Akito hates weakness especially when it burns her throat, clogs up her lungs, and makes her have to hide it right underneath her tongue.
Her smile's all practiced, cool calm, and she has to bite her tongue to distract herself from the coughing that nearly hops right out of her throat and graces the floor in petals.
"Shigure," She greets unsure of why any other words falter, wither, and die before her; she can't quite find the way to ask why he's here or perhaps kill the feelings that clog up her throat and flutter to the ground when she throws up.
"Akito." He greets back, but doesn't even remotely try to add anything to their still, practically non-existent conversation.
"So what are you here for?" She shivers involuntarily, slightly overwhelmed by just how new all of this seems, and yet over the own feeling of pleasure at the thought that even if her feelings may be unrequited, he still wants her in his own selfish way.
"Just a regular visit." He shrugged, and she remembers regular visits in brief bouts of passion, dangerous adrenaline, even though she's unsure of whether his feelings are the same as hers; love for them had never been necessary for passion even though it makes her stomach feel sick to think of it that way.
Akito just wishes that there was a way for this clogging, aching pain to vanish from her throat without admitting to the pain within her, "Shigure." She breathes even though it sounds more loving despite the flowers stuck under her tongue, and she hates further how sweet, how loving, how heartfelt, and how weak and sentimental it makes her feel.
"Akito," He responds with that darn smirk, and she wonders how he can avoid her more, how she can't even touch him with her poisonous actions or words or even her thoughts.
Sometimes just a hint of her being unhappy, ill content, and they back off in fear; Shigure's never that weak minded.
She hates how she sort of likes how he's different, and she wishes that she didn't want to close the gap between them; if she presses closer, she'll need to swallow the black rose whole and send it straight back to her throat to deal with later.
Black roses are dark, death in a flower, and she feels that somehow it's fitting; it's fitting to fall apart on the inside, to just get weaker, and try to hide it.
Akito is like death in a person, and she understands that somehow this flower suits her in this way.
Yet Shigure's rash and for the life of her she can never quite figure out what flower defines who he is underneath it all; may be she doesn't really know him at all.
A large rose stings her throat with its thorns, tries to claw its way out, as she pushes her hand to her mouth and tries to bite back the choking sensation that makes her nearly fall to pieces on the floor at Shigure's feet instead of bravely standing before him like she always does.
"Shigure, just kiss me." If her voice is a little weak, a little hoarse, he doesn't react to it, just pulls her closer into the thin charade of a tight embrace; does he even care?
She wants to cry when she molds easily into his embrace as if it wasn't a fragile thing, and she wants to scream in frustration when her throat won't let the ache dwindle from before when she's pressed against the wall and kissed with a passion that rivals age old chemistry, rivals the brute strength and heat of the sun.
Akito molds herself as fully into his embrace as she can; it's only a brief reprieve from the pain if she can forget entirely what clogs up her throat, why it begs to be released, and why she's become so weak.
Shigure only pulls back when her rose petals fill his mouth like some ill forgotten salad, and Akito finds the words to say, "They're nothing. I just accidentally fell in a patch of rose bushes before you shown up."
It's a lie that she hopes is stable as nerves descend on her belly, almost with the brunt force to throw the rose out of her throat and into her mouth and possibly onto the floor at Shigure's feet; she can't afford that, can't afford letting him know.
"Akito, are you sick?" The meaning in that last word lets her know that he knows completely, that he's aware what the black rose petals mean, and she imagines them like black blood that drips from his mouth even now, leftover remains from their brief kiss.
She should have coughed those flowers up and took care of them, but the pain is worse today, worse more recently, the flowers more common than before; she can't quite justify them or explain them away when he knows absolutely without having the need to ask though he does anyway.
"I am." Akito murmurs, and it's faint, like something that even now she can't quite grasp.
"Who is it?" Shigure's words still her heart for a beat or two or may be three and make those flower petals try twice as hard to be coughed up at his feet.
"Who else?" Her voice draws on some sort of cynical energy that she'd never expected to find, "You."
Her whole world seems to shift and tug her closer to something that she'd never expected at all at this discovery, petals tumble forth from her throat with the kind of ease that she wished they didn't have.
Shigure smells like ink and paper, smells like wet dog fur, almost as if he got drenched by rain that isn't out right now, and something uniquely Shigure that reminds her of sweat and yet not quite as gross; it's something precious and frustrating, something that she wishes doesn't soothe a certain part of her.
"Akito, don't worry." His words remind her of the world around her, remind her of how sick she is for him, and bring the harsh slap of reality back down on her; she's sick, because he doesn't love her back.
"Why not?" Her voice cracks as it raises with the tears that want to form that she just wishes would go away, but she can't stop the emotions that swirl like an angry vortex around her chest and drop into her stomach.
"Because I love you." Shigure says it as if it's something simple, something easy to grasp and understand, and yet Akito can't imagine life being nearly that easy, not anymore.
"Wh-Why?" The curse isn't binding him to her, not anymore, not since she let it crumble and fade away; Shigure never holds her close like a lover, just someone that he embarks on passion with.
"Because, I guess I always have." Shigure's voice fades over to a happy lull as if the fact that she's ready to argue with him currently doesn't matter, "I always will."
Her throat clears up and yet it feels almost like it hasn't quite registered his confession as it itches terribly, and she can just imagine heaving more rose petals onto the floor, letting black embrace all of the space that it can, eat away at her mind and her heart.
She hates being weak and yet she's not quite sure whether everything has changed in these simple moments or whether nothing as changed quite yet.
"Why? There has to be a reason!" She hisses as if remembering all too late that she should probably argue her point though after the words are out there she realizes that she needed him to accept her and love her for her own disease, a curse all of its own, to fade.
"No, there really doesn't, but I've always admired your strength and been drawn in with how broken and absolutely twisted you've been; I'd rather be with someone as broken as me than with someone unhurt by time." Shigure shrugs, and she realizes that to him, the big reasons, the earth shattering revelations didn't matter. She's always loved him, because he's been different, never quite bent to her will the way the others always did.
"I-I love you." Akito hates the way her voice breaks, hates how weak she feels to admit it, but she does try to be more open, more honest, tries to not be as demanding as she used to be.
"That's good then." Shigure lifts her up into his arms, and Akito can't remember her flowers, the black petals that have so recently plagued her anymore, when he kisses her; her heart blooms like a flower within her chest and yet that doesn't hurt.
Her mind flutters like butterfly wings away, and she knows that every once of her will go into mending whatever they've become, to becoming something much greater than what they are, and she trusts herself only enough to not let her break the two of them beyond repair.