Beckoning, Wings Outstretched [The World Ends With You, Joshua/Hanekoma, PG]

[toujourspret.livejournal.com]

Title: Beckoning, Wings Outstretched
Author:toujourspret
Rating: PG
Warnings: suggestive themes; spoilers like WHOAH. If you haven't finished Another Day, skip this one.
Word count: 600
Summary: Every artist aches for imperfect permanence, even as he works toward perfect chaos.




He can feel it hissing over his skin; Sanae’s creating again. That gentle buzz, cool and slightly sticky until it’s dried. He finds Sanae standing in the back streets of Udagawa, a can of paint clutched in his hand. Sanae leans in, cigarette clenched between his teeth, and shakes the can again. He listens to the rhythmic clatter of the paint being agitated, revels in the ticklish feeling of paint applied delicately. Expertly. He trails his fingers along the wet paint and smirks when they come away sticky-red, twin smears scarring the character on the wall. Sanae frowns at him.

“What are you doing to my city, Sanae?” Yoshiya asks, voice lilting almost girlishly. His fingers smack and pull at each other when he presses red fingertip to red fingertip.

“I’m working on a new mural. A focal point. Someplace for the players to gather,” Sanae tells him, biting down on the end of his crooked, broken cigarette as he sprays. Another floating symbol forms, glowing almost bloody against the mish-mash of graffiti on the wall. Above Sanae’s current project, a zephyr blows rabbits along until they are wolves, riding hard and fast across the length of the wall until they disappear into a giant pink ear. The line work is crude, amateur. Sanae’s is better.

“It feels good,” Yoshiya tells him, and Sanae’s arm falters. The line comes out crooked. Yoshiya grins when Sanae swears, correcting the stroke, and sits back on his heels. “Like butterflies,” Yoshiya says. His fingers flitter up his own arm, raising delicate hairs and gooseflesh along the way.

Sanae stares at him, drawing a long drag from his cigarette. After he exhales slowly, billowing smoke wreathing his head to trail in loose circles toward the sky, he begins to look less unnerved by the statement. More intrigued. He trails a finger through the wet paint and smacks his fingers together. “Did you feel that?”

“No,” Yoshiya says. Sanae raises an eyebrow and drags the stream of paint across a pale, bare forearm. “Yes,” Yoshiya hisses, and when his eyelashes flicker interest, Sanae bites back a triumphant smirk.

“Take off your shirt,” he suggests, and Yoshiya peers sardonically at him beneath moon-pale lashes. “I don’t want to get it dirty,” Sanae tells him, and they both know he’s lying. Yoshiya reaches up to coax mother of pearl buttons from the buttonholes of his Western-style shirt, and Sanae rifles through his vandal’s bag of paints and sprays and stencils. The horsehair brush tickles against Yoshiya’s ribs as Sanae traces the angle.

“There’s nothing on that brush,” Yoshiya tells him, feeling the exact moment creamy-cold paint slithers into existence on his skin.

“There is now,” Sanae replies, and neither of them knows who’s performed that particular miracle. The shirt falls to the asphalt as Sanae paints vivid streaks across white skin like tribal tattoos. In just a few teasing strokes, a panther rests curled in the hollow of the Composer’s armpit, claws extended menacingly toward his navel even as the elegant tail curls gracefully in the small of his back. Yoshiya hums in satisfaction as the brush glides against him, always tantalizingly wet, always just the right color.

Sanae stabs it against his skin and the stiff hair prickles. “I wish this were a needle,” he says, and Yoshiya smiles benevolent.

“Don’t be afraid to disappear, Sanae,” the Composer says, even as dried paint flecks away from his skin. Behind him on the underpass wall, spray painted red wings glow, beckon, draw. Closer. Come closer, they plead, and Sanae doesn’t know yet if they’re angelic or demonic.