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Coalescence only worked as their Forte when they held someone’s hand, yet the interlinking of their lips felt just as right.
Yuma’s hands slid down, tracing the outline of Makoto’s body, until they stopped firmly at his waist. He clasped tightly, pressing Makoto further into him, grounding him in place so he wouldn’t move away. Their lips parted for a little to catch their breath—swapping and passing their exhaled nitrogen and carbon dioxide.
“A covalent bond,” Yuma murmured, almost into Makoto’s mouth. He lifted his eyelids slightly only to look into Makoto’s eyes, as though confirming something.
“Hm?” Makoto hummed, questioning.
Yuma was panting, grasp on Makoto snug all the same. Now that he said it, he had to elaborate, explain further.
“Chemical bonding between two atoms, in which they share their valence electrons to achieve stability,” he defined. Makoto could feel the vibration of each word on his skin and it was quite distracting from his point. “The nuclei of the atoms experience strong attraction to the bonded pair, thus making them require a large amount of energy to break.”
“…I am aware.” Makoto stared into Yuma, still confused. “What warranted a sudden chemistry revision?” Yuma had a habit of rambling about the most arbitrary things, related or not, whenever they spent time together, no matter the nature of it. It was a cute way to fill the silence, but when he did so during their more intimate moments, it threw Makoto off.
“Doesn’t it remind you of us?” He asked so with childlike wonder in his voice, ready to depart into yet another information dump, and Makoto only raised his eyebrow in signal to carry on. “A non-polar bond, between identical atoms? They are the same yet seek each other out to form a full octet through sharing. Only by being together are they stable.” Finally, Yuma’s hand moved. So did his gaze. Both shifted slowly over Makoto’s ribs, towards the leftward side of his chest. He pressed his hand flat against it, observing intently. “If the nuclei are our hearts, and the shared pair is these feelings, wouldn’t we complete each other?”
The question almost made Makoto chuckle. It was so sappy, cheesy when it was usually not Yuma’s part in the confounding relationship they found themselves in.
“And I thought I was corny,” Makoto sighed, shaking his head. “Clearly, you beat me.”
“Come on…” Yuma pouted, blinking twice. Makoto huffed in disbelief at the naïveté of his original.
“Fine. Perhaps nitrogen gas. Essential for survival, and yet highly unreactive.” People could not use up the nitrogen gas they breathed in, abundant in the air around them. And yet, it was vital for plant growth, the very thing producing the oxygen their bodies needed through photosynthesis. Inert to things around it, but a key aspect of life. In a way, it was them. While they worked alone, by themselves, they still made the world a better place, each in their own way. “It has a triple covalent bond. One sigma, two pi bonds. Sigma being the strongest, it would stand for the life and feelings we shared,” Makoto clarified, trailing his right palm lower, until he could interlock it with Yuma’s fingers, identical to his. “Pi would be weaker, but a bond nonetheless. A connection through our experiences after our lives diverged, past the fork in the path.”
Using his free hand, Makoto squeezed the back of Yuma’s neck, pulling him in closer.
Yuma flushed, giving the explanation a nod. “I was thinking that, too.”
“Of course you were,” he closed his eyes. They might have changed, but their way of thinking was still the same. “Now, shut up and kiss me again.”
It was fascinating, how the wish to share the thought contained enough energy to break up the dinitrogen. But that didn’t carry any weight anymore, not when Yuma leaned back in, connecting them once more. Forming the bond, their nuclei experienced mutual—electrostatic—attraction that pulled them together again. Yuma was right. It felt complete like this.