Price tag.
Just a little thing I challenged myself to write in half an hour. Not edited. Inspired by the song 'It's Far Better to Learn.' By Saosin
Sometimes, Akihito has horrible dreams. Not dreams you'd expect from him; dreams of guns, blood and violence. He'd stopped having those sorts long ago.
The dreams that visited him every so often now were so much crueler, they attacked the very center of his self worth, the thing he always questioned of himself.
What am I really worth?
In these dreams, he was in an abyss, black and floating, and all he could see was dollar bills, gems, plastic cards and endless zeros.
Wealth. Endless wealth. The thing that made the world turn, the thing that made his world stop.
What is my body worth?
What was he compared to all that, how much? What amount would it be, before he was considered of lesser value?
Nothing could be crueler than these dreams, these dreams that lashed him in gold chains, tied him to the very principle he was trying to run from.
He was nothing, he had nothing, that's how he wanted it. A human's life shouldn't have a price tag, in was incomparable, but here he was in these dreams, running from valuations and price tags that people were trying to pin to him, paralyze him with.
The truth behind those dreams was that he didn't want to know how little his worth truly was.
There never used to be a price tag. As soon as he knew that number his ideals would be shattered.
And so he would run, thrash about, anything to escape these dreams that chose to remind him of his place in the world of wealth.
He woke up in a cold sweat with a gasp, sitting upright to let air flood his lungs, that dream always left him fighting for breath. Always left him feeling uneasy, uncomfortable despite the plush bed he slept in.
That queasy feeling anchored itself in his gut, sinking his sense of security further and further into a trench so deep.
"What's wrong?" a sleepy voice mumbled next to him. Ah. There it was, the thing that was worth the most.
He looked over to the figure sprawled on the bed; one silken sheet draped over one leg, the rest of his body highlighted by the moonlight coming through the condo window.
The lines of his muscle were shadowed under the dim light, defining his abs and the long sinuous muscles on his legs and arms. Something else was highlighted under the light too; a beacon.
It called to him. And so he reached out to touch the raised scar on Asami's leg, a perfect circular scar. Only one thing could leave a scar like that, something capable of taking life in an instant and rendering everything worthless. A bullet.
His fingers traced it, felt the skin change textures around it, soft skin, hard scar. If this bullet was further in, it could have hit a nerve, paralyzed the leg, hit the major artery, the consequences would have been costly.
He touched the next one, by the collarbone, he remembered crying over that one. If this scar was any further down, if this bullet had flown any lower, it could have been a lung or a heart that it'd torn through. That would cost everything.
"Akihito, what are you doing?" a strong hand wrapped around his wrist, halting his melancholic inspection of the silver scars.
"Asami, what if-" he began.
"No what ifs, Akihito. They're a small price to pay, a price I would pay over and over again if I had to. Go to sleep."
Oh.
He fell against that expansive chest, close to the scar and shut his eyes. Unease dissipated as he drifted off again, listening to the steady heartbeat under his ear.
He knew he'd never have that dream again, because his worth was that heartbeat.