Seimei wakes, in the end. And isn't that something.

He arrives and returns to the familiar. The scuff of Hiromasa's socked soles as he scrabbles to his feet. The clap of his knees to the floorboards when he relinquishes his bearings just as he's reclaimed them. The curl of his tongue around the notes of his name. The reach of his voice across close distances and far veils.

It could pass as paradise, if only Seimei was so easily tantalised by what he knows he has not earned. So, life, then. Yet swung on its scale and judged rewarding, not by the absence of feats he will still accomplish but by the balance of Hiromasa's presence; a weight more than transmuted gold, surpassing heavenly absolution.

The sun is setting to the west of Hiromasa's back, but it rises, now, in the east of his face, as relief breaks open his mouth into a grin. His joy is a bleed on Seimei's skin, through his ribs. How can he not take the smallest part of it for himself, pay it into the fond quirk of his own lips? Hiromasa has so much of it to give that there is no amount of it he could ever miss.

After, when Genkaku is dead and Seimei is dressed, they alight again at the overlook of his garden. Again, as though there has been a parting to meet again from; as if Hiromasa has not been trailing his heels like a hound, lingering in his shadow like a haunting. There, they drink, and Hiromasa succumbs to the part of the dark that tricks a man into honesty. Here, they sit, and he confesses to his fears with the same loose compulsion he keeps pouring to fill their cups, again, again, well before they empty.

Given such a tender gift, how can Seimei not tease him? Hiromasa is so open that all the world could sift through him. Call it a promise of his trustworthiness, that Seimei can hold it so gently. Call it proof of the threat he can be, as is his inheritance and his inherency: that he is keen at finding bare throats and soft bellies, like all cruel men and clawed beasts. The distinction, its semantics— they are unpoignant and immaterial when Hiromasa's acceptance of both and either is unconditional. He has seen Seimei's teeth, hasn't he. He is a smart enough man to know it is not his own kindness that shields his flesh from feeding them, and a stupider one still to court Seimei's companionship anyway.

So here he is, spiting everything. How fortunate. How exciting.

Hiromasa could yet realise, come one day after this, that this heart he dotes on sweet maidens has long been claimed. Perhaps he has, already, and who is anyone, even himself, to say it? Seimei might possess his centre, in his way, obsess it, even, but it doesn't privy him to his workings, every secret.

Is that not for the best; a blessing? It has always been wonderment that seizes Seimei's interest, after all, just as hunger torments the starving. There plates the feast: arrays of human contradictions, questions in defiance of answering. So Seimei toys with what's lain and left out in his reach, laughing with Hiromasa's fluster and at the fragility of his loveliness. And he finds himself glad for it — these hours, this friendship, the momentous monotony. Let it make him uncurious to the purpose of this fate, whether it holds greater ordainment. Let it leave him eager for dawns, convinced of the infiniteness of their possibilities.