author's note: POV switches at lines. :) The order is Mugen, Shino, Yukimaru, Fuu, and Mugen again. Please enjoy and a thousand thank yous for looking!!!

Goddamn, it pisses me off. But I can't help but notice – it's right there, so damn close, and I'm sure that if I touch it, even get near it, I'll just die.

Right there, right then, and the last thing I'd see would be those angry eyes watching me sink to the ground for the last time.

Maybe that's what he means when he says he's going to kill me one day. He's going to fucking kill me with those eyes when I try to touch that sacred stretch of skin, his neck, that goddamned neck.

It really pisses me off. I can't stop staring.

I could not say that I have ever seen something so beautiful on a body, such a statuesque structure, so perfect in construction, so perfect in function. The skin is warm, the bone is sharp and placed just so.

I know too that it must be strong to have kept him from collapsing on himself all these years, all these seconds. At this moment I can see the faint pulse and feel along my nose that the next heartbeat might betray him, might let him fall.

But this is warm and the bone beneath it is strong.

Along my nose – he is so beautiful.

I have seen men with hands so slender, I have heard rumors of men with features so finely cut, and day dreams can be peopled by men with hair so perfect to a touch any woman would bite her lip in envy, but a neck like this cannot truly be.

So I do not believe, though the skin is warm, the bone is strong.

I cannot say if he is a god, I cannot say if I am awake. But I will say tomorrow morning that I dreamed again, after all these years.

I'll touch my nose. It was a good dream.

He cannot hide the pulse. I feel my entire body beating so I know there is no point in trying to hide my fear, but he is vulnerable there, at the throat.

This is my target.

I watch it closely while he speaks and see each word so clearly there. The words we say to each other here mean nothing; we know. Were either one of us absent, perhaps this conversation could happen with purpose at some other time or some other place, but we are here and his throat is throbbing.

I watch it closely while I speak and see him swallow.

This is my target, (he knows as he does not move) this is my target until I let my eyes flick up and meet his.

I am lost there (I know as I cannot move), and I feel the heartbeat he was hiding.

But I saw. It was in his throat.

"Yukimaru…"

Because I love him, this was my target. We wish to die with honor.

I wouldn't have noticed, of course. Such a silly thing, to pick out details, but now that I've noticed, I know I must look just as stupid and oblivious as Mugen did when I realized he was staring.

At Jin.

I've never picked apart a person by his features before. A person is a person; I see him or I don't see him, but it will wear with age, I think, that way of perceiving people, because I've started staring.

At Jin.

But it's such a silly thing, isn't it? Such a stupid thing to notice any particular piece or part, any hand or foot, or I don't know, but his neck's not that special! It can't be that special. And that's why I'm staring.

(At Jin).

I'm trying to figure out what makes even Mugen's angry eyes calm down and stay still for so long, too long. I think.

It's not that – well I do think – let's just say that – he's so beautiful.

But I still don't understand. It's simply where my eyes line up when we're standing face to face.

But I know what's going to happen. I'll get drunk, or you'll get drunk. One day, you and me, we'll get so fucking wasted it won't matter if you really need those glasses or not and I'll taste every inch of that skin.

Then things will be okay again because even if you're scary gorgeous, the mystery will be gone, I'll know what it feels like to run a thumb along your throat, feel that pulse on my tongue, on my cheek.

But goddamn, it pisses me off. I don't give a shit if you see me staring, but gods.

It really pisses me off. I'll never meet a girl this pretty.