Title: Oceans and Glaciers
By: Sei-chan-1999
Summary: She's still a teenager. He's a few years away from thirty. Their very existence together is wrong, sacrilegious and unholy, but it's happening right before her eyes and there's nothing she can do about it.
Warning: Subaru x Arashi, Implied adult situations.
Rating: T
Disclaimer: If I owned Subaru, I wouldn't be writing fan-fiction about him for God's sake. I'd be finishing up X with Clamp. Seeing as I'm just another common high-school student, I conclude that I own none of the characters.
XXX
When she wakes up that morning to see that his side of the bed is empty and that he's left the sheets unfolded and rumpled, she tightens her mouth and clenches her fists, feeling a wave of nausea overtake her.
When she gets up unsteadily, silently seething as she begins to fold it for him, she smells the familiar aroma of cooking food wafting up the stairs and instantly feels guilty for her cruel thoughts.
She catches sight of herself in the mirror and even though she's never been particularly vain, she gathers up her messy hair and pins it up high to make herself more presentable. It's something that surprises her, because for as long as she can remember, she's always left her long black hair down.
Not that he'd care. And even if he did, he wouldn't be the one to pass judgment on her.
She walks down the stairs, pulling the shirt down consciously. It's one of his old ones; something she must've grabbed last night while mistaking it to be hers, in her hurry to be sound asleep when he returned after his walk.
They're so similar these days that she can mix up their clothes.
She sits down at their dining table, her head down, staring at the blank wood and hears him walk in and set down a large dish in front of her. He puts his own plate before his place carefully and ceramic clatters against timber.
"Good morning, Arashi-chan."
It took him six months to bring himself to call her that.
She takes a deep breath and looks up.
"Good morning, Subaru-san."
He sits opposite to her and when she looks at the food, she realizes that he's made toast and soup.
The bread is a little underdone but he's added a generous amount of butter to her slices and almost nothing to his. Her soup has been carefully flavored. She can tell from the very smell, but the salt and pepper has been left out for her in case she finds it disagreeable.
She's still a teenager. He's a few years away from thirty.
Their existence together is wrong, sacrilegious and unholy but it's happening right before her eyes and there's nothing she can do about it.
She stares at him.
Subaru has let his hair grow out recently and he wears black almost all the time now. She made him a scarf for his birthday and he uses it and treats it with the same care he gives everything else in his life, whether it's a rare cockroach in the kitchen, a stubbornly dirty pan in the kitchen sink….or her.
His eyes are green and gold.
He sees her observing him and tolerates it as he drinks his soup, but when she doesn't lower her gaze, he puts his bowl down and looks at her questioningly.
"Is anything the matter, Arashi-chan?"
She jumps and puts her hands in her lap, as if trying to cower or shrink or just vanish, but that's stupid of her…
She has nothing more to hide from him. He is the only living person who will ever know her so and the same applies to her.
They're far too similar and that makes the sting so much worse.
"I'm sorry," she says simply and tries to take a bite of her toast.
Too much butter. It's slippery in her throat and the bread is still limp in the middle. She puts it down.
"Are you feeling better today?" Subaru asks her and she hates the way he asks her that, because it's the same way she would've asked him that….if he was still there.
He wouldn't have ever asked after her in a voice that was so…calm.
So dead.
Sorata would've laughed and cackled and gotten her to throw something at him in frustration and then he would have said something in that suddenly serious way of his…something where the weight of the concern and solemnity in his eyes would threaten to unbalance her usual sense of propriety.
Sorata was a turbulent ocean that moved, pulsed, created tsunamis and never let anything settle before mercilessly tossing it up into chaos again.
Subaru is a glacier.
There's just too much ice to make out what's underneath the green.
And Arashi isn't sure if there's anything at all, or if she's standing on a sheet of frozen water that could break under her feet any second and send her hurtling to death.
"I'm fine, Subaru-san," she says calmly and puts a hand over her stomach, because that's obviously what he was referring to.
It was an accident, something done hastily months ago, an uncharacteristic instant of recklessness from both of them, when they had nothing else but each other and needed something, anything to leave their mark on each other and in the end, she wasn't sure if she left any mark on him but he…
He had definitely left his mark on her.
"Shall I get you some water, Arashi-chan?" Subaru offers and she jumps, flushing as she stops herself from going over what happened that night again. She feels that terrified little jolt again…the one that's been happening off and on since the possibility of what's been haunting her first entered her mind.
She feels like she's going to fall off her chair and sways dangerously, maybe because of her condition, maybe because of the fear of what he doesn't know or the weight of it all crushing her from above.
Arashi hears the table scraping in protest as he gets up quickly and then feels Subaru supporting her chair from behind as she pulls herself together.
"I need to tell you something," she says hurriedly and she has to, before he faces her again and she's looking into those passive emerald eyes once again.
"Arashi, you need to-"
"No! Listen to me!"
They both fall silent, shocked.
He's left out the honorific.
She raised her voice at him.
Subaru is the first one to speak. He doesn't move from behind her.
"What is it?" he asks and his voice is soft.
That makes her tear up at last…he's just like her and every time he speaks, she feels herself growing number and colder like a flickering flame being buffeted by freezing winds on all sides.
"The child," she says desperately, crying, feeling him start a little at that, "I don't know, Subaru-san, I don't know whose-"
He tells her to slow down and start again. He can't understand her broken words.
"Subaru-san," Arashi says at last, wiping her eyes, feeling angry with herself for her outburst, "I'm not sure who the child's father is."
He waits and since Arashi knows him so well, knows herself, she hastens to make herself clear.
"You could be the father," she says and then steels herself as she turns to face him, to admit the truth she's been avoiding out of pure fear.
"Or Sorata."
Subaru looks shocked. His eyes are widened and his lips are a little apart as he looks down at her, speechless, as if he's unable to believe that she…that she…
Of course he doesn't know about that. He wasn't there then.
His studies her carefully, still holding the chair, but it's the early stages and the shirt she's wearing, his shirt, hides her.
Arashi doesn't bother to stop the next surge of tears down her face.
Subaru then does something she would've never expected from him.
He surprises her.
And he smiles.
He actually does and then after a moment of hesitation, he tucks a few escaped strands of hair behind her ear.
"It doesn't matter," Subaru says, "It doesn't bother me, Arashi-chan."
"How could it not?" she asks, almost whispering.
Then she understands.
A glacier. With nothing inside.
But Subaru goes on.
"Whoever the father may be," he continues, and he sounds curiously vulnerable, like he's choosing his words with care, "The child is a separate person…a boy or a girl who will define their own lives, irrespective of whom their parents may be."
"Our only duty is to guide the child, teach him or her what we can and then watch."
Arashi takes in the words and then shuts her eyes. She opens them again seconds later to look at the world outside their window.
"But how?" she breathes at last, "We're completely alone."
It's June 8, 2000 and Subaru and she are the only ones on Earth.
"We're not."
His voice is firm and certain. Suddenly, she's glad that he's elder than her.
Subaru gently rests a hand over her stomach. And this time, she doesn't flinch away but allows herself to lean back against him.
XXX
'When two or more individuals come together and influence one another, they are said to constitute a social group.'-Ogburn and Nimkoff.
XXX
Author's Note:
Besides my unreasonably fanatical love for Subaru x Kamui, I've always liked Subaru x Arashi even though there's nothing for them in canon. They're both so calm and composed and perfect that I always wondered what they would be like if they ended up together.
The quote at the end is from my 11th grade Sociology textbook and the second I saw it, I knew I had to use it in a fic. I hope to God my teacher never reads this.
Please read and review!