A Caress of Flesh: Part Two
"A little jealousy in a relationship is healthy. It's nice to know that someone is afraid to lose you."
By Rykea Night

With December's passing, January flared to life in wisps of feathered snowflakes and heated clouds of the purest gray. The goddess of vicious rime lay strewn against the hollow of the moon, her vile acts forgotten with the swift coil of a gently frostbitten breeze, the light passing of cloud on a seamless day. But the air's foreboding chill remained, prickling vulnerable skin with its bitter grasp, gnawing into naïve thoughts of sunshine and intoxicating warmth. It continued to linger, to torment, to remind.

Fuji sighed, sinking into the comfort of his folded arms that rested upon the desk, eying the blank chalkboard, the empty chairs. The day was done, the activities had ended, and yet he couldn't bring himself home. At home his conscious only tore him apart, filling his mind with scattered images of indulgence and passion, betrayal and grief. It was unbearable; the pain he caused, the reflection of it in Tezuka's hunter glare—the frozen ache.

Clenching his jaw, Fuji rested his head in his arms, the glimmers of his self-induced nightmare tearing at the back of his mind, blinding his bleeding eyes. The crimes were his and would forever be, but the burden was suffocating. He pushed the only thing that mattered away, crippling his own emotions in a foolish act of desperation, throwing his only admiration into a game of Russian roulette. And he was the one that pulled the trigger.

Grabbing his messenger bag off the whimsical gleam of freshly washed floor, he let his frustration guide him through the doorway and across the corridors, past the string of classrooms and down the northwest staircase. With each footstep, each bitter breath, the images only continued to burn, his flesh still sticky and warm, the sensation sickening his soul. He wished to scream, to cry in raw agony, to gorge out his eyes, but it would change nothing. His sins, his reprehensible recollections, his acrimonious guilt—they were his to bear, his to bury in the abyss of his vile, blackened heart.

Collapsing against the exterior of the building, his flesh began to quiver, his throat torn and ravished, his eyes oozing translucent blood. January's flowing spirit washed over him, her kisses of warmth wrapped in beads of icicle poems, slithering through his uneven tresses and brushing over his pallid flesh with sensual grace. Yet December still possessed her hold, the essence of frost gliding over his skin, bringing forth her territorial marks, continuing to freeze the open scars. It was her hold that bewitched him, her hold that entrapped him, violated him, raped him. He, too, was a victim of her sadistic lust.

"You're going to catch cold if you remain like this."

Fuji almost laughed through his tears, the reverie too bittersweet as he wrapped his arms around his chest. His throat was scorched sore, unwilling to swallow; his bare hands were streaked in mazes of violent veins, skeletal and grey. But the tears continued to fall, streaking his gauntly face in rivers of shame, the blackened circles under his eyes sinking deeper.

Carefully wrapping his scarf around Fuji's neck, Tezuka's hunter eyes refused to meet Fuji's sickening stare, his hands rigid and unsure. There was hesitance in his movements, a sense of concealment, hurt. He was afraid, Fuji realized all to easily. Afraid to touch him.

"Don't force yourself," he finally whispered, coiling away from Tezuka's grasp, sinking back against the protective chill of the outer wall. "I wouldn't want to touch me either."

Enthralled in the rush of movement, Fuji barely caught Tezuka's sudden rage, the sparks of augmenting frustration cast within his sight, the shimmering flicker of the purest crimson caught within his darkened eyes. His head colliding with the concrete, Fuji's lips trembled as Tezaka stole away his open mouth, sweet saliva crawling over his tongue, the warmth of foreign flesh pulsating within his own. His legs buckled as Tezuka slid into him, thrusting his frame against the wintry wall, pinning his hands against the rime. The longing, the aggravation, the hurt—it bled from one into the other, sweet nips of heated lust caressing the wounds, stroking the scars. And it was beautiful.

Freeing his mouth, Fuji's chest heaved, his powdered breath crawling over Tezuka's burgundy lips. They rested against one another, their breathing coiled in a heated rhythm, lingering against the other's flesh, their lips quivering with the cold, lusting for more.

Entwining his fingers deeply with his lover's, Fuji opened his gentle eyes, letting the tears flow, letting his sins wash away in a river of guilt. "I'm sorry," he whispered gently, feeling Tezuka's body stiffen against his own. "You have no reason to listen to me, to forgive me, but please don't despise me. That is the only thing I have the audacity to ask."

Resting his eyes, their rigid bodies still locked, Tezuka let the silence come, the null of unspoken words entwining its spell around them, locking them away in its chilling grasp. Sighing, his hollow breath warmed Fuji's chill-flushed cheeks, thawing the streaks of salty remorse. "I cannot despise you, Fuji, regardless of your actions."

The older boy felt his tearing conscious flutter in the pit of his stomach, turn his insides, pound against the shell of his corpse, letting the empyreal breath of aspiration slither through his teeth, even with Tezuka's chilling words.

"Forgiveness, however, is another issue."

Feeling his throat burn, Fuji slumped back against the wall, wrenching away from Tezaka's clutch. "Please, I—"

"Have you ever truly wondered why I avoided you this past month, walked away without a word?" The question was not one to be answered, which both boys knew. "It's hard to lose something close to your flesh, your mind. Jealousy burns, and it broke me to the core. You broke me."

Coiling the words over his tongue, the prodigy only shook his head with lament, his elegant frame withering to nothing, crumbling to bits with his shattered aspirations. "Then walk away. Leave me be." It was finally over, he realized. It was their confrontation, their requiem, their repulsive end. And he deserved it.

Taking a step back, Tezuka slid his unscathed hands into his coat pockets, leaning against the frostbitten wall. "They say jealousy is a sin, a dreadful emotion of repulsive demise. It became my shield, my savior—my sin. And with that realization, it made us equal."

"We're anything but equal," Fuji whispered blankly, his voice nothing but a ravaged breath.

Tezuka briefly smiled at the comment, letting his gaze travel to the auburn glow of the setting sun, tainting the white-clad sky in streaks of bubblegum pink and candy corn orange. "Perhaps a little jealousy is healthy in a relationship."

"I thought you said you couldn't forgive me."

"It's not that I cannot forgive you," the hunter-eyed boy replied, "I simply find it hard forgiving someone who cannot learn to forgive himself." Uncoiling the scarf from his lover's neck, Tezuka lightly caressed Fuji's salt streaked cheek, letting his warm fingers taint the pallid flesh, gently, sensually, flooding the boy's mind with visions of passion and lust, pleasure and pain.

"I love you," he cursed, sinking back against the security of the concrete, viciously running his hands through his sandy tresses, gripping the hair at the roots.

The fading figure halted, throwing his gaze back over his shoulder at the crumbling boy. "When you are ready to embrace your demise, you may return to me."

"Why?" Fuji screamed back, his shoulders slumped, his bare skin covered in Goosebumps and snowflakes, sickening sweat and apprehensive longing. "Why console me, embrace me?"

"Sometimes," Tezuka replied as January's veil sprinkled fresh fragments of crystallized heaven, "sometimes it's nice to know someone is still afraid to lose you."

Watching the only one he loved sink into a blaze of swirling snowflakes, Fuji collapsed upon winter's forgotten gown, digging his frostbitten fingers into the brittle white-veiled earth, screaming in raw agony.

December's sensual cruelty had cast her tainting laugh once again.

La fin.