It is in both of their natures, rooted inside with the dissent spread through their bodies like old sickness, that they do not communicate through avid touch.
Shinjiro avoids it; Minato dislikes it. Shinjiro's hands are coarse, brushing over the wearing knuckles belonging to the other with a hesitant apprehension, broken and burned nerves reacting to the stimulus of skin – even when he turns his hand, palm upward and fingers slotting in between Shinjiro's as means of peace, there is tension that peaks in their wrist. Minato relaxes his grip. No one else earns his patience.
The mutual appreciation sits warm between them, resting in the cuts on their skin that split in the midnight hour and never healed, inviting a comfort that sits foreign in Shinjiro's mouth. Uncommon, yet welcomed, yet uncommon, always having stood at the precipice of what they could and could not do, never certain if it's their own anxieties and uncertainties and limitations that kept them from breathing the right way and feeling the warmth of existence for themself, or if it's a force they do not know the name of pulling them back every movement towards the edge, retracting into isolation before the first contact. Minato took to them, rather than Shinjiro unto him, crossing that barrier for them both.
They pull back from Minato's lazy hold on their fingers, palms grazing his sleeve, tracing upward to the curve of his elbow. His eyes matches Shinjiro's, slate grey, yet diluted in the dim light dyes them a low blue. He watches. Minato always watches, lips shut and brow low, thinking slowly before each word, cut sharply but languid in delivery. Watching, when Shinjiro breathes twice on the same hitch and moves those marred hands upward, cradling a skull carrying everything they adore; his wit and his contempt all resting at the front of his thoughts. Minato offers, "You don't have to," but Shinjiro doesn't allow the ghost of hesitation to keepthem still, with clutch of apprehension slipping from around their neck like a noose. Like there's no pressure in their head, like there is only him, and Shinjiro, and every open wound bleeding and blossoming into every love story they could never keep in their mouth, sitting in their jaw and never fitting right.
When Shinjiro presses their mouth to his, closed, uncertain and austere, they don't breathe, they don't breathe because what if Minato flinches and what if he breaks apart from what they've kept to their heart for a long time – but they're met with hands on their shoulders and a sigh brushing against their cheek, exhaled with an ease Shinjiro finds themself envying. Shinjiro pulls him close with fingers dragging through the hair at the base of his skull, the hesitation that built in Shinjiro's shoulders easing from them.
They don't often allow themelf the comfort, always standing like the hand or blade will come and cut – it is against their ( lover, boyfriend, words that are stupid and embarrassing and have no meaning or purpose but to categorize the purposes of human relationships, they'll call him Arisato and keep it that way, mutter Minato when they catch moments in halls and door frames and on concrete with blood spilling, a word goes here and they won't tell its definition ) they feel their absolute despair stray from their too-old joints and their too-young faith.
They tilt their head, parting from his mouth but rolling their forehead against Minato's – there's a smile split and shared between them, quiet and without a purpose they can name, and it's hidden behind their teeth. Physical contact has always hurt. They feel better with, against, beside him.