The Snake and the Message

(Akane's PoV)

—

The very first thing I registered upon waking up was his weight.

Not the room, not the light, and not even the sound of my own breathing.

Just the warm, solid shape of Shin's chest beneath my cheek and the slow, even rhythm of his heart moving somewhere under my ear, tapping quietly against the bone of my temple like a very patient metronome.

I didn't open my eyes, and to be honest, I never opened my eyes right away. It was one of the very few luxuries I had allowed myself when I started to sleep with Shin, those three or four seconds between waking and consciousness where I got to just exist, warm and horizontal, in a body that was for once not being asked to defend itself against everything.

The sun was pressing softly against my closed eyelids in that specific pale-gold way of late morning through curtains, and somewhere outside, a bird was doing whatever birds do.

I burrowed my forehead deeper into Shin's sternum without opening my eyes, tucking my nose against his warm skin.

He smelled like sleep and sandalwood. Perfect.

Then, after a few instants, beneath me, his chest rose in a slow, patient sigh.

"Good morning, Akane," he murmured, his voice rough with sleep.

"No," I mumbled against his chest.

"No?" He said, confused.

"No good morning. No morning at all. Not yet." I replied, my voice muffled

"Ah. Okay, understood." He said.

I heard the smile in his voice more than I felt it. His hand moved slowly up my back beneath the blanket, his fingers tracing lazy patterns between my shoulder blades.

Then, after a while, he shifted his arm slightly beneath my head and let out a small, quiet grunt.

"Akane." He called me.

"Mm."

"I can't feel my arm anymore." He said, trying to break free.

"Mm." 

"Akane. It has been three hours. My arm is now a dead limb, and I think there is nerve damage. I might have to amputate." He protested.

After his words, I finally cracked one eye open and lifted my head just enough to look up at him.

His hair was a complete disaster, with dark strands sticking up in three different directions like he had lost a fight with a pillow, and his eyes were the specific soft, half-lidded gray-brown of a person who was awake against his will.

His cheek was slightly creased from the pillow, and a small line of dried drool had traced the corner of his mouth at some point in the night, which he had not yet noticed.

He was, objectively, ridiculous, and I couldn't help but stare at him for a moment.

Then I dropped my head back down against his chest.

"Love hurts, ghost boy," I said flatly. "I know. Bear it with dignity and sacrifice for your girlfriend's happiness." I added, snuggling into him.

"That's not— that's not what love hurts means, Akane—" He tried to break free again.

"It is now." I didn't move.

"Akane." He called my name with a desperate sigh.

"I've made the decision, Ishikawa," I said, leaving no room for argument.

He let out a slow, resigned sigh beneath my ear, and his hand kept moving in those small, patient circles against my back.

For a long moment, neither of us spoke while the sun kept pressing softly against the window.

The bird outside kept doing its thing, and Shin's heart kept tapping quietly under my temple.

I did not want to move.

I did not want to move for all the future years to come, in fact.

If someone had offered me an official contract at this exact moment guaranteeing that the rest of my life would be spent here, on this specific chest, in this specific room, with this specific beautiful idiot breathing softly beneath me, I would have signed it in blood without reading a single clause.

Then Shin, quietly, murmured: "I'm going to tickle you if you don't get up."

I stopped breathing for exactly one second.

Then my eyes snapped open, my head lifted an inch, and I stared at him with the flattest, most murderous glare I could produce at close range.

"Don't you fuckin' dare, Shin. I will kill you." I whispered.

He smiled. Very slowly.

"Three," he said.

I clamped my arms around his ribs tighter, tucking myself against him with the specific defensive stubbornness of a woman who had spent most of her years perfecting the art of not being moved.

"Two." He continued.

"Shin." 

"One—"

In that moment, I shot up out of the bed a full second before his fingers could reach my ribs, throwing the blanket off me in a swirl of dark fabric, twisting into a long, arched stretch with my arms lifted high above my head and my back curving into the pale gold light coming through the window.

I held the stretch for a long, satisfying moment, my eyes closed, my shoulders rolling with a small, quiet crackle.

Then I lowered my arms and glanced down at him with a smug little smirk.

"Reflexes," I said flatly. "Superior wolf reflexes. Take notes, Ishibaka."

But Shin didn't answer. Not even an ironic word.

I looked at his face.

He was staring at me.

Not blinking. Not moving. Just... staring, with the specific quiet, slightly stunned expression of a person who had opened his eyes in the morning and been ambushed by something he hadn't been ready for.

I noticed that his eyes were traveling slowly across the pale line of my collarbone, across the bare skin of my shoulder, down along the dark line of ink that curled up from beneath my ribs toward the center of my chest.

His mouth was slightly open, and I raised one eyebrow at him, clearly confused.

"What are you looking at?" I said flatly, tilting my head. "Do I have something in my hair?"

He blinked, once.

Then, with a small, sheepish smile that did not fully hide the fact that he had just been thoroughly caught, he cleared his throat and said:

"I was wondering how much that snake you have tattooed hurt. Oh, and I was also admiring how beautiful you are, but that's a secondary detail."

Something warm dropped through the center of my chest and rolled all the way down to my stomach.

I did not let it show on my face.

Instead, I stepped forward, leaned down onto the mattress, and pinched his cheek between my thumb and index finger with theatrical severity.

"What would I do without you, ghost boy?" I said flatly, releasing his cheek, but not before kissing him.

Shin laughed softly, rubbing the spot where I had pinched him, his eyes still following the dark curl of the snake along my ribcage.

I lowered myself back onto the edge of the bed, one leg folded beneath me, and let my fingertips trace slowly along the smooth ridged line of the tattoo where it began at the low curve of my ribs.

I was still totally naked in front of him, but I didn't care at all. I felt totally relaxed.

"It hurt a lot," I said quietly, running my thumb along the shaded scale-work near my sternum. "I remember passing out at one point."

Shin raised an eyebrow.

"You passed out? Really?" He asked, surprised.

"Mm." I let my mouth curve into a small, dry smile. "That damn morning I was on an empty stomach. I hadn't eaten in two days because of the stress. I told myself, 'How bad can it be, the other tattoos didn't do anything to me.' But the moment Hoshiko got to this point—" my finger tapped lightly against the ridge of my sternum where the tattoo climbed — "I saw stars, God, and the whole universe. I went into full panic. It was extremely painful. But the result, in the end, was satisfying."

"In fact... it's beautiful. Yuki had really done an amazing job." Shin said, his finger tracing the line of the snake, gently tickling my skin.

Then, he pushed himself up onto one elbow, his hair still ridiculous, and his eyes serious now in that quiet, attentive way of his that always made me want to tell him things I had not planned on telling him.

"And... tell me, does it have a meaning?" he asked.

I glanced down at the dark curl of the snake along my ribs, and for a moment, I didn't answer.

I ran my thumb slowly along one of the curved scales, tracing the path the ink took as it rose from the low place at my hip, wound its way up along my ribcage, and settled finally at the center of my chest, its dark head resting just above the bone that guarded my heart.

"It doesn't have just one meaning, Ishibaka," I said quietly. "That's the point. That's why I chose it."

I lifted my eyes to Shin's face.

"The snake sheds its skin. That's the first thing. It's the animal that gets to become something new without dying. Every time it grows too big for what it was, it leaves the old shape behind on the ground and walks out of it in a body that's the same but not the same. I needed that. When I got this... I needed to know it was possible to leave a version of myself behind without having to erase myself completely."

Shin was quiet, listening to my words.

Then, I traced my finger up along the curve.

"The way it climbs," I continued softly. "From here — " I pressed my palm briefly against my hip, against the low place where the ink began, "— up to here." I let my hand settle over the ridge of my sternum. "That path matters. The ribs are what protect the vital organs. They're the cage. They're where you keep the parts of you that won't survive being touched. So the snake starts at the base of the cage. It climbs up along the walls of the fortress. And it ends here — " my thumb rested lightly against the head of the snake, at the center of my chest, "— on top of the heart."

I let the silence hold for a moment.

"It's a guardian," I said. "That's the second meaning. Snakes have been guardian animals in every ancient culture for a reason. They coil around the thing that matters. They don't strike unless something comes close enough to hurt what they're protecting. So I put one on top of my heart. So that whatever came at me next — whatever tried to get in — would have to get past him first. And you're the only one who did, I guess. Probably because ghosts cannot be physically attacked." I giggled a little.

Shin smiled softly while his eyes stayed on my face. He didn't interrupt. He didn't rush me.

"And the third meaning," I said, quieter now, "is that the snake is both. That's the oldest part of the symbol, and the part almost nobody remembers anymore. The snake is temptation, and it's wisdom. It's the animal that tempted Eve, and it's the animal wrapped around the staff of the healer god. It's poison, and it's medicine. Same body. Same fang. Same everything. The only difference is what it decides to do with itself."

I looked down at the dark ink on my ribcage.

"I liked that," I murmured. "I liked that a lot. Because I'd spent my whole life terrified that I was going to become the poison version. That the blood in my veins was going to decide the outcome for me. That whatever I had inherited from my father was going to run its course, and there was nothing I could do about it. And the snake was the first thing that told me — no. Same body. Same fang. Same everything. The only difference is what it decides to do with itself."

I lifted my eyes back to Shin's face, and saw that his expression was very quiet.

"That's what it means," I said simply. "All of that. It's my reminder. Every time I look at it in the mirror, I get to choose again which one I am. And... since you're in my heart, the snake is also protecting you and our 'love'. All planned, of course—" I said, before giving him a small thumbs-up.

For a long moment, Shin didn't say anything.

Then, slowly, he reached out and let his fingertips settle over the dark head of the snake, just above the bone of my sternum.

His touch was careful, almost reverent, the way you might touch the edge of a page in an old book that you were afraid of damaging.

"He's doing his job," Shin murmured. "The guardian."

I let out a small breath that was almost a laugh.

"He's on active duty," I said dryly. "24/7 since the first line of ink touched my skin."

Shin smiled softly, let his hand drop from my chest, and pushed himself the rest of the way up out of bed.

And then, we 'officially' got up, and the first thing he did was land a small kiss on the top of my head before telling me, "I'm so lucky."

'I love this idiot... It can't be real...' I kept thinking, fighting the urge for a morning round.

Then, he pulled on a soft gray hoodie over his bare torso and gave me one of his older ones to throw on over my sleep shorts, and I padded after him into the kitchen with my hair still a slight disaster from the pillow and my bare feet cold against the wooden floor.

He put the kettle on, while I sat cross-legged on one of the tall counter stools, rested my chin against my palm, and watched him move through the small choreography of his kitchen — reaching for the two mugs on the third shelf, spooning coffee into the drip filter, and also pulling the Lilibat box down from where he had put it on top of the fridge last night.

Then, he set the cereal box in front of me with a small, dry, matter-of-fact motion.

"Backup supply," he said. "I was right, once again." 

"Idiot," I murmured. "I-I don't eat that much—" I added, but I opened the box anyway.

Those cereals were too good.

Outside, the city was doing its ordinary Sunday morning things.

A truck was reversing somewhere in the distance; a woman was calling her small dog on the sidewalk two floors below... Normal stuff.

Then the kettle began to hum quietly, and Shin poured hot water into the drip filter, and the room slowly filled with the specific dark, warm smell of coffee and rain.

I ate cereal with my fingers, one piece at a time, and watched him move through the kitchen, and for the second time in twelve hours, I let myself have another of those foreign moments when my guard was fully lowered.

Once we finished, I immediately stepped closer to him and wrapped my arms around his neck.

"Ghost boy... I think that I'm really... needy. Why don't we go into your room?" I whispered, nibbling on his earlobe.

In that moment, Shin tightened his grip around me and immediately said: "I was thinking the same, you know?" After that, he spanked my butt, making me jump.

A wave of electricity and anticipation ran through my entire body, and I couldn't help but moan a little.

"Damn... Someone is more eager than me..." I said, rubbing against him.

But then, right when we were about to go into his room, my phone vibrated, completely destroying the beautiful mood.

'Tch—'

"Wait a second, honey, let me say 'fuck you' to whoever dared to interrupt us—" I said, moving away from Shin and grabbing my phone.

I glanced at it absently.

The screen lit up in the pale morning light.

There was a single notification. A single message from a contact I had not deleted from my phone in three years and had not spoken to in almost as long.

Something in my chest went still, and my eyes widened.

Shin, across the counter, glanced up from the coffee filter.

"Who is it?" he asked, curious.

I kept staring at the screen, ignoring his words like I didn't hear them.

The vibration had stopped, but the notification was still glowing there, its small preview visible beneath the contact name, and I read it once, then again, then a third time to make sure my brain was actually seeing those words on the screen.

Then, my fingers closed around the phone. Tightened. Tightened more.

"Akane? Are you okay?" Shin said, softer now. "Who is it?"

I lifted my eyes slowly from the phone to his face.

My voice, when it came out, was thin and flat and did not sound like mine at all.

"My mother."

—

Author's note: This chapter was REALLY hard to write. DAMN!