A/N: I blame Damien Rice's music and Gackt & Hyde's Orenji no Taiyou for inspiring this as I don't usually write anything so depressing. So yeah. More Taito…I have mixed feelings about this one.
Disclaimer: Don't own.
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Dusk
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"Winter will always be your favourite season," he says, standing behind you, unwrapping the black and blue scarf from around your neck, and kissing the top of your head as you sit in front of the television that flickers across both your faces like a fire. Closing your eyes, you try to memorize that tone of voice and every word spoken, lovingly, hauntingly. The fear that this may be the last time makes your grip tighten around the mug of hot cocoa in your hands. The drink had been his choice and creation. You'd have preferred coffee but to him, you could never say no.
For now, you wish he would sit down even if only for a while, because his constant motion and inability to sit or stand still is enough to make you dizzy sometimes. As quickly as the thought comes, you push it away. Tonight, you will try to get by without picking out faults. He had said there was something to talk about tonight but you already know. News went from his sister to your brother to you before it went from him to you and you wish you could blame him for that. You want to say a hundred things to stop him from leaving eves as you want to mentally hit yourself for feeling so desperate. This is the only person in the world who can make your heart sink or soar in a heartbeat, and though you know it will be impossible, you want to hate him for it so, so much.
Finally taking a seat on the chair diagonal from you, he is fidgeting now. Old habits die hard; you want to shake your head. "Yama…" And now you want to smile—albeit a little bitterly—because it has begun.
You do not look up, but hum to confirm that you are paying attention, likely more attention than is called for because although you are not required to close your eyes and wait for every breath of his to come and go, you find yourself doing so anyway, committing it to memory. You know what's to come. University acceptances have been coming for all your friends these days. It should not affect you so much but—
"California said yes." His voice is unsteady now, not at all the way you like it.
"Of course," and you bite your lip realizing that you have actually said it aloud. "Why wouldn't they have?" You're talented and you know it. The world knows it, Yagami.
"I'm leaving Odaiba, Yama, leaving Japan."
You don't know if he's waiting for a storm from you or afraid that it won't come though you do know that your silence has always terrified him more. "You seem to have decided," you settle on saying, not sure if you should feel affronted that your input was not asked for. It's probably for the best, you want to say, not believing it yourself, but you decide against it. "We're growing old," is strangely what seems to come out of your mouth now, along with a weary chuckle, sounding to yourself eighty instead of eighteen.
"But not apart." And you look up now, to see eyes the colour of your lukewarm cold cocoa fixed upon you. Vaguely, you wonder, how long they've been doing that. You're angry, you both know, but the predominant emotion is something else altogether. A strange mix of helplessness and loss, two of the things you've always hated most. Suddenly you are being pulled away by your father again, away from your mother and your little brother, because things were already carved into stone and you could do nothing but go on.
"I mean it," and in a flash, there is a hand on yours, another in your hair, the mug pried away, and the boy kneeling on the parquet floor before you. In that moment, you think, he could be twelve again if only his voice would not belie his age. "Never apart." And you know he means it by the way his hands shake, sighing at yourself because how can I doubt you? He is the kind to live and die by his promises.
As much as it hurts to admit, you can see him fit right into a land of sun and summer. Winter was never your season, you think, finding him warm even as the snow and wind howls outside. The soccer scholarship will do him and his future well, and in all honesty, he would have been a fool to decline. "I know," you whisper, "and I'm proud of you." But even so, a part of you wonders--the hands in his hair now drop to his shoulders, encircling and memorizing--how you will carry on without your summer sun.
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fin
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with you, I want to burn the seasons