cemetery gaits | mini event & eight
Akashi is a helix of curved edges and practiced lines, crooked smiles that drag out for miles and never quite find their end (an intricate mess of words that poke and prod like teeth, grazing spines and tugging at weaknesses -- politics required control, and he had enough to spare).
There's a tidal wave of masses ready to crumble at his feet like the walls of Babylon, slowly but surely playing into his hand, even if they're unaware of it; wraps strings around his fingers with ease and tugs them all into position -- it's a game, he knows; they've simply yet to realize it. (The dance floor's a wooden shogi board and the ever-twirling couples are the pieces, dropped into place and moving with the bend and break of his fingers.)
It's a rare moment, to be left to the sidelines to analyze his next move (he's been caught up in the whirlwind of diplomacy for slowly passing hours, and the weight of it all is beginning to feel like an anchor -- a slow sinking ship), but he appreciates it, nonetheless. Too much champagne and tampered punch is causing a reckoning to unfold -- semisweet royalty plucked from their thrones and flushed rosy with regret, a lack of control that makes him sick to the core.
(If anything, he will be his own downfall.)
With a grace akin to a predator, he takes steady strides over to the refreshments table, glancing over one of its occupants with an unwavering gaze (studying, observing, pinpointing). Tilts his head as he fingers the rim of a punch glass, smiling over at the other boy (sleek and steady; the calm before the storm).
"I do hope you're taking caution."
"It'd be a shame to see you fall into the trap the rest of them have."
(He tangles spider webs through his fingers and hopes he falls into his, instead.)