Yakari Drabbles

Prompt 01: Air

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He could recall the exact moment when it had happened. At first he blamed the accursed symptoms on anything and everything but the disease. The sensual warmth that rushed into his cheeks when she walked into the room—it had to have been the lighting in the house; he always thought that family had too many damn lamps. The soft pang of disappointment when she was out with friends—he had grown accustomed to her sitting diagonally across from him when he invaded their house at supper time, she was disrupting routine, nothing more. The random thoughts about her that made a smile sneak onto his otherwise concrete features—he saw her almost daily, of course she'd be on his mind just as her brother and his brother tended to be.

Then there was that rapid increase in his heartbeat when she smiled at him; so simple a gesture required no such response. He found no fault of which he could blame, not unless he counted how he had a tendency to hold his breath while she was speaking, an act that elicited a threatening pound from within his chest for the want of air.

So Yamato had no choice but to admit to himself that it had happened to him. He had fallen in love and there was no more denying it.

His first thought was to ignore it. Hell, he had forced himself to have feelings for Sora long after his initial attraction to her had faded and all he had was the desire to feel something towards her. That hadn't worked out, however, and it had nearly ruined their friendship completely. He wouldn't react and eventually he could make himself lose those feelings towards her.

A small voice in his head ordered Yamato to scream it for all to hear in the middle of a crowded sidewalk downtown, but reason quickly doused that idea. He knew he wasn't supposed to fall for her, not for his best friend's younger sister.

Not for his younger brother's girlfriend.

So Yamato waited until he got home and instead of shouting it to the world he shouted it into his pillow. He couldn't express his feelings, perhaps, but that wasn't about to stop him from having them. Maybe Hikari was out of reach, even for him, but he didn't want to just let go.

She was the air that slowed the violent thumping of his wretched heart, even if she was the reason his breath was withheld and his body ached for more.

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I'm going to try to do this alphabetically rather than randomly. It's the same idea as the original. I needed to put something up, didn't I?