Disclaimer: I do not, nor will I ever, own the characters in this story.
Sigh and feel my fingertips brush against your
Fingertips
Let me show you how to be…
He's so close. So, so close. My nose is tingling with the softened smell of cologne and earth. Sweet, green-grey earth that swirls around me, holding me with the arms he would never give. Will never. He smells like black and brown and yellow. Like midnight in the middle of a school parking lot, just next to the woods. Like dark and dreamy and not-so-sure-he's-real.
This morning, at the hotel, everyone had been awake and downstairs, ready to eat and go explore Kyoto, but he had waited and knocked at my room's door.
"'C'mon, Yuki, let's get goin'!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming. Geez, hold your horses."
I opened the door, and there you were; tall and lean and waiting for me with that smile. Your smile…
We had gone down and sat next to each other for breakfast, stealing the couch in the corner from the rest of the group. Bagels, cream cheese, orange juice, cereal, a whole buffet, just at our small table. It was still dark out, but we liked it. We didn't even talk that much, we just sat there. Just sat there and soaked in the sun's first beams of light as they peeked over the buildings. At least, you did. I couldn't stop staring at you. Bright brown eyes softly focused on the rising sun. Green flannel hanging around your shoulders, making you seem like a hanger more than a wearer.
I can just imagine being that shirt. Clinging to you desperately just to feel myself smooth over your skin, to smother you woven warmth. To be of use to you. If only…
"Kakeru!"
"Hey, buddy, what up?"
"What's going down in K-town?"
Everyone flocks to you eventually. I don't know why I expected any alone time, but it's okay. So long as you're here. But you won't be for long. You'll get pulled away by Kimi, or Suko or Mayko. I want to believe that I mean something to you. That I'm not just another moment you pass through with your liquid perfection. With your delicate hands that tear me open, part me like waves to make room for your reality. I just need to believe for a little while longer. Just a little. Please, just leave me here for a while; let me soak in my adolescent. self-loathing for today, and tomorrow. As long as I can pretend that you think of me, I'll be okay. Smiling, dying.
"C'mon, Yuki, sing along! We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow-"
Reluctantly, I join in, just to see you smile again. I don't know where this obsession began. Maybe it started when I told you everything I'd ever felt for Tohru, admitting my childishness to you without shame. Maybe it started when I was abandoned by my mother and left to watch my hope for escape die every night, wishing an angel would come and help me, would make it all better. Please, send an angel to make me stop crying. When you found me, saved me, you became my angel.
"Suicide," you said, " killing yourself, it's like stealing something from the rest of the world. Everything you could have ever become, everything you would have created, it'll all disappear. All of it, gone with that one last breath."
You never realized it, but you saved me then. I didn't want to take any love I could give away from you. I wanted to give it to you, suffocate you with it and watch you drown in everything I felt for you. Feel for you. I wanted to believe that you could be my angel. But as the people continue to surround you, holding you and laughing with you, I know; I'm not enough. I'm just not enough. Even if I told you everything you've ever made me feel, everything I've decided to become, none of it would matter. You're too perfect for me. Too perfect for these marred, salted hands to hold.
Standing up from the couch, I move to go to the bathroom, and you don't even notice, not that I expected you to, but I'd hoped. I push past the people flocking to reach you, to have you. You laugh behind me, the loud, low vibrations hitting my chest and filling me with tears. I turn around to look at you again, glistening in the bright yellow of the sunlight.
"I love you."
A/N: When I wrote the part about suffocating Kakeru with Yuki's love, I meant for it to be more of reference to the fullness one would feel when drowning. The feeling of being completely overwhelmed by Yuki's love in a way that screams, " No more! I have no room left!" Aparently, some people didn't catch onto that.