Disclaimer: SD and relevant characters belong to Inoue Takehiko.
Warnings: Angst. Shounen-ai. A sequel, or complement, to "Fall", so may be clearer and have greater effect if "Fall" is read beforehand.
Notes: I find this fic immensely depressing. I think it's because of the sheer desperation – quiet desperation – of it all. The worse part of it is that some people do grow into lives like this, and that was a big part of what made it so tragic to me.
I tweaked my style a bit, though at the end I still reverted to long, dragging sentences. Hope you enjoy the fic – constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.
FLOTSAM
28-year-old Sakuragi Hanamichi is a lucky man.
He lives in a middle-priced apartment, with a kitchen and two rooms. He wakes at 8 am each morning, takes bus route 880 to the factory, and examines computer parts for 8 hours each day. He takes the subway and arrives home at 8 pm each evening.
Hanamichi's partner is immaculate in her disposition. She leaves their bed spotless and crease-free, edges folded crisply at right angles to each other. She arranges and polishes the dishes on the dinner table, which shine coldly in their chilled pearl-white. She beams at Hanamichi with an unchanging smile. She waits patient, silent years for him to ask The Question. She never leaves.
Hanamichi is a lucky man. He changes the channel instinctively at the mere sound of basketball, and no longer engages in athletic activities. He shirks the subject of his youth and diverts the subject of his life in high school when she asks him questions in routine conversation. He lies about his whereabouts on Saturday mornings, the time exclusively reserved for visits to the Youhei residence. He tells her nothing of his past and his future and his identity, and he is a lucky man.
Hanamichi sometimes excuses himself in the middle of dinner. He feels a strange sensation somewhere between his gut and his heart, and finds that he can neither speak nor breathe. He follows custom, nods apologetically and waits for her to respond with her same forgiving smile. He stands abruptly, paces into the bathroom, leans against the door, gasps, then collapses onto the floor. He cries, hot, scorching, blazing tears that sting his skin like soundless absence and veiled lies. He shudders and shivers, and suddenly he is up on his feet, wiping his eyes, strolling back into the room, sitting back down at the table opposite her, proceeding with the same casual exchange of the same empty words.
Hanamichi dreams. He dreams of hypnotic desperation in piercing blue eyes, of painless punches and breathless blows and the balsamic sensation of pale skin on bronze. He dreams of air heavy with unsaid confessions and goodbyes, of apocalyptic uncertainty and the fearful faltering of disguised hatred. He dreams of the bottomless, silent grief of an R-shaped hole in the universe, of unfulfilled promises and forbidden possibilities, of escape and honesty and paradise lost. He dreams of the spellbinding taste of lips which burn like ice-fire, of a kiss which etches tattooed shadows of invisible scars that lie far below the surface of his skin. Hanamichi dreams, and when he awakes in the dead of the night, jagged strands of tears are staining his face, fingers, and chest like the blood of love. And when she arises beside him, an eternal stranger with worry stamped on her features and concern in her voice, he laughs and shrugs, speaks with the same words but as always, does not say a thing.
And Hanamichi reminds himself that he is indeed a very lucky man.
It is a Thursday, a typical Thursday with occasional showers and provincial rainfall, when Hanamichi sights Rukawa Kaede for the first time in 10 years. Hanamichi is not conscious of his whereabouts or the crowds filing around him in the subway, he is unthinking and uncaring as ruthless routine dictates, and Hanamichi looks up, and suddenly, he sees him.
At first, Hanamichi cannot move. He stands transfixed, torrents of emotion overwhelming every chord of his consciousness, tornados of suppressed and stifled memories coagulating and running into each other, floods of fresh feeling and interminable wounds which Hanamichi has built a life upon burying. He looks older now, paler, wearier than ever before, wrinkles obscuring his eyes and shadows shrouding the shattered shards of crystal in his vision. His features are strained, indistinct, defeated.
He is still beautiful. He has not changed.
And in an instant Hanamichi knows. He knows Rukawa Kaede, this Rukawa Kaede, the Rukawa Kaede who once was different but now remains unchanged, he knows that he is still everything he has ever wanted or hoped for or imagined in this life, and has ever dreamed of anywhere else. In this instant Hanamichi remembers, and he has always remembered. In this instant, Hanamichi thinks: he is the one. There can be no other.
And just as he did 10 years ago, Rukawa steps wordlessly off the train, and in the blink of an eye, is gone. Just as the world had crumbled silently into ruins back in that lost time of naivety and simplicity and persistence, so it does again.
Hanamichi does not run after him. He does not scream, or shout, or break down in liberating sincerity into the flotsam of pretense and luck which is his life. He does not watch as Rukawa's figure recedes for the last time into the distance. He arrives home one hour early, and raindrops shed a foreboding silhouette on his shirt.
"You're early." she greets him with the genuine happiness of a practiced and worn smile. "I thought you might be late, what with the rain and everything. I was worried this morning, you left your umbrella on the table, and I thought that if you got caught in a full-fledged storm, you'd come down with a terrible cold. I'm so glad you got back before the rain."
He does not know why, perhaps he has grown accustomed to ignoring it over the years, as he has done with all feeling. Tonight, her untainted and perfectly shaped features seem unbearable in the glaring clarity of the recently-polished overhead lights. He feels as if he is on automatic mode, pushing the fast-forward button on the remote control of reality, watching his movements from the outside, a separate and detached observer. He speaks, unconscious of his words, he laughs, unaware of the presence of humour. She laughs back, and retreats back into the kitchen, and he does not know why or who he is.
In the bathroom, the water runs into the sink, but he cannot hear its crash and clatter. He stares at his reflection for what feels like the first time in as long as he can remember. He reaches out before him and his fingers shake when they trace the distant outline of his face. The mirror breaks.
When it falls, he plummets onto the floor. His knees give way and immediately he sees, in the thousands of millions of disjointed fragments, individual reflections of his own soul.
The door bursts open and there she is, all frantic eyes widened and gasping alarm. The water from the tap still runs, the mirror remains broken, and Hanamichi still kneels. There is a silence, and for a fleeting moment, the look in her eyes betrays suspicions for which Hanamichi feels momentarily and incomprehensibly grateful. He wonders whether she will touch him, and whether he, too, will break when she does.
"Sakuragi," the quivering in her voice is almost imperceptible, but Hanamichi hears it well. "are you alright?"
And Hanamichi wants to tell her. Hanamichi wants to tell her that he does not love her, he has never loved her, he does not know what Love is. He wants to tell her that he once thought Love was a change in one's heartbeat, a rush of blood to one's cheeks, a chemical infatuation; he once thought Love was a family and 2 kids, living peacefully undisturbed in a house with a garden and a swimming pool, a dog and a decent salary. Hanamichi wants to tell her that all he feels when he thinks of Love now is ethereal black over moonshine blue, the comfort of frenzied passion concealed behind a façade of grudgeless hate, the lingering tingle of forceless fists and the fiery anger of subconscious desire, of indecipherable insults and shades of grey and irreversible, inerasable memories, the unthinkable infinity of disappointment and despair and utter self-destruction.
"I'm fine." he says. "The mirror broke, and I was just picking up the pieces."
He imagines that he hears her exhale in sweet,mindful relief, that he hears the mute and never-ending aftermath of an inexpressible, internal death.
Later that night, Hanamichi dreams of screeching bridges and catastrophic ripples on ocean waters, of the claustrophobic confinement of a 50-seater bus that screams helplessly with the final regrets of lost lives.
And when Hanamichi awakens, he knows - with a certainty almost ferocious and merciless in its conviction, with a tragic poignancy like never before; like a leap, bright and blinding, into the depths of chaos, into glorious agape sacrifice - that it is too late, that he will never see Rukawa again.