Warnings: Gore, murder, character death, kisses of dubious consent, detailed makeouts. Veeery detailed.

Now accepting prompts.

-/\-

Sometimes things happen that you can't explain. Sometimes those things are people.

-/\-

When he meets Haruka, it's an instant connection. Those dark eyes gaze at him from beneath long lashes, dangerous behind the smile, and Shintaro can feel himself tumbling headlong into something he will likely not be able to handle.

That's okay. He came here to forget about consequences, didn't he?

The music around them sinks to a pulse, and the cool of the bottle in his fist is suddenly layers removed from his consciousness as Haruka takes his other hand.

(He doesn't know at the time that the stranger's name is Haruka, but this is a memory, so we can take some liberties.)

Maybe its the fuzz of alcohol that makes the lights blur, or maybe its just that dazzling smile that steals the oxygen from his lungs within a moment, but the one thing he is certain of is that at the time his judgement was impaired. Not that he would have chosen any differently were it not, but he likes to think that he would have. That fate maybe had a hand to make him do what he did.

Time skitters around a bit, like it's not going quite in the order it should be, and somehow he goes straight from the edge of the dance floor sharing eyes with a stranger while scantily clad dancers bob in the background to kissing that same stranger in a dark corner, listening as they breathe their name-

("Haruka," against the shell of his ear, "Haruka," and in reply he bites out, "Shintaro," and that's likely the moment from which he is lost.)

-gasping as their fingers twine in his hair and draw thin, burning trails across the nape of his neck, pressing his lips to their collar and just feeling as everything frays even further from there. Haruka's mouth tastes of cheap beer and cheaper cigarettes, and Shintaro simply drinks in this impossible man like he will never have another chance.

(For all he knows, he won't, so it's justified)

"Let's do something crazy," Haruka says, and somehow his voice is different. There's an edge to it, a danger, and Shintaro meets his gaze to find that black eyes have blazed to gold. He pushes his fingers through Haruka's hair and fists them tight, presses their foreheads together so that their breaths mingle, admires those changed irises as he flicks his tongue over swollen lips, feels his own eyes stinging perhaps from the light and perhaps from something else.

"How crazy?"

Haruka grabs him, suddenly animalistic in a way that makes Shintaro bare his teeth, growls, nips at his earlobe. "So utterly insane-

(His voice grates on 'insane,' low and sultry and everything Shintaro needs to hear.)

-that it's wicked."

"Immoral?"

These aren't Shintaro's usual words, but this more than likely isn't the usual Shintaro. His eyes burn, and the world is filtering oddly. He finds when Haruka kisses him again he bites down hard enough to draw blood. As the iron floods his mouth and Haruka's moan fills his ears he savors every bit of taste and sound, and as Haruka pulls back and rasps, "Detestable, vile, an abomination," Shintaro wishes nothing more than to see those eyes against a landscape of red.

"Then let's do something crazy," he says, and that's how he becomes responsible for the deaths of the Tsunbomi family. He kisses Haruka again, hungry as the flames that dance merrily across the wood to his right and radiate a heat that makes the night air feel almost like water. They are more violent now, biting and bleeding and clawing, and Shintaro, this new, wild Shintaro that adores the tang of blood and the sharpness of screams, loves every second of it.

His vision is swimming for certain now. Not too sure why. Maybe to do with the high, the wonder of the pain, the sting. Haruka is as much a part of him now as any organ within his body, their limbs twined together as tightly as any knot. They share lungs, one breathing out as the other breathes in, which, despite what common sense may say, works perfectly fine.

"Let's do something crazy."

And then they're breaking into a house, flailing wildly with bats and a gun that they strangled some gangster for, and the wood collides with a sickening (wonderful, shiver-down-the-spine lovely) crunch against the mother's head. A bullet finds a home in the son's brain, and for the first time Shintaro can bathe his fingers in the slick warmth that floods out. He presses a finger to his lips, then to Haruka's, and then they share it, and it's not quite certain who the words escape from.

"Let's do something crazy."

They push a boy in the river after his dog, watch him flail as the water sweeps him in somersaults and steals his life away.

"Let's-

"-do something crazy."

They snap a woman's neck after stumbling across her house in the woods. Her daughter, a pathetic little thing that won't stop wailing, bears witness, and when the mother's body is beyond recognition as human they decide that the child will make a good witness. After all, they both know by now that they will be caught. It's only a matter of how much destruction the caan cause before it happens, how many lives they can demolish, how many faces they can smear in crimson tones.

They each hold one of the child's hands, keeping her between them even as she slumps uselessly and squeezes her eyes shut. They are a twisted tableau- a small family with their little with their little daughter between them, but the parents are smeared with gore and brain matter and the girl is anything but happy. It's no concern of theirs. The child is light, and an extra pair of eyes is needed.

They flit about the alleys for a while, lurking out of sight to avoid being called on their bloody attire and the most certainly unwilling girl they drag with them. At one point Shintaro grows bored of the sneaking and shoves Haruka up against a wall, splaying his palms against the rough brick on either side of Haruka's head and crashing their mouths together. Haruka requires one hand to keep its viselike grip on the girl's wrist, but the other slips beneath Shintaro's sweatshirt and drags agonizingly across the plane of his stomach.

They stop when a drunken street-dweller shambles into their little section of the back streets, descending upon him like the animals they are and strangling him, watching the light behind his eyes fade and holding the girl's head in place so that she may also observe. She struggles at first, then falls into a strange sort of rapture, and when the man is dead and they allow her to turn she looks at Shintaro and her eyes have morphed from a gray to red.

She doesn't struggle anymore, quite content to stand and stare with a detached sort of interest at the corpse, head tilted as though deep in thought. Haruka traces a small heart on the back of her neck, then slashes a line through it, and Shintaro understands perfectly. It's happened to him, after all, that same pattern below his hairline, and in a moment he also knows that his eyes are the same shade of red as the girl's, and that he belongs to Haruka as surely as the child.

That's fine. There's no way he'd rather be.

The girl trots along with them, actually holding their hands in return this time, and the figure they cut is all the more twisted with her willingness. Like one entity they move, and like one entity they spy their next target.

"Let's do something crazy," Haruka says, eyes locked on two children and one adult standing lonely on the street corner, and so they do. They move together and push all three into oncoming traffic, watch the stizza streaks paint themselves across the white rectangles that designate the crosswalk, peer impassively as the cars spin and pile and crash and the smash of metal fills the air along with an iron bite.

Shintaro feels strange.

It's like being underwater, diving deep. For as long as you're down there you feel fine. Normal. Great, even. Then you begin to rise, slowly at first, nearly imperceptibly, but the closer you get to the surface the faster you move until your ears are popping and you're shooting up to break the surface. He is quickly accelerating, losing, the buzz, clearing, and he wants none of it.

He whirls and kisses Haruka with all the strength he can put into the action, and Haruka kisses back, and for just a moment he can feel the blur returning. Then a car beeps sharply, and there is a chorus of screaming, and the razor edge of reality shatters everything.

"Something crazy," he whispers, eyes wide, staring at the broken bodies of three people, flashing through all the other ones they have left in their wake. Burnt, bloody, mangled, dead, all dead, all gone.

Fingers caress the back of his neck, and moist words slip into his ear. "Is this," Haruka smirks, "crazy enough for you?"

Shintaro whirls, eyes running up and down Haruka and realizing that this is not the same person as first approached him. This is a dark version, with black hair and black clothing and unnaturally pale skin that makes him look like something risen from death.

Those eyes, though, those are right, the sickly yellow that burned into him hours ago and bent him into whatever it is he has become.

Haruka smiles, revealing pointed teeth. "Congratulations, Shintaro, you have reached the end of the game." He steps in close, hovers his mouth so close that all Shintaro needs to do is move a few centimeters forward and he will be under his power forever, guiltless and free, and oh lord is that a frightening and beautiful concept. He nearly does it, even goes so far as to lean in half the distance, then stops.

What about the girl?

His eyes flick to the side, to the child still standing like stone, surveying the scene. Shintaro has no illusions about the consequences. The police will already have been called, and unlike the rest of their murders this had been done in public. If he goes with Haruka, they will be caught, but only himself and the girl. Haruka would, he is certain, be free in one way or another, and neither of them would even have wills of their own.

Can he do that to a child when it is preventable?

Haruka has done this before. That is certain. He has had victims before them and will have victims after as well unless he is stopped. Can Shintaro let that happen?

No.

"Let's do something crazy," he says, and with every bit of strength he can muster to his exhausted limbs he crosses his arms, grabs one side of Haruka's head and the opposite shoulder, and pulls, snapping his neck and dropping him to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

The lights are shifting, blurring. It's fuzzy, but a different kind of fuzzy from before. There is no heat in this, only light and colors and the tearful gray eyes of the girl, kneeling above him as Shintaro slips away. She is mouthing something, over and over and over, and just before everything smears entirely he manages to decipher her message.

Thank you.

-/\-

Shintaro wakes in a cheap hotel with a killer hangover, no memory of the last twenty four hours, a note on the nightstand, and the taste of metal on his lips.

A shame, letting pretty eyes like those stay hidden. But then, maybe that just makes me more honored to have seen them.

Until next time, Shintaro.