The Drawer
by Nix Winter
Disclaimers, I don't own wk
I own darkfedora com
He sat in his window, a bare foot on the smooth white paint, warmed by sunlight and the presence of Aya's heavy crystal ashtray. Ash flicked, caught on his jeans, and long fingers brushed the gray and white speckled soul snow out the open window into the air drowning in the scent freshly delivered carnations and lilac. Youji wanted a drink. The flowers were here, but the real prize of the day hadn't happened yet.
His dresser ground wood on wood as Aya pulled the top drawer open. When Youji had been young, he'd owned a cheap metal and cardboard mini trunk with garish prints of Mickey Mouse on it. Inside, he'd kept every half finished thing from his life. A picture of his father, a dear john letter from his first girlfriend, a report card his mother had let him slide on. Just kid stuff and he only thought about it now because Aya had complained about not having any clean underwear.
Of course he'd had red hair fanned over his lips and a hard warm body presses up against him when he'd offered. 'You can have half my dresser,' he'd said, fingertips caressing Aya's hair. He'd meant, he thought about what he meant as he flicked ash out the window again.
He could smell Aya's clean laundry, very light scent of blue detergent over the clean scent of the flowers. It was his own room, damn it!
"I'll take the right," Aya said, some grating in his voice.
"I should have," Youji paused, took a small drag from his cigarette and polluted the world a little more with a slow gray smoke, "I should have folded them, or something."
Cloth sort of rushes against the air, breaking molecules with the softest sound. Aya's breathing's like that sometimes, when he's sleeping, deep currents of near silent life, and Youji wanted to suck his whole cigarette down in one pull. Aya was cleaning his underwear drawer.
"These are nice. You should wear them more often," Aya said.
Youji didn't look up to see what Aya was talking about. These things happened, he guessed, when you share your underwear drawer. Suddenly people think it's okay to comment on your underwear and how you wear them. Youji flicked more ash, looked back over his shoulder, smiled, a lazy smile, all smoky sabotage just rising to a boil and there, sitting on top of his new Mickey Mouse box that looked like a dresser was a stack of white briefs, tee-shirts, a couple of colored shirts, even a pair of jeans and, Youji's world reversed. He licked his lip. Aya's lips lifted in a small shy smile. Youji suddenly wanted his underwear drawer smaller by half, the silk little shorts folded and stacked by color and yeah, as long as they sat right there by Aya's white cotton ones, he was a very happy man. "If you like," he said, a hand combing honey colored curls away from his face.
The next draw wasn't so bad, just shirts and pants, and the one below was the one that would finalize the move in. The third was fitted out as a jewelry box, shallow velvet on the top and naughty pretties below, and Youji never though that Aya would look in the fourth. Somehow, he thought the dildo in the third would be a protective talisman turning Aya back. Nothing turned Aya back.
When it creaked, the old thin, too often repaired wood creaked, complaining that it had been made after WWII and it wasn't meant to hold this much weight, Youji's foot slipped from the window he sat in and he turned, face calm, but paling.
Aya squatted in front of the drawer, the true Mickey Mouse Box, and they both just sat there. There are some things that go way passed underwear drawers. Since Youji had moved into the flower shop, every half finished plea to the universe for a chance to just slide by had been shoved into the bottom drawer.
There was a boot, black mission boot of thick hard leather, already sliced down the side, from when he'd fought with a car head on and lost. A picture of Asuka hanging upside down from a monkey bar when she was 15 was face down under a spool of wire he'd lost it with one night. There were two anonymous tickets for HIV tests in there, littered like yellowing movie tickets. Probably half a dozen bullets rolled into the front of the drawer as Aya let it tilt, and then there was the pistol he'd missed a shot with. It lay in pieces, half way between being cleaned and just dismantled. There was a pack of razor blades, the seal opened, but the blades not used, and Youji hoped Aya wouldn't find that. There was a half bottle of some nasty American liquor and worse, a pair of female panties that Youji honestly didn't remember where they'd come from, or who had worn them. Youji flicked un smoked ash out the window, scratched the side of his head.
"Are these the cutters I've been looking for?" Aya asked, looking at a pair of green handled clippers.
"Yeah," Youji said, mouth too dry to take another drag.
Leaving the drawer open, Aya rose. Back to Youji, they both just waited.
"I'll put them back."
"You don't have to," Aya said, moving to the window, leaving the drawer open.
Youji held out his cigarette and Aya took it, held it to his lips with thumb and pointer finger and sucked up the last half of Youji's cigarette. He held the smoke for a moment, then leaned closer to Youji. Youji rose, slipping his foot back onto the window, so his knee just brushed Aya's leg and they kissed, sharing the smoke, sharing the darkness and the need. Smoke slipped over their lips, curling into the room like they'd written the prenuptials deeper than blood. Aya had his Mickey Mouse box too, but he just wasn't ready to let anyone see it yet.