Strangers in the dark.
This one is partially inspired by this really beautiful piece of fanart of Thanatos and Minato. I've always wanted to write some sort of fic based off of the image.
Oh, uh… if you don't know who Ryoji is, then this fic is spoiler-ridden and therefore v.v. dangerous.
The title is taken from April 19, 2006.
Minato Arisato did not realize it until much letter, but he had actually met Ryoji a long time ago, well before he even knew about him, about Pharos, and about himself. It had happened as it usually does in Tartarus – one second you're running up the stairs with your comrades and in the next, you're on the next floor, completely alone, surrounded by shadows.
He had thought he had seen a boy up ahead, someone his age; someone human, maybe, except for the fact that he was shrouded in the sort of white that's brilliant enough to radiate its own strange light. His first instinct, of course, was to approach the other – perhaps the boy was another Fuuka, someone lost in the tower after staying too late at school. Then the boy had morphed into something terrible, something that seemed to be made of the very shadows he was surrounded by, with the mask of a monster for a head and cape of silver coffins.
There had been no time to call for back-up, no place to run – Minato also didn't want to try and find his comrades, because there was no way they'd be able to take this guy on. He had stood his ground, then, lifted his sword close to his chest and resigned himself to not coming home with the rest of them at the end of the Dark Hour. He still remembers what it was like, standing with his back to the wall, watching Death itself fly towards him on invisible wings.
Minato had expected the first slash to cut him in half. What happened, instead, was the creature standing before him, filling the air with nothing but the sound of its breathing. It had a very human hand, he remembers, one that reached out in that moment to move the hair out of his eyes and trace the lines of his face.
An arrow from the left sent the creature fleeing, and by the time he turned back from watching Yukari coming in to rescue him, Death was gone.
Minato was sleepless for the first week, mulling over the encounter – it took exams, social linking and the thrills and chills of the Tartarus for him to bury the memory somewhere deep and focus on other things. Then he met Ryoji for the first time around, spotted his long fingers and knew what it might be like, for the other boy to touch him.