HEY LOOK. I'm back! This is only a tentative thing, though, as I'm currently also in Beijing and being suffocated by the heat, business, being sick, and my little brother, in that order. Yup. HOWEVER, as everyone else is working on chaptered summer fics, my subconscious decided to jump on the bangwagon too.
This fic is a gift for Jun-chan (as promised!), whose ebullience has no match. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.
This is going to be a series of drabbles; some long, some short. And yes, I know that this takes place in Venice but the title mentions Rome. There's a reason, I promise! Oh, and last thing: if you don't want spoilers, please don't google for the rest of the poem.
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Swift After Rome
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anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
- e. e. cummings
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"One…"
The water lapped at the sky—or perhaps vice versa, as both were a murky navy that had swallowed the horizon, encasing Venice in a circle of rippling stars that sloped past the winged lions and wingless angels—
—who slept, watching—
into heaven.
"Fourteen…"
There were candles burning in the old theater by the canal, each flicker echoed by the gondolas tied to the edge of the water knocking together with the waves—faint hollow sounds as for temple meditating, wood on wood,
Wood on wood.
"Thirty-one…"
It was orange dancing across a curtain that looked like the sky, all dark and flecked with white. There was a bit of rustling, shuffling, bulging in the fabric as the curtain: sky rippled in the burning dark, shelter for resting, tired hearts
(boys, four, with soft faces and hardened feet).
"What are you talking about? Give that here—what, forgot how to count? It's twenty-one, not thirty-one, you blundering idiot. Why did we let you count our earnings again?"
Hattori Heiji cast a sullen look at Hakuba Saguru, half-hidden by shadows. "I'd've liked it to be thirty-one…"
"Yeah, we all would, but that doesn't make it so, huh? Keep your fantasies in your head where they can fill some space."
A scowling murmur, inked into the smoky air. "Yessir, Signor Stick-up-my-arse."
"What?"
"You heard 'im, Signor." An infuriating grin, unfurling between the leaning shoulders of Kuroba Kaito as he played into the banter. His friend—fellow conspirator, runaway, orphan—drew his mouth into a thin line, bringing candlelight to his chin.
"Alright guys, could we carry this on at a later time? 'Cause I want to finish and sleep. And Saguru, lighten up."
The fourth in the tiny circle of hunched shoulders and furious whispers cut in, tendrils of voice the most carrying in the rest of the black, cavernous theater. Kudo Shinichi fingered the edge of the moth-eaten sky as he drew closer to the others on the side of the stage.
"I am lightened up—"
"Shinichi, you're boring."
"Huh?"
Kaito shoved him in response. He was shoved back. A tussle followed, fists grabbing shirts and arms flying behind the dripping wax. The remaining two of the group glanced at each other and were momentarily brought together in exasperation towards their other friends.
"So, twenty-one, right?"
"Yup."
"Okay then, twenty-two, twenty-five, twenty-six…"
One and a half hour later, the candles were blown out in the abandoned theater Stella,
(—And darkness smoothed the eyelids of young, motherless boys…)
leaving that corner of Venice quiet for the latter night.