one's new neighbors to get it, that master and pupil can transcend the love between siblings, for parents, for anyone you take to your bed. 'qimir' should be lonely, or something. but it's hard to be that with koby breathing a pink cocktail frowst into his face. music still thumbing in his eardrums, balloons bouncing dreamily in the periphery. the corsage on his wrist, promising wanda will, at least, want to know later if he had fun. loneliness is easy to medicate at saltburnt mansion.]

Nine months is a whole baby.

[irreverence is an easy fallback for he who has a decapitation habit. he ducks. blows a brief raspberry on the hollow of koby's temple, sending up pink hair into a spray.] Everyone wants to kiss you. You didn't know?

Oh, you – know what I mean. [huffed, expressed in a rock of koby’s head towards qimir’s shoulder, an exasperated weight before he pushes himself away, suddenly, swaying. he hiccups, frowns, then rolls to hands and knees, surprisingly nimble for tipsy.

there’s a ghost of a tickle where qimir had messed up his hair, a pesky echo that crawls down the back of koby’s neck, curls up in his collarbone, purrs like a cat and makes him blush. he crawls, pivots, moves around so he’s facing qimir beneath the table. and the tablecloths aren’t sheer, but they’re light enough that the flickering neon lights up koby’s face and he’s smiling and smiling.]

I didn’t ask about everyone. [intent, both those big warm eyes and the nudge of koby’s sunset-toned presence, his energy, his power, making itself known like an affectionate cat.] I asked if you did.

[well, now the giant pink aura's stepping in, and he doesn't have to be master to acolyte in this particular binary to appreciate the scope of insistence breathing into the space under here. one more whiff of power and the table will go floating and bouncing with buffy's birthday balloons.]

I do. I'm everyone.

[anyone. no one. human. it amounts to the same, even when you're seventeen identities loosely stacked into one. indeed, he had known what koby meant. koby would've known what he meant, if he ever explained anything about himself, but that wouldn't be his inclination. he likes to believe koby is padawan to someone; that such a thing is possible, even at saltburnt. like calling to like. haki to haki. someone to shape him, the way the stranger was once made, unmade, made again.]

Going to sit there and act like you didn't know? [he's smiling too, but it's faint, like the edge of a knife half-buried in frosted sugar. he's still leaning back on a hand, manages to look casual. a telekinetic flick of his other one settles koby's hair back, from where it got skewed, between gluttonous courses of raspberries and sniffs.]

No. [soft, quiet, koby sitting back on his heels with his head at a tilt, hazy eyes and long, long lashes. there are freckles beneath the blush, little scars that match the ones on his knuckles -- the obvious x-marks-the-spot on his forehead aside, the nicks and bites and too many fists to the chin, too many backhands with a ring-studded hand. all koby's sweet-strawberry-sugar skin's been touched, marked, wounded.

and yet: he kneels here. he looks at qimir with the wonder of someone watching a sunset for the first time. more reasons than many to recoil, withdraw, but koby's up on his knees, nosing forward, nearly nose-to-nose.]

You should've said something. [stern, wrinkles in that freckled nose, mouth pulled into a pout.] Or -- done it. [a flick of his eyes down, then up, tongue dragging over his lower lip.] You should do it now.

I can't. [despite all evidence to the contrary, the stranger says this with uncharacteristic rue that suggests he believes what he's saying. that's because it's true. he tilts his head, hair falling into his eyes, failing utterly to disrupt the stability of his stare. you could turn a planet for a billion years around that unmoving axis.

he smiles at koby with something akin to patience. to affection. the curiosity of a man who's died a hundred times in the bodies of other people and understood all the tender birthday parties and kitschy ritual dances and glittery first kisses he murdered in the process. killing children goes much faster than making them. but teaching them is something else altogether.

he comes bearing no haki. only an empty hand and an unguarded mouth.]

I'm supposed to teach you how to know and love your buried emotions. Not going to do your homework for you.

[at can’t, koby’s eyebrows jerk towards each other, a scowl wrapped in a pout on his face, close enough that the scrunch in his nose is evident even before his freckles get involved.] That’s ridiculous.

[firm, prompt, a jut forward of his chin, open suit jacket gaping around his scarred, glittery chest, hair tumbling loose from the careful gel to fall in his face. koby blinks slow, sooty lashes and lower lip still pouting.] You said “buried”. It’s not. Not for me. I don’t – want to bury this part.

[the ethical impacts are aside – koby’s a little smitten with anyone who looks at him and sees someone to teach, someone to lavish attention and knowledge on, and that’s more than enough of a basis for him to rock forward slow, measured. qimir doesn’t move (koby knew he wouldn’t), and it’s easy to kiss him, easy to lean up under the shag of dark hair and press their mouths together. koby always kisses like it’s the first time, like he’s never touched another living soul, sweetness and hunger, desperation and tenderness all at once.]

[sometimes, the stranger issues a challenge and it is a visible taunt. shit-eating grin or just unutterably smug, a stinging gauntlet delivered to the face, some stupid comment. he did make a stupid comment just now. but his face was placid, equally dead to self-pity or mockery, patient the way the sea is patient, generous the way the sea gives&medash;because it's water. wants as simple as physics. taking the shape of his container and

koby's mouth meets his mouth, and for a moment, he accommodates. his half of the kiss wrapped around koby's bottom lip like the wet cohesion of eddy to glass. except, of course, he's not the sea. he's a man, as earlier specified, as fallible and error-prone as any, and there comes resistance that's not resistance at all. the bulk of an arm winding around koby's boyish waist, yoking him tight—but for the gentle thumb on the dimple on the right of the small of koby's back. the initial, backward buoy of 'qimir's head rocks forward, reversing momentum into a ravening crush, bending his nose on koby's cheek.

i don't want to bury this part. sure. people fail in the actualization of their desires all the time.

light, in sufficient quantity, will kill anything. but 'qimir' does not say this because some wisdom comes in different tongue, like the one delving into koby's mouth, his jaws opening on the thick cords of muscle like some machine, drawbridge, hungry trap for boys that don't know how to read the sign that says beware.]

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