A/N: I wrote this like 2-3 years ago, did some editing and originally posted on my Ao3, /users/filthinbeau. But a friend of mine suggests me to post in this site, so I did it anyway since I'm a good friend ;D
Shingyouji doesn't mind being left behind. He always take times keeping a distance when they walk, dragging his feet, like a scruffy little kid. Just to take a moment to admire.
He likes it. His back, Arata's back. Loves it, in fact. He knows he notices even without him mentioning. He is just good at pretending that he doesn't. Shingyouji knows this, but that doesn't really matter, as long as he can keep engraving this view into his mind, being so close breathing the same air, walking on the same path but never mind that he wouldn't be able to walk at the same pace, until he would forgotten what it looked like in the bright pleasantness of the day, in the glimmering dark of the night, outside of his world- their world that he wish would go on and on, until who knows when.
How can it be so confident and proud. It's envy, he realises at start and then the changes slowly present, that is clogging up his throat, making it hard to swallow as he watches him put on the coat, over the shoulder, wrapping that back – and the vision of his will feel frozen on the sight alone and become the center of his longings, but he knows that right now, Arata couldn't care less – and resume walking away, as he watches. Not in slow-motion, but it feels like that, as he would always imagine what must it feels like to have that back to turn on him.
It doesn't that broad nor it's muscular. But it doesn't need to look graceful, because it's him. It's always him.
He doesn't have the exact answer, but he knows why, how. Though it isn't always.
A voice, constant, whispers in the back of his mind, and there's a possibility behind it, a desperate option that he doesn't even want to consider, that he never allows to become conscious in his mind or else he would have to be aware of it, think about it, and he cannot allow that. So he concentrates on the presence, the movements, not-so-effortlessly he drags up his feet, chasing the back that invites him to chase. The part of him that wanted to continue following and pursue. And comes another part of himself that he always tried to push away, but he's tired and there's just too much to push away now, he can't do it all anymore. And this part; this part is harmless. It's unpleasant, in a way, but only if he thinks about it, and there's so much on his mind that he doesn't have to. He can simply allow it to ascend.
And he watches, and if sometimes his breath stops because Arata doesn't need to look graceful, he is, he doesn't think about it. And if there's a burn in his throat, in his eyes and in his mind, deep inside his heart, a whisper of a thought, Shingyouji pretends it's because he doesn't see the wings that started to grow on his back.
