(A/N: To me, love rarely starts with a single look. It is also not the case when you've already known the person for long. Transition from one mode of relationship to another is hard, even if the will and wanting is very much there. I like pondering about the beginnings and such transitions of the relationship between Hirato and Akari a lot. So here is another peek. There are some references to other oneshots I've written within the same theme, but you don't have to read them to understand this story. Perhaps I should make this a series of drabbles... Any review would be a true blessing.)
Amidst the chaos that occupied the halls of the Research Tower after the recent Varuga attack that was not like any before it, right in the middle of the simultaneous race of saving lives and gathering enough data about the peculiarity of the injuries to better prepare for the future, it was quite reasonable for Akari to miss the face of his former student among the numerous wounded. After all, they were nothing more than a former student and teacher. He could not deny the fact that he knew more of this particular former student than any other, for the young man had been almost obsessed with tormenting Akari for years, continuing his vexatious ways even now, well after his graduation. Perhaps it was exactly the reason why Akari was struck so profoundly catching a glimpse of the injured young man; his amethyst orbs absent, only an ominous whiteness filling his eyes, the alabaster skin now deathly pale and ragged with tears all over in various dark shades of red. Gone was the cunning young man whose eyes always glinted with a particular interest and pleasure every time Akari unexpectedly found him in his own office, always uninvited and brazen. The face of the boy he once knew during the times he taught at Kuronomei was especially alien now compared to the face before him; Akari remembered how much shorter Hirato had been then, how larger his eyes had looked on his face, how rounder his chin had been, and despite all the tricks he had pulled and the crafty nature of his character, the naiveté that would surface now and then... That boy was almost a ghost now. For a second it terrified the doctor for a reason he could not deduce right away and would not want to deduce in hindsight... His body moved on its own and his lips cried on their own:
"I'll handle that one."
Why?
He did not know. He did not bother to analyse.
It was not as if he had never operated on somebody he knew before. He had, many times too. Certainly he preferred his research in the laboratory; test tubes and cell cultures, randomised controlled trials and cross-sectional studies, and not the actual emergency care or complex medical operations. It was not that he was unskilled in surgery, he was absolutely talented, one of the best of his generation too. It was the feeling he did not like, this Messiah role did not suit him even a bit, trying to tie the ends of that thin string called life and the turmoil unleashed as a consequence of a possible –even if unlikely– failure... If one saw him working, operating on a patient, they would never even imagine the kind of burden he would feel afterwards; he was professional and inhumanly efficient until the very end. The moment it ended though, the moment he did anything and everything humanly possible to help because he had just that capability, things would be out of his hands and instead cruel hands of Fate would take over. This was exactly what Akari hated. He was not fond of Fate and perhaps that was exactly why he did not believe in her, at all.
Regardless of how perfectly you could execute anything that is humanly possible, the humanly possible had a limit, for humans had a limit... Creatures perfectly imperfect. Things could fail even after all that had been done to prevent and even though he was aware of all this undoubtedly and his conscience was certainly clear, something would pull on his heart. He did not like that something.
Yet the Fate he absolutely refused to believe in had grasped him again and placed him in an operating room. It was unavoidable considering the number of casualties and his own brilliance and the superior ability to aid. Why was he helping this particular gent? Was there a peculiar reason why he had chosen Hirato to help out of all others he could? That – that was the question he did not answer and would never answer.
It went all right as much as it could go all right, no complexities were observed and he gave a sigh of relief after he was done. The issue was that again even if everything had gone flawlessly, it did not mean success necessarily. The patient was carefully moved to an intensive care unit while Akari hurried back to the halls full of injured and staff. Before he was rushed to another operation though he was abruptly stopped by a redhead, his other peculiarly bothersome student, now with glazed eyes and a horrified face adorned with multiple cuts and bruises. Tsukitachi was clearly afraid and this was the first time Akari saw him afraid. A surge of compassion surged onto his chest, he could not remember a single instance where he had seen this young man without a smile. A cheeky one or a bittersweet one, a smirk or an innocent grin. The lips quivered in a frown now and his voice was shaky; he stood tall and resolute but Akari could almost smell the fear from him.
"He will be fine. I personally operated on him. I have to go now, I have another operation I need to attend right now."
Despite his aversion to bodily contact he could not help but gently pat the shoulder of his former student,
"Go get your own wounds checked by the nurses."
He did not stay long enough to see the nod given in response and hurried as fast as his legs allowed him. That word ruled the rest of his day: he hurried. He hurried from one place to another, from one patient to another, from one test to another... He continuously hurried.
By the time the urgency calmed down and a dull lethargy claimed the atmosphere, half the staff either asleep out of exhaustion right at their desks or here and there in awkward positions, patients already moved to their rooms or ICU or released, and the dead... The dead already sent to morgue. The few researchers and those who just started to their shift talked in silence, complaints mixed with gossips mixed with laments. Akari dragged himself to his office and found his desk already covered in piles of paper as if the number of unread e-mails already nearing three hundred according to the screen of his computer was not enough... He sighed and stretched his sore muscles. He was certainly an immensely dutiful man but his mind was too far away to deal with paperwork now nor were his tired eyes precise and alive enough to read anything without mixing up the words and soon losing themselves to sleep. He blinked a few times and tried to find something to do. Somewhere to be. Both his body and mind were in ruin right now even if he did not want to admit it. He wanted to rest but somehow the idea of leaving for his quarters seemed woeful and perilous. It was as though leaving the work right now would somehow ruin everything and when he came back he would find only disaster. He did not want to go to bed, yet he did not want to stare at his looming unfinished paperwork either. It was almost on a whim he remembered and decided. Within three minutes he was already inside the room Hirato was now moved to. His vitals were good but the severity of possible brain damage was unknown; it would only be fully realised after Hirato woke up. Or rather, if he woke up. Akari took the only chair in the room located near the window which was draped in moonlight at the time. For a few moments he chose to watch the full moon that serenaded the earth so beautifully that it was almost painful. The scent of antiseptic overrode anything and everything but Akari could still smell the legacy of the blood that loomed in the halls and in this particular room. Was it a cruel olfactory hallucination in the aftermath of a disaster that had shed so much blood or was his ability to smell extremely sharpened? He closed his eyes and yet could still feel the moonlight, almost a sheer blanket over his drained body, a soft embrace devoid of any warmth like that of a past lover's ghost... Perhaps his mind was so burdened that he was feeling so uncharacteristically sentimental, or perhaps his mind was so burdened that his characteristic but resolutely concealed sentimentality was revealed. He did not bother to analyse. If one thing, he hated analysing the psyche.
One true phantosmia of the night though tickled his nose gracefully, he smelt cloves in the middle of the night in a hospital room certainly barren of such spices. An old memory of tea and of his student and of cloves and of bitter things surfaced and his lips tightened into a line. Vexed by remembering just one of the countless times he had been successfully irked by the young man who now slept seemingly peacefully in the hospital bed across him, Akari opened his eyes to look at Hirato's figure. His skin seemed less pale but was it because life has returned to him compared to before or was it because he was hidden away from the moonlight and shrouded in the shadows of the dark room? Various cables and machines attached to him, would this man wake up and wake up as himself with the same brilliant mind and devilish spirit, come the sunrise of the morrow or the day after or the day after or...? Akari felt an unfamiliar sadness and that was the moment exactly when he realised that yes, he had operated on quite a few people he knew before but he had only knew them very remotely, none had ever ruffled his feathers or truly caused any feeling, whether ill or not. It was the first time in his life he had seen somebody who he knew and was not indifferent to wounded deeply and fatally and operated on... He remembered the conversations held in passing or in the cloak of bickering about death and life with Hirato, Tsukitachi, or even with Tokitatsu and he realised how he had truly never imagined before operating on and possibly saving the life of a wounded Hirato... And how he had also never imagined before, not being able to save the life of a wounded Hirato.
Various feelings of odd attachments and diverging concerns whirled around in his chest and an undeniable fatigue settled deeply in his mind, first his overworked senses fell into dullness and soon his mind followed, perhaps wishing to escape the relentless anxieties and insoluble questions of life and death and existence.
.
.
.
.
When Hirato woke the first thing he saw between the narrow cracks of his eyes was the white ceiling now shaded a peculiar tone of blue. As he willed himself to open his eyes larger and soon felt all his bones crumble in pain and his muscles stubbornly dull, he realised that it was likely an early hour of the morning, before sunrise. The blue hour claimed the room for itself, dimly illuminating every inch and corner in various shades of the same colour, shadows in midnight blue and walls in greyish azure. There was a certain peace in the colour and the hour and in the faint light and Hirato managed to curve his lips up slightly, a tiny smile grateful to be alive. It was only then, after realising that he was alive and thanking to inexistent gods for it, his eyes trying to wander as much as they could without actually moving his neck which felt too fragile to move, only then in his peripheral vision he caught the glimpse of his very own divine.
Cerulean hues smoothly and beautifully blending across his figure, his face in graceful serenity, his arms loosely cradled in his own lap and his head resting on the wall now draped in the same hues as the rest of him. It was as if he was ethereal. It was as if this moment was not real and Hirato had indeed died and truly, if he had believed in heaven, he would assume Akari to be the heaven, in spite of how awfully trite the idea was. His lips curved into a tiny smile again at the childish ways his deep affection revealed itself at times, though he kept these artless and naive revelations hidden from all, he could not keep them hidden from himself after all.
An insatiable craving grasped his soul then and despite all the pain he was in and the fear he had felt so close to death, all he wanted and needed at that moment so endlessly and completely was Akari. A morbid hope surfaced, if he ever faced the same suffering again, to wake up in the arms of Akari... Not under the spell of his grace from a distance but in his intimate embrace so incredibly near, to feel the warm pulse of Akari's healing breath.
Hirato closed his eyes, engraving the image of his ethereal beloved onto the darkness of his blind vision and lulled himself back to sleep in pure silence but the twittering of birds far away and Akari's calm and quiet breathing.
One day, he hoped, one day, even if each step was taking him closer to death, he hoped, they were also taking him closer to his greatest want... If only he could have Akari, before death... If only that...