Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own these characters; they belong to Shungiku Nakamura. I'm not making any money out of this and no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: I find it incredibly annoying that prohibits the use of symbols/non-alphabetic characters as paragraph dividers!
Two Quatrains and a Sestet
The rocket describes an arc against lush trees and blue sky, blue like the tall kid's eyes as he does silly things to make an old man's day a little brighter. Despite being ambushed earlier, Hiroki thinks he may get to like him.
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Yellow leaves are whirling around them and Nowaki is laughing, looking like he'll soon stretch out his arms and begin to dance with the leaves. Nowaki the typhoon, Hiroki thinks; this is his element.
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The sky is the colour of lead and it starts to snow, but Nowaki's hands are warm. So are his lips and other parts of him, as Hiroki is soon to discover.
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When Nowaki pulls him in under a cherry tree, petals falling like snowflakes and settling in their hair, Hiroki is about to say they need to stop living in a romance novel. Then he changes his mind.
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No one should look so miserable on such a gorgeous summer day. No one so pretty should be so sad. Nowaki is aware of the gaps in that logic, but he pulls the young man with tears on his face up from the bench and into his own life.
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The look on Hiro-san's face as Nowaki laughingly wades through drifts of leaves, kicking them up in clouds, is indescribable. "You're such a kid sometimes," he says. "But you love me for it," Nowaki smiles. Hiro-san doesn't reply, but his eyes do, in the affirmative.
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There's only snow for a day that winter. Hiro-san loves snow – as long as he's snug and warm indoors. Nowaki makes a snowball and puts it in the freezer for him to enjoy at his leisure.
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The red weeping cherry blossom makes them draw a breath and stop to admire. When Hiro-san softly recites haiku, gazing at the tree, the blossoms fade into the background and he is all Nowaki sees.
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Their first real kiss is strange, with Akihiko's face still imprinted on Hiroki's mind. A strange kiss, one Hiroki isn't entirely sure at first that he wants, but gradually he realises it's only been waiting to happen.
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There are shower kisses, many of them, in a wet, misty world where the room is obscured but their senses aren't, and Nowaki's skin is even smoother than usual.
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Drunk kisses are nice; uninhibited and sloppy, and nearly always leading to sex.
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The married-for-20-years goodbye kisses when Hiroki leaves for work drive him up the wall with their triteness. Kisses with Nowaki should be special, precious, not handed over like a packed lunch, not like an everyday thing you'll eventually stop noticing.
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There's a series of kisses that aren't kisses, only in their minds. Like their toes touching in the hot water at the public baths, their warm thighs aligned when they sit next to each other on the train, or their eyes meeting when they order coffee. (The things Nowaki's eyes are saying just then are not fit to be expressed in public.)
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That kiss in the library, wet from rain and tears, is cataclysmic; Hiroki falling apart, both of them laying themselves bare like never before. Somehow it feels right that they're surrounded by books when it happens, like Hiroki's life is coming together after being shattered: books, confessions, and a kiss that seals their future.