notes: Some sexual content, but nothing explicit below the belt. Spoilers through the end of the series.
. . .
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost, Nothing Gold
. . .
The beginnings of a summer storm murmured on the horizon. Thunderheads gathered dark and imposing over the city that had once been No. 6, spilling into the shared sky where the wall once stood. It looked like rain was falling already over Chronos and the center of the city, but the clouds had yet to spread further and the August sun still shone bright and hot over the West Block.
Shion made the most of the long daylight hours by working in his garden. He'd started with a handful of sunflower seeds bought cheaply from a wandering traveler at the rebuilt bazaar, and though Nezumi had been skeptical – of the seed peddler, of the soil quality, of Shion's complete lack of gardening experience and knowledge – Shion proved to be competent, and then some. He dug around through Nezumi's bookshelves until he uncovered some gardening books Nezumi didn't even know he owned, he asked his mother for advice, and he poured his soul fully into the endeavor the way he did everything in his life, earnestly and fearless.
Nezumi had never possessed the courage to act with such blatant lack of restraint. If he was honest with himself, he envied Shion's courage. (Not that he would ever admit that to the airhead in question.)
Those same sunflowers – now fully grown – provided the only shade in Nezumi's stretch of outskirts, save for the thin slice of shade from the half-crumbled walls around the stairwell to his basement home. But the sunflower shade was closer to Shion so that was where Nezumi sprawled on the soft ground beside them, overheated in the syrupy humid sunshine. He was barefoot, cargo pants rolled up past his knees, wearing a ratty tanktop that used to be a t-shirt before one of Inukashi's mutts got ahold of it and Nezumi forevermore banned Shion from wearing his clothes outside of the house.
"If you're that hot, you could just strip down," Shion said, "We're the only ones outside right now." He talked as he weeded, shirtless and shiny from sweat. Dirt clung to his skin in the grooves of new muscles he'd earned during his stay in the West Block; Shion wasn't just a skinny little boy anymore. This was partly his influence, and Nezumi was proud.
"I'll pass. Unlike you, I'm not one to flaunt my abs to the entire world. You have to earn that privilege."
Shion beamed at him, and chose that moment to stretch, very purposefully, his arms back over his head, his spine arched back in a perfect curve, stomach and chest and collarbones thrust out and sharply defined. "You could go back underground where it's cooler like the rest of the mice," he said lightly, fully knowing why Nezumi did not. He smirked – smug little brat, stealing all of Nezumi's tricks – and went back to work.
He had been so shy about his body, at first – shy about his scars, and translucent white hair. He had been shy, but Shion was a fast learner, and learned fast that baring skin in proximity to Nezumi yielded pleasant results.
Shion had careful, skilled hands. Those same fingers that had many times washed Nezumi's wounds and stitched him back together were just as gentle and deft as he picked tiny green shoots of weeds out from the soil and shook the dirt off their roots. Nezumi tried helping once, but Shion snapped at him each time he accidentally pulled a plant that was not a weed, or pulled a plant that was a weed but Shion specifically allowed in his nonsensical, contradictory, unwritten and ineffable rules of his garden domain. Nezumi backed off. He didn't have the patience to learn all the plants and their ways as Shion had.
But over time, he learned, from watching Shion, and smiling secretly to himself as Shion narrated while he worked, glowing and beautiful in his enthusiasm.
Nezumi learned that bindweed riled Shion enough to swear at its winding roots, and dandelions were tasty in salads but still not allowed to colonize Shion's workspace. Forget-me-nots were a pleasant surprise and allowed to stay in tiny bright stars of blue. The foxgloves that suddenly sprouted one day had not been planned or planted but were off-limits for weeding because Shion loved the feral flowers all the same.
Eventually Nezumi tired of just watching Shion's hands. Shion's garden made him happy, and that made Nezumi happy, but there were other activities they both enjoyed that Nezumi sometimes prioritized.
"Hurry up," Nezumi whined, and flopped his head back onto the ground in a fit of dramatics, "It's going to rain soon, we should get inside."
"That's why I'm finishing weeding now, so I don't have to do it in the mud later. And don't act like you're not enjoying yourself. You can't fool me."
"I'd be enjoying myself a lot more if it wasn't so fucking hot outside," Nezumi grumbled, and, petulant, kept the back of his head flat to the ground so that Shion and his naked torso remained safely out of sight. He lasted less than twenty seconds, but only because his ponytail was coming undone and sticking uncomfortably to the back of his neck. He turned his face sideways to train his eyes on Shion, staring shamelessly. "This is disgusting, how can you even be outside when it's this muggy?"
"By wearing fewer clothes," Shion said simply.
"You're wearing nothing but underwear. I am not about to prance around outside wearing only boxer shorts, it's indecent."
"I don't prance, you prance. And you're not really complaining about me stripping, are you?"
"That's different. I like it when you're indecent."
"Same to you," Shion said with his eyebrows arched. The hair clip holding his bangs back had come loose and they fell into his eyes in sweat-soaked clumps, and he paused his weeding to brush his hair back again over his forehead. (Nezumi scowled. He wanted to be the one doing that.) His boxers had slid down his waist, too, showing the prominent lines of his hipbones as they dipped below the waistband.
Any patience Nezumi possessed evaporated in the heat and he slowly gathered his sprawled limbs together and stood upright, graceful and deliberate. Shion continued weeding, oblivious, ass in the air as he bent over his flowerbeds
"Shi-on," Nezumi drawled, a predatory growl. Shion turned to look back at him, questioning – predictable airhead – and Nezumi hauled him up by his dirt-encrusted hands and pulled him into a kiss.
Nezumi kissed Shion because he could, and he could because Shion let him. Shion's eyes fluttered closed as he swayed into Nezumi, every inch of sweaty skin aligned tight to Nezumi's front. His fingers curled around Nezumi's where their hands still touched.
And no matter how many times they kissed, Nezumi still kissed like he was falling, the giddy gleeful fear of running too fast down a steep hill or plunging headfirst into deep water. He fell into Shion: the grit on the palms of his hands as he slid them up Nezumi's bare arms, the quiet catch in his breathing when Nezumi stole his breath through the kiss. Time slowed around them in the honeyed sunshine, the buzzing insects browsing from flower to flower, the consistent background whine of cicadas.
Nezumi never cared for summer until Shion taught him how.
Shion's hands smoothed all the way up Nezumi's arms to the back of his neck and remained there, combing through damp tangles of hair and destroying what little remained of the ponytail. "I still need to finish weeding," he mumbled against Nezumi's cheek, but his heart wasn't into it.
Nezumi responded with a smirk, which he dragged down Shion's jawbone and nestled into the welcoming curve of Shion's throat. "Do you, now." He nipped at the soft skin there with his front teeth and followed with a swipe of his sharp tongue. Shion trembled full-body against him, still swaying on his feet like a drunk; Nezumi steadied him with a hand to either hip. Shion always reacted like this, helplessly, hopelessly entranced by Nezumi's every touch, like even all these months later he still couldn't believe that Nezumi wanted him.
(And even all these months later, Nezumi remained amazed that Shion wanted him in return. Maybe I'm the drunk one, he thought, kissing Shion's bared throat again and again and reveling in Shion's complete lack of fear.)
"You're a bad influence," Shion said, breathless. "I'm never going to finish weeding. The weeds are going to overtake my garden and destroy it and it's going to be all your fault."
"Do you want me to stop?" Nezumi paused, carefully watching Shion's half-mast eyes. He kept his voice light and teasing but he was serious.
Shion pulled hard on the shorter hairs at the nape of his neck, threw his head back and moaned, "Never."
Happiness bubbled effervescent in Nezumi's heart, so he spread his palms across the small of Shion's back until his fingers interlocked and he said, "As you wish, Your Majesty." He kissed down the column of Shion's neck, each brush of his lips drawing another gasp, another sigh, sinking down to bite the defined ridge of a collarbone.
Everything about this felt right. Everything about the way Shion leaned back into his hold and shook and shook, the exact tone and pitch of his sighs, the taste of his lips and of his skin. Even his sweat tasted right, even bitter and sandy with dirt, everything, every perfectly imperfect inch of his scarred skin. Nezumi followed the meandering path of that scar from his throat down across Shion's chest, bending his knees into a half-kneel to run his lips further down with quick, wet kisses interspersed unpredictably with little bites to keep Shion guessing. The muscles of Shion's flat stomach tensed with each nip and his fingers twisted tighter in Nezumi's tangled hair, and this was perfect, he was perfect, Nezumi wanted him and only him and he wanted.
He wanted Shion's skin and Shion's voice and his scars and smiles and laughter and Nezumi was so unused to this kind of wanting, unfamiliar with desire that brought him joy instead of pain. For twelve years he longed only for violence and revenge. He achieved his revenge, and revenge left him hollow; he filled his heart instead with Shion, a yearning so opposite he did not always know what to do with the feeling.
Like birdsong, like the fluting song of the thrush, like the musical burble of a freshwater spring. As if the summer sunlight suffused into Shion's skin and melted into Nezumi's skin wherever they touched and condensed inside his body into a tiny burning sun. The opposite of hollowness, the opposite of hate and fear. Something bright.
Nezumi knew the words but not how to say them. His only means of translation was this: skin on skin, a secret message kissed in morse code.
His hands slid down Shion's arched back, slowly down the curve of his spine and then swiftly down underneath the waistband of Shion's underwear to grab two handfuls of ass. Shion yelped and jumped up on his tiptoes, which only served to push Nezumi's palms down more. "Nezumi! We're still outside, someone could see us!"
Nezumi laughed into his warm mouthful of skin at Shion's hip as mischief sparked forth from his longing. "Right, because the neighbors wouldn't object to me leaving bites all down your front, but we can't let them see this," he said and finished his statement with a sudden yank on Shion's boxers, pulling them unceremoniously down to his knees.
Shion shrieked.
Nezumi laughed so hard that he toppled Shion backwards onto his bare backside flat in the dirt. He fell on top of Shion with his face at Shion's navel, still laughing as Shion scowled down at him and smacked Nezumi's own ass in retribution. "You're terrible," he said, but he was still hard, and Nezumi's infectious smile twisted Shion's expression into something softer.
"I really will stop if you want me to," he said, looping his arms underneath Shion's back in a loose embrace, "But like you said, we're the only ones outside, and I wouldn't tease you that much just to leave you hanging."
Nimble fingers threaded through his hair again, and Nezumi knew he was forgiven. "I like your teasing," Shion admitted, "But you're still terrible." Shion squirmed below him and pointedly tilted his hips up and said, "Could you, um. Could you do something about this?"
Grinning widely, wickedly, Nezumi shimmied downward and said, "It would be my pleasure."
It was Shion's pleasure too, judging by the desperate needy sounds he made, the relentless quivering of his muscles, his unraveling thrusts against Nezumi's mouth when he came. Afterward, he gasped for breath as loud as the approaching thunder, hands combing Nezumi's hair in a futile attempt to untie the new knots he'd made. Nezumi was content to watch Shion come back down from his orgasm, his head leaned to the side with his cheek resting on the top of Shion's still-trembling thigh. "I take it my Prince enjoyed himself?"
Shion hauled him up roughly by two fistfuls of hair and smashed their lips together in a wordless answer composed of passion and teeth. They kissed like that fast and harsh, then slow and gentle, continuing to indulge in each other regardless of their overheated skin. This, this was all that mattered, Shion in his arms, Shion whispering his name into their kisses, Shion taking a name forged as a weapon and melting it back into something precious, something worthwhile.
And then, rudely interrupting a kiss with exceptional promise, the sky above them split apart into burning white cacophony, rumbles growling on long after the flash of lightning faded. Torrents of rain spilled down with abrupt violence, soaking through Nezumi's already sweat-soaked clothing in the amount of time it took him to emphatically declare, "Fuck!"
Cackling like a loon as suddenly as the surprise cloudburst, Shion shoved Nezumi off of him to stretch out his limbs and lie there fully exposed beneath the downpour, spread-eagled and naked in the mud. "You're nuts!" Nezumi shouted over the rain, scrambling into an unsteady stand, "Let's go inside before you drown yourself."
Shion shook his head side to side, inadvertently coating his hair in soupy dirt. "No way. I needed a shower anyway, and this feels great after cooking in the sun all day. You should try it too!" Before Nezumi could react, Shion lunged at his waist and grabbed the hem of his khakis, tugging down pants and underwear in one go and pulling Nezumi back down onto the ground from the momentum.
"You little - "
Shion pounced on him and cut off his complaints with a kiss and with two devious hands rucking his shirt up to his neck. "You're terrible," he said as soon as Shion gave him a chance to breathe, but allowed a grinning Shion to forcibly maneuver him out of his tanktop nonetheless. "I can't believe you. If anyone sees us like this, I am never going to hear the end of it for the rest of my life. 'Hey, did you hear about Eve? He was mud-wrestling naked with his boyfriend the other day! What a show!'"
"Oh, so now you're worried about people seeing, now that you're naked. I see how it is."
Nezumi's cursing was muffled by another roll of thunder. He wriggled underneath Shion's unrelenting weight, struggling to brace himself against slippery mud to throw Shion off. "This isn't funny anymore, I'm going inside. Get off."
"I already did."
"If you don't let me up immediately, I'm shoving this mud directly up your nose."
That, finally, inspired cooperation. Still grinning, Shion wobbled to his feet and lifted Nezumi to his feet as well.
If the rain was good for anything, it was at least a warm rain, and it washed most of the mud off their skin in the time it took to collect their scattered clothes and slog over to the stairwell. Shion paused at the top of the stairs to whimper a morose sound in the vague direction of his garden before Nezumi dragged him the rest of the way down.
Lukewarm rainwater puddled at their footsteps and tracked down the hallway to the entrance of their room, where Nezumi rounded on Shion and said, "If you drip water on any of the books, I'll have your head."
"Which one? You already 'had' one of them earlier."
Nezumi threw his wet underwear at Shion's face, opened the door, and bolted inside before Shion could retaliate. Shion followed after, grumbling, but he hung up his soggy clothes in the bathroom alongside Nezumi's without complaint save for a muttered exhalation of "gross" under his breath and a halfhearted attempt at a glare. Halfhearted, because Nezumi took his hand, kissed his wrist, led him closer in and handed him a dry towel.
"Care to towel me off?" he asked, which really meant, I'm giving you an excuse to grope my wet naked body. Not that Shion needed an excuse, but he took this one graciously, accepting the towel and with it Nezumi's roundabout self-serving apology. He sat down behind Nezumi on the wet tile floor, his legs to either of Nezumi's sides, reminiscent of how they had aligned themselves the times Shion replaced Nezumi's bandages after the Correctional Facility. They weren't sleeping together yet at that point, and it was strange to remember that there had ever been a time when they weren't comfortable with nudity, where closeness caused as much anxiety and fear as it did desire. Everything about this felt right; everything before was as distant and unreal as a half-forgotten dream.
The towel descended first onto his head, mussing his veritable rat's nest of hair into further disarray. He considered complaining, but held back, because more snarls meant more of Shion working on his hair later, and that would be nice. This was nice too, and Nezumi leaned backwards, eyes closed, into Shion's gentle hands.
"You know," Shion said, nonchalant, "The night we met, during the typhoon, I thought about stripping naked and running out into the rain. I'd wondered what it would be like, and now I know."
There's not much that can be said to that. Nezumi sat in mute fascination while Shion moved the towel down to wipe up the drops of water on the back of his neck. "I can't believe it," he eventually managed.
Shion paused his rubdown of Nezumi's back and asked, "Can't believe what?"
"You. Every time I think you couldn't get any weirder, you go and prove me wrong. It's amazing. I need to stop underestimating you."
Behind him, Shion shuffled closer and reached his arms around Nezumi's chest, then folded them over one another, cocooning Nezumi in the towel. "You're pretty weird too," he said. "You literally lived in a hole in the ground for two developmentally important years of your childhood, your bloodline was chosen by a forest goddess to be Her messengers so your voice has supernatural qualities, and when we first met you threatened to kill me with a soup spoon." He hooked his chin over Nezumi's shoulder where he could turn and nuzzle into Nezumi's face, which he did. "And weirdest of all, you let this total weirdo live in your home and sleep in your bed."
"I've let this total weirdo put his dick in my mouth. I can't believe it."
"You've let me put my dick more places than that," Shion said with his breath hot on Nezumi's ear, his voice gone low, legs squeezing around Nezumi's sides and hips leaning suggestively forward into him. Every nerve of Nezumi's spine shivered where all of Shion's naked torso pressed against him through the thin layer of the towel.
"I have, and I've enjoyed it too. God. I really am weird," Nezumi said, or struggled to say with Shion distracting him by placing a series of gentle kisses on the side of his neck. Shion's hair was still soaked through and drops of water, warm from Shion's warmth, dropped from his bangs onto Nezumi's shoulders each time he changed the angle of his head to kiss a new spot. "Mmm, Shion, lose the towel."
He felt Shion's smile soft against the underside of his jaw. He felt Shion pull the towel away and drop it uncaring onto the wet tile. He felt Shion stand up and pull him up into his arms, he felt Shion's lips on his own as they stumbled out of the bathroom and into the bed, and then he felt nothing but Shion, Shion's touch, Shion's voice, Shion.
Sex hadn't meant anything, before Shion. Sex was a tool and a weapon. Realizing that he wanted sex with Shion was – strange, at first; sex wasn't something pleasant. But Shion enjoyed it when Nezumi reached out first to touch him, when that strange want overtook Nezumi and all he wanted was to touch Shion, touch every inch of him and make him come, tell Shion with his body everything he was still unable to say with words.
And when Nezumi gave in to his other strange want and allowed Shion to reciprocate...
"You're like the rain," he mumbled. He hadn't meant to say it aloud.
Still between Nezumi's legs with the side of his face resting on Nezumi's chest, Shion made a questioning noise and squeezed Nezumi's hand where their fingers still interlocked. "What was that?"
"Nothing."
"It sounded like something."
"It wasn't."
"Mrm," Shion said, and sounded annoyed, but left it at that. He was probably only half-awake, with his breathing so slow and the sleepy heaviness in his voice.
You're like the rain. Nothing else before you matters – you wash it all away.
The storm outside continued on above them. The sounds of rain and thunder filtered in to the underground room through the ceiling, muffled and soft, distant. "Hey," Nezumi said. Shion made another quiet mrm noise but gave no other response. "Shion. Hey. I want to ask you something."
" 'n I want to sleep," Shion slurred, rubbing his face into Nezumi's skin.
"If you're going to use me as a pillow, then there's a fee, and the fee is answering my question."
"What kind of pillow requires a fee? You're just making things up."
"You're drooling on me. There's a fee for that too."
"Just ask already."
"Earlier, why didn't you tell me it was about to rain on us?"
"That's a stupid question," Shion grumbled, "And it's stupid you wanted me to wake up to answer it. Why is it my responsibility? Why didn't you tell me?"
Nezumi scowled, even though he knew Shion couldn't see him with his eyes closed. It was the principle of the matter. "I was on top of you, I couldn't see the sky. All I could see was you and the mud, and I wasn't looking at the mud."
Shion's eyes opened and he shifted, incrementally, to where he could look up at Nezumi sideways. "What do you think I was looking at?" he said. "All I could see was you. You're all I ever see."
To be fair to Shion, Nezumi realized belatedly that he walked right into that one. Nezumi's face flushed with flustered heat and dammit, Shion was watching him and giving him that dopey, lovesick smile he wore whenever he pulled shit like this. "I need to stop asking you stupid questions. You only ever give me stupid answers."
"It's the truth."
"It's stupid. You're stupid." Nezumi ruffled Shion's hair with his free hand with an affectionate kind of roughness. His hair had not been dried properly before they were otherwise distracted, and was still damp and muddy with the occasional twig tangled in. It was endearing somehow, Shion inadvertently dragging his garden around with him.
"How am I the stupid one when you're the reason I didn't finish weeding before the rain started? I'm not necessarily complaining, you were a very enjoyable distraction, but it is technically your fault."
"It was a joint effort," Nezumi said, "And should be amended by both guilty parties. I'll help you finish weeding once your garden isn't a swimming pool anymore."
"You're not very good at it," Shion warned, "You still pull all the wrong plants."
"Teach me better, then. I promise I'll listen better this time." His aggressive scrubbing of Shion's hair slowed to a caress. His energy was fading, and he was warm and comfortable even with the bedsheets being wet and smeared with remnants of mud; Shion had the right idea about sleeping.
Shion turned his head back to the side with another nuzzle into Nezumi's chest, and curled himself over Nezumi's body so the top of his head fit just below the hollow of Nezumi's neck, over his heart. "If you promise." He yawned, squeezed Nezumi's hand again, and was quiet and still in the tender hold of sleep.
Nezumi dozed on and off, waking up each time to the hushed sounds of the storm and to the comforting weight of Shion lying against him. Their little room was quiet and safe and each time he fell back asleep in seconds.
When the rolls of thunder slowed to a stop, and the pounding rain thinned to a harmless patter, Shion awoke and kissed him once on the shoulder and rolled off of Nezumi to face him on his side. "I just remembered that I forgot to tell you, I need to go into the city tomorrow," he said.
"Meeting with Safu for liaison work?" Nezumi asked.
"Yeah. She's been telling me that the Reconstruction Committee would benefit from a full-time West Block representative, instead of me only dropping in once a week or two." Nezumi frowned and opened his mouth to speak, but Shion quickly continued, "I don't want to be full-time. It's too far to commute every day, I'd have to live in the city again, and that defeats the purpose of a West Block representative, right? And also," he snuggled up closer to Nezumi with his nose tangled in Nezumi's tangled hair, "I want to stay here with you."
You're like the rain, Nezumi thought again, helplessly. The rain, or the sunny golden yellow of his sunflowers, or the senseless words of affection and praise he kissed into Nezumi's skin when they had sex. Nezumi rolled himself onto his side to wrap an arm over Shion's back and draw him closer still. I want you to stay here too, he tried to say, but his voice caught in his throat and refused to form the words, so he spoke instead through seeking out Shion's lips with his own, soundlessly confessing with the movements of his lips and tongue:
Stay. I want you to stay. I want to be by your side. That's all I want.
Shion kissed his cheek before just barely pulling away. "There is a possibility of telecommuting through video chat several times a week, so I would be busier during the day then. But it's all up in the air still."
"They would pay you, right? They better pay you."
"They'd pay me," Shion reassured.
Nezumi traced the line of Shion's snake scar with the faintest touch of his fingertips, following it across his back and up around his neck, detouring to the side to stroke the incision scar he carved into Shion's skin when he told Shion to live. He made a decision. Nezumi steeled himself and said, "I'll go with you tomorrow. Into the city."
Shion furrowed his brow in a perplexed half-frown. "You don't have to."
"I want to. It's been a while since I've had a chance to eat your Mama's cooking."
All of it was worth it for Shion's responding smile. "She'd be happy to see you again. Safu too – and before you say anything, she does like you, she thinks you're a pain, but she likes you, and she's right. You are a pain."
"Not as much of a pain as you."
"That's debatable."
Shion rolled his eyes, but dropped the subject. "We should get up out of bed," he said, "We'll have to leave early in the morning to make it into the city in time, and if we keep sleeping now we won't be able to get enough sleep tonight." He extricated himself from Nezumi's clinging hold and sat up, stretching his arms over his head.
"Are you going to go back outside?" Nezumi asked, sitting up as well next to him. "Even after that rain, it's probably still hot as hell out there." Stay down here with me.
"True. And I don't want to try and work in that mud pit. But," Shion bumped their shoulders together with a conspiratorial smirk, "It's hot down here, too. I don't think we need clothes."
"This total weirdo is a total pervert, too. Whatever happened to that blushing virgin I used to live with?" Nezumi kicked the thin blanket off their legs and clambered over Shion and off the bed, walking naked to their water stores to fill a cup for himself and for Shion. With his back to him, he couldn't see Shion, but knew on instinct that Shion was staring. Which in honesty was still terrifying sometimes, but less than it used to be. Shion wasn't like other men who stared.
"You deflowered him," Shion said wryly, "Plucked him out of the dirt and killed him just like you killed his lupines."
"You're still pissed about that? I said I was sorry." He returned to the bed with two full cups and offered one to Shion.
"Sorry can't bring back the dead," Shion replied gravely as he accepted the water. When he took a drink, Nezumi watched the movements of his throat as he swallowed with his own mouth drier for it; Shion wasn't the only weirdo pervert in the room.
"Yes, yes, my condolences to the family," he said after draining his own cup. "But you yourself have yet to make amends to all of the strands of hair you plucked out of my scalp. Get over here and untangle this mess."
Shion shuffled over to sit behind him with his legs to either side, the same comforting embrace as before. "Read to me?" Without waiting for a response, he smoothed both palms down Nezumi's scalp from the crown of his head down to his nape, and set to picking apart the snarls with the same lithe delicacy of tending to his flowers.
"Sure. Grab a book, doesn't matter which." He held his hand open behind his back, and after a moment of Shion fidgeting and scuffling behind him, a slim hardcover book was placed in his grasp.
"I hope a picture book is okay for now, it's the closest I could reach," Shion said while Nezumi brought it forward to look at the title: The Velveteen Rabbit. "I was reading it to Kalan and Rico yesterday. Could you start it from where I left off? There's a bookmark."
"It's fine. Just don't stop what you're doing." He inclined his head backwards, helplessly drawn into Shion, his warmth, the seamless grace of this relationship. Nezumi stretched his legs out in front of himself, turned to the bookmark, and started to read:
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become." [1]
Shion hummed quietly to himself as Nezumi read, the tuneless murmur mingling with the faint white noise of the last trickles of rain. The three little mice climbed up onto the bed and settled atop Nezumi's feet with their ears perked towards his voice in rapt attention. Every so often, Shion kissed the back of his head, his gentle humming reverberating through Nezumi's skull down his spine all the way to his soul.
How strange, happiness. The old woman had been wrong all along.
. . .
Nezumi's guiltiest fantasies are not about sex with Shion. His guiltiest fantasies are about everything after, and everything between.
Maybe afterward, when the rain cleared, they would walk to the river, hand-in-hand, and lounge on the banks by the blackberry thickets. They would eat the sweet berries by the dozens until they were sick of even the smell of them that hung throughout the swampy river air. Shion would carefully lick the purple juice off his fingers, and Nezumi would help until his lips were dyed the same. Maybe he would smash blackberries in Shion's hair just to hear him shriek and see if his white hair stained.
They would be sticky and smell sickly-sweet and the river mud would be cool and murky on the soles of their bare feet. Shion would strip down again and wade deeper in to the green water and ask Nezumi to join him for a swim. And Maybe Nezumi would. Maybe they would be alone, and Nezumi less afraid. Or maybe it wouldn't even matter if anyone else saw his scars, because Shion makes Nezumi brave.
They would splash and play in the river like children, Shion's laughter ringing out like birdsong, the blackbirds singing and scolding from their nests among the reeds. Nezumi would show Shion how to catch fish with his bare hands. Shion would opt to instead catch tadpoles and talk to Nezumi about the lifecycles of frogs and about transformation, the metamorphosis of all things.
They would linger in the water until it wrinkled their skin. The waterlogged stink of riverbed soil and decomposing plant matter would linger on them; Nezumi would complain that they smelled like fish. He won't actually mind.
And maybe Nezumi would take Shion to the forest. He would search through the underbrush and find wild roses and pick Shion a bouquet, because he could. Later Shion would put them in a mug of water on the low table in their underground home, and press their flowers in books when they begin to wilt. Their room would smell like roses and petals would remain on the floor for weeks
Maybe they would stay outside late into the twilight hours and watch the sun set over the new city they had helped create. Maybe Nezumi would hate No. 6 less in the red glow of sundown. Would he hate it less and less with every sunset and rise? Maybe Shion would teach him how.
They would lie down together on their backs in the long green grass and watch fireflies light up gold in the purple canvas of dusk, nighttime falling with the rising chorus of frogsong and nightingales. They would look to the sky and watch the stars together, Nezumi tracing the lines of constellations with his fingers and telling Shion of the stories written there, about Orpheus and his lyre, about the sympathy of magpies. And Shion in return would tell him about the unfathomable vastness of the universe and the inverse smallness of all its component parts, of the burning cradles within dying stars that gave birth to all the elements of their bodies and their souls. He would touch on quantum physics and the infinite possible universes and the sheer improbability that all of those diverging paths would allow the two of them to meet, and to stay together.
Nezumi would call him hopeless and he would kiss him beneath the crescent moon. They would watch the sky for shooting stars and they would hold hands.
Shion would tell Nezumi he loved him. They would be happy.
In Nezumi's guiltiest fantasies, he wasn't a coward. In his guiltiest fantasies, he never left.
The gold of sunflowers withered and faded from Nezumi's thoughts, replaced by the reality of the burnt gold of autumn leaves and the final green remnants of dwindling summer farther down the mountain's slopes: green, true green, true sunshine, true forest. [2]
Summer was at its end. Safu wasn't on the Reconstruction Committee, she was murdered at Nezumi's hand. Nezumi wasn't with Shion, he was alone. He was miles and months away in a mountain range to the north of the city, and he was losing himself in longing, not for the first time, for something that could never be.
How could a person like him make a person like Shion happy? They were too different. Nezumi brought only destruction. Shion and Nezumi would destroy one another as surely as Nezumi had destroyed all the rest of Shion's life.
Nezumi was never meant to stay in No. 6. He was never meant to stay with Shion. No amount of time or love or longing could ever change that.
From his vantage point at the crest of the trail, Nezumi saw the mountain pass below sprawled out in billowing flames of crimson and gold, aspen and larch, birch and maple. Autumn is the season where gold can stay, if only for the bittersweet half-life of a daydream.
Shion had so wanted to spend the summer with him. Shion had so wanted him to stay.
Maybe Nezumi had wanted to stay, too.
He'll get over it, Nezumi thought. He'll get over it, and he'll move on, and he'll be happy. His gaze traced the abandoned railroad tracks he'd followed to this summit, following with his eyes its serpentine loops down through the foothills to the south and beyond, to the city, to Shion.
When he left, Nezumi did not look back. There's punishment for those who look back. During his exodus, Nezumi kept his back to Shion and his line of sight forward on whatever future Nezumi had without him. But Shion wasn't here to see his vulnerability, and this was the last Nezumi would ever see of this particular valley, so he let himself linger, caught in a reverie, caught in a lie, singing a swan song for the summer that never was.
Like a kiss goodbye.
Nezumi turned away and walked forward down the mountain. He had a long road to travel before nightfall.
-end
. . .
endnotes: IF I GOTTA BE STUCK IN NEZUSHI HELL, I'M TAKING YOU ALL WITH ME.
This fic can be read on its own but it is meant as an insert fic between chapters two and three (AND I'M STILL WORKING ON CHAPTER THREE I PROMISE) of my reunion fic but let's not talk of love or chains, so rest assured that for all his bullshitting at the end here, Nezumi does eventually make good on his vow. Nezumi go the fuck home.
Additionally: friendly reminder that Nezumi blames himself for Safu's death as much as Shion blames his own self, and that he sees himself as good as a murderer for fulfilling her final wish for a coup de grace. (Safu bby u deserved so much better.)
[1] The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams
[2] green, true green, true sunshine, true forest lifted from a stanza from Death Experience, Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Cliff Crego)