He felt tired, dried up. The day had been a bitch, literally. He had tried to do too many things, had been asked to many questions, had been demanded to decide too much. In the end, he hadn't really accomplished anything.
His stomach hurt. He just wanted to rest, wanted to eat something and then sleep and maybe everything would just disappear, disintegrate, vanish. At least that would mean that he wouldn't have to worry about anything anymore...
His communicator chirped. Not again... he should just ignore it... But automatically, his hand came up to open a channel.
"Irie-sama?" She knew he had heard. Why answer... He knew it was rude. He knew he should... but he was so tired... So very tired... "Irie-sama, Byakuran-sama asks you for a talk."
Slowly, he nodded, rubbing his forehead. "'ka...y..."
"It seems to be because...." The womans voice became lower, more unclear, harder to understand. He tried to concentrated but couldn't, it was so hard to even make sense of any of the words, they seemed to fade away the faster the more he tried to comprehend...
Irie didn't even notice when he staggered and hit the ground. He was already unconscious.
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
His head was hammering when he woke up, and at the same time everything was a blur. His whole body ached, as if he had just been beaten up or maybe rather, as if someone had placed a thousand needles inside his veins.
Something rustled, and it took him some moments to realize that it were the sheets beneath him. Sheets? He couldn't remember going back to his room... He hadn't even planned to go there, but to fetch some food before... So when...
Plus, the smell was wrong. It wasn't really unpleasant nor even really alien to him. Rather familiar... very familiar...
How again were the words to describe it? This mixture of... steel and oil and fire that would enter one's nose and mouth and stay there even after brushing one's teeth. This mixture that was so completely machine, was so absolute inhuman. He just couldn't consider it inhuman, though.
He knew it was yet wasn't he knew that the smell was supposed to describe inhumanity yet... it was so reassuring. He had always felt more secure around machines than around men. They were more logical, and if someone seemed off, it was usually easy to detect the reason, the part that was broken. Humans were different, way more complicated, and did things without logic and reason. He hated that. It confused him, and it made him feel insecure and left him with a bad feeling and the impression to not have done enough research.
Yes, Irie preferred machines.
Yet, yet the smell wasn't all oil and steel... There was more, a light scent of something else... Something human...
He opened his eyes and let them wander. Where was he? Not his room, that much was sure, but still somewhere in the base, that much he could tell, too. Although "room" might be to large a word for the low, narrow hole he lay in. The place seemed strangely familiar, just like everything else, yet he was sure that he had never been here. There was steel and cable and similar stuff all around him. Some buttons and other controllers around. What a strange space to control...
Slowly, the explanation dawned on him. The thing under him that he had considered to be a strangely shaped bed was a seat. Those controllers looked exactly like something a certain Black Spell technician would create. And the smell...
Someone had laid him down inside a "Strau Mosca." His lips formed the words without him even taking notice. He couldn't believe it. He was really inside one of those pimped legendary humanoid weapons, those things he had dreamed of back when he was a little boy (and it hadn't been nightmares. This was Irie, after all, and as long as humans weren't involved, his dreams tended to be fascinating and nice. Others would have considered those that had no humans in it the way more scary ones, maybe.) And then, years later, he had heard that someone did research on them, making them much more invincible. He had been more than eager to meet that person, maybe be able to take part in the research.
Byakuran had disallowed it.
And then, when he came to Japan, half way around the globe, he had found that this very technician was there too.
He still guessed it to be some kind of coincidence or maybe, if he would have believed in Fortuna, he could have blamed her.
"Nope, not exactly." Irie was shaken off his train of thoughts by Spanners calm voice. "It's a King Mosca, the Strau are too small to carry a human inside."
Irie looked around like a little child beneath the Christmas tree, soaking everything in he saw yet not touching anything. It was another technicians work, he wouldn't lay even a finger on it without permission. Unwritten Technician's Rule #1.
"They need no human life force anymore?" Irie's eyes shimmered with excitement.
"Nope." A Popsicle plopped out the blond man's mouth and pointed at the robot. "I guessed that that life force thing should be something one could replace if there was really made effort to do so."
Irie pushed his glasses in place and nodded slowly. "I guess the problem with a human is that this energy would be limited?"
"Quite." And so they went on.
Down here there were no such things like Black Spell and White Spell, no such things like Millefiore or Byakuran.
Down here there were only two technicians, fascinated by complicated details like two little boys would be about a new video game.
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
It was nice talking to Spanner. It reminded him of the time when he had started to really work in his profession, in places where non-technicians barely came. For the first time in his life, Irie had experienced meeting other human beings that didn't make him feel uncomfortable, that weren't strenuous just to be around.
Just that this time, he didn't even feel indifferent, but even found that Spanner's presence had an effect on him that he could describe as either reviving or calming, at the same time.
He nearly wouldn't have heard his intercom when it rang.
"Yes?"
"Irie-sama?" He sighed at the troubled voice of the pink haired woman at the other end of the line. "Are you all right? I have been waiting for more than seven minutes now before you responded."
"Sorry, I was talking to Spanner- I'll come."
"Talking?" The voice sounded confused.
A blush crept over the orange haired man's cheeks. "I'm sorry, it was so very fascinating, you know..."
The woman nodded. "I understand. I hope you feel better now."
The man blinked. "Uhm, yes, thanks?"
She broke the connection, but Irie could hear them giggle before the intercom went black.
Throwing a glance at Spanner, he met equally confused eyes.
"Do you have any idea what that girlish giggle just now was supposed to be?"
They were interested in robots. They could have noticed a changed amplitude of a nanocell immediately and come up with a solution half a day later.
But humans were a totally different thing.
Because feelings were nothing one could measure and investigate in, nothing one could give parameters and make a diagram of.
The only thing they knew was that they shared a fascination. That they could talk easily. That, among all those mindless uninteresting fighters, they had found someone intelligent in each other.
"Do you have some spare time tomorrow?"
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
They started to meet on a regular basis, mainly because Irie liked those little escapes from the crowded, demanding world above. He even started to switch off his intercom, although he had to endure even more concealed giggles in return (he would never have believed that those women could behave like teenage school girls).
But the visits were important, and the more they met, the more important they grew to both of them. All the time the White Spell captain had used to enjoy being alone in his room before was spent at Spanner's workshop now, and he felt it even more refreshing than relaxing alone.
Refreshing to be around someone who didn't wait for any commands. Relaxing to be around someone who didn't try to command him or maneuver him out, either. Relaxing to be around someone who wasn't interested in anything else than robots and other mechanics and programming and that like, who didn't want to discuss politics or murder or marriage, only about simple interesting things like left-spin nanoengines and such.
They would maybe never have noticed the other reason why they spent so much time together if not there had been those rumors.
At first, they had just ignored them (it had taken them some time to realize that they were there at all, neither of them being to keen on gossip). Until Byakuran had asked Irie oh so innocently if they really had... done certain things (they were said to have done) neither of them had ever considered to do with anyone (some of them sounded just strange or impossible), they had had a very long talk about it.
Especially about those things the white haired had mentioned that seemed practically impossible.
But they had lost interest soon and gone back to their normal themes.
Yet...
Some days later, Spanner had eyed Irie thoughtfully and plopped the Popsicle out of his mouth.
"Sho?"
"Huh- yes?" The shorter man was still absorbed by the generator he was repairing, not even looking up when the blond spoke.
"I was thinking about those rumors your Byakuran mentioned."
"Ah?"
"Some of them sounded rather fascinating."
lady I swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
And that was it, more or less. There was no romance for them, no "I love you" or "darling" ("Sho" and "Hana" was the nearest they ever got), but neither of them really missed it. The whole thing was oddly pragmatic. But then again, it was more about fascination than about anything else. Fascination with not only the plain physical experiences but also that strange yet interesting mix of affection and trust that built between them.
They never talked about it, never, not even those times when one of them went out for a battle that might as well be his last.
There just was nothing they could have talked about.
Neither of them was sure what it was. Neither of them wanted to say those shallow words to name something that was so much more interesting than those girl's novels that used the word so lightly.
But they both guessed that "it" was there, somehow.
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
It was there, and even as he cradled the cold corpse of the man he had never called his "lover" to his chest, he could still feel it. He could still feel this bond between them, and despite the almost insane sadness that buit inside of him, there was a very scientific, technical part of his brain that was looking forward to explore the way things would go on from now.
He had heard certain things about the Vongola mist guardian, and he was sure that it wouldn't be over like this.
A cracked smile claimed his lips, just like the man this corpse had been had done so often before.
And would do again.
And death I think is no parenthesis.