Gathering Dust
Shion has grown just enough that he fits right tucked up under Nezumi's chin, arms wound around his neck.
This is a long time coming and the only thing he adds to "Oh, my God, Nezumi," is an order to be quiet, he'll let go when he's good and ready.
Shion can sense Nezumi scanning their surroundings over the top of his head, unused to not having to worry about where the next attack will come from. This is the crumbled wall opening into No. 6, of course, and it couldn't be safer. No threats from either side. It's been a while since the rebel has been here, and unlike Shion, he hasn't been witness to the great changes that make it okay to stand up here, straddling the city and the desert. Nezumi finally sinks in to the hug with a sigh and trusts Shion to know whether his defenses should be up.
Shion pulls back enough to take his hands and smile up at him. It's been more than five years, closer to a decade than not, and life has gone on without Nezumi. He's had a hand in rebuilding this part of the world, seeing it settle into something great, seeing it flourish. His family has been there, his mother and her work and being the brother to two quickly growing children.
He's hardly even certain that the other man has been off revolutionizing the rest of the world all these years, even though that's always been his guess.
But despite Nezumi's distance, the lack of contact or any information at all (is he well, is he alone, is he safe, God, is he alive) there is no one more important to him, never has been, no one who his spirit recognizes more. Squeezing those palms within his own, his emotions are already calmed. He feels at peace.
Nezumi's eyes flick from left to right, ear to ear, a quick study.
"You look good," He determines, voice steady and face impassive.
Shion feels an awkward smile twitch onto his face, as spasm of the muscle in one of his cheeks. He resists the accompanying bubble of laughter that he can feel rushing up from his sternum. It's just silly, really. Nezumi's desire to seem measured and deliberating is obvious and wonderfully familiar; for all that he actually is those things. Calculating, but maybe not in the way he thinks he is.
"You too," he says, and he means it. Nezumi has always been handsome, even as a fragile-looking child and that hasn't changed. If anything the growth he has made into adulthood makes it more obvious. The physical maturity suits him.
They make their way into the remains of the village. It's quiet, but where it has been fixed up in some places, people have come to live here again. They no longer have to, but maybe the desert life makes them comfortable.
They end up past that and into the place most familiar to him. Neither of them has exactly led their way here, nor have they exchanged many words at all, though Shion feels curiosity in his stomach once they reach the threshold.
He doesn't look back at Nezumi when he goes inside.
Soon he is standing, laying a book open across his palm, thick with dust—more dust than belongs, special dust, because underground and shabby and old, there was always plenty of it. But this is a layer that comes with long-standing stagnant air. It doesn't come completely away with his fingerprints. Nezumi has been gone from this place just as long as he has, he realizes, and it's a little worse for that.
Without even closing his eyes against it, he can see Nezumi several years younger at the stove, between the shelves, propped up on the couch—moving and being and keeping this room alive. And it's not much more than the base he came back to after he'd done what needed to be done each day. A place to refuel and rest, because the important things that he needed to accomplish, steps to his over-reaching goal—that was all outside and elsewhere.
He'd certainly never meant to attach any importance here, but Shion has.
Later they kiss against the bookshelves, Nezumi quotes poetry in his ear, Shion lays him down and his thumbs drag along the line of his hips when Nezumi tells him he's never done this, their eyes water and they sneeze against the dust that resettles when they come, and Nezumi remarks about clean, fitting clothes as Shion leads him home at dusk.
Notes:
Attempt at rearranging a notebook page full of stream of thought.