Title: hand-tinted faces of history
Characters/Pairings: Kazura/Aoi
Rating: PG for slash
Word Count: 555
Warnings: spoilers for episode 5
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.
Prompt/Theme: Jan 18 "what's left behind leaves one less thing to pass" at 31_days
Notes: Written in January 2012.
Kazura's room above their studio is an island of calm in the otherwise hectic City of Sin; he is standing at the window overlooking the luminous advertising of bath houses, dance halls and night clubs, holding the photograph he developed and hand-tinted earlier that day.
Lingering strokes on the face of an old friend.
When the rain slaps the streets with the force of a bullet, he knows he has seen Nishio for the last time today. He listens inside, where no regret is left.
There's a knock on the door, three raps in quick succession, but he does not call Enter or turn around. Aoi will step inside anyway; he ignores other people's privacy when he chooses, or Kazura's at least.
True enough, the door clicks shut behind him and footsteps advance in his direction, muffled and measured, and his dress shirt rustles like fire as Aoi wraps his arms around his waist, the cotton hissing at the friction. Warm pressure settles on his shoulder and breath tickles the strands of hair sweat has pasted against his neck.
Kazura keeps his eyes fixed on the endlessness of the night sky. Their breaths and the static of the rain occupies the room for the moment, and his mind, like the noise in a telephone wire, like a cancelled radio broadcast.
Then Aoi speaks up. He must have seen the photograph in Kazura's hand. "I pried," he says. "Into your past, I mean."
What he means is that he asked about Nishio's importance to Kazura, asked about a past he, as Iha Kazura, didn't have; they're partners, or supposed to be, and their real past lives play no part in this charade. What he means is that he shouldn't have; what he means is that he's sorry. For asking, for stirring Kazura up, for everything that happened after.
Aoi knows how overcome Kazura is by the past. "I sounded like a jealous wife setting an ultimatum."
"You were worried about the mission. And me," Kazura says. There was no helping it. He had to pull the strings that bound him to the past, before he could sever them without regret. "I understand."
He sought out Nishio to confirm he hadn't changed, and would not even if it killed him. Photographs document the past, but serve as no more than a reminder. You can't go back in time through their framed windows.
Aoi reminds him to let go: nuzzles his nose against Kazura's earlobe. Kazura closes his eyes then and exhales. When he turns around, Aoi's eyes shoot up to look at his. He reads no trace of accusal, blame or impatience in them. There's only acceptance in that open expression.
He presses Aoi close by the sweat-dampened cotton at the small of his back, presses their lips together and Aoi follows suit. One hand bunches up Kazura's shirt between the shoulder blades, the other runs through his hair - he likes to ruin Kazura's combed hairstyle.
This is where they turn to muscle memory to guide them, because it needs no words, no past and no identities. It's just them now and their names don't matter.
The photograph Kazura has taken care to bleach and color lies forgotten on the floor, the faces on it fragments of history, a reminder of a moment in time will not ever come again. And of faces you may not ever see again.