A Scene from an Unremarkable Time
i. after practice, 6.30 p.m.
Fuji steps into the shower just as Tezuka starts soaping up.
-Oh, I'm sorry Tezuka, I didn't see you through the mist,- he says apologetically. –You don't mind, do you?- This, in Tezuka's comprehension of Fuji-speak, means simply Hello, Tezuka (smiley face emoticon inclusive)
If Tezuka were a mere mortal he would have rolled his eyes. Instead he turns away a fraction, politely but pointedly.
-You know, Tezuka. I thought you were the kind to wear your spectacles to shower. Do you wear them to sleep, too? Yuuta had a friend who stayed over and did that, and when he woke up in the morning he had little red indents on either side of his nose, like tiny clay pans, or Mars craters. If you never take your specs off perhaps moss grows there, and eventually you have a whole little ecosystem perhaps, which can't be very nice, it would get itchy eventually – Fuji's own nose wrinkles a little imagining this (whether in distaste or morbid curiosity Tezuka cannot tell), but talks on, his voice melding with the steady thrum of water on the tiles.
He slicks his hands with the bar of soap, and swirls his fingers in the hollow at the base of his throat, along the shadows at his collarbones almost absent-mindedly.
Tezuka stares fixedly at a droplet sliding down the wall and tries not to cough.
- Told Inui that it could have been better if the golden peppers were minced a little finer, then it's easier to get a stronger flavour when you distill the juice. – Fuji drops the soap in a puddle and bends over to get it; Tezuka looks, and carefully watches only the ripples forming outward, perfectly circular, concentric rings of light. Thinks about the physics needed to form such tidy geometry: as Wikipedia says, capillary waves in fluid interfaces. Physics is straightforward enough, but chemistry he has to work a little harder at to understand.
Fuji laughs as he meticulously begins to soap the web between each finger. –Why, Tezuka. Yudan sezu ni ikou indeed; you never know what fearful germs might lurk near your knuckles.-
-The worst,- Tezuka replies with a completely straight face. Fuji's eyes open wide for a nanosecond, then the corners crinkle up and he leans his head back, out of the spray of water, to laugh. His laughter echoes, each note held in suspension and stretched out, gracefully fading (and Tezuka imagines they are bubbles, refracting light in different colours, purple green blue pink, rainbow-spotting the whitewashed walls)
They finish showering in silence. Fuji makes a move toward the towel rack, but by some mysterious contrivance slips and makes a startled sound as he falls backward –
- and then Tezuka is there with a firm hand around his wrist and Fuji is pressed up against the wall. There is a terrible moment in which Tezuka contemplates all of
(a) the damp tendrils skimming the curve of Fuji's neck;
(b) what would have happened if Fuji's head had hit the floor;
(c) how he managed to cross the distance he did in a matter of, say, about two seconds; (contrary to popular belief he is not a demigod, a vampire or a robot)
(d) the fact that it was rather nice to have Fuji slightly flushed and open-mouthed and warm under him.
The last made him let go and step back. I'm sorry, he says formally. Are you alright?
Fuji's smile is wide and completely inscrutable. Thank you, Tezuka-kun. He turns, and already Tezuka can see the faint bruise at his hip where he hit the towel rack. He wants to apologise again but the words are viscous in his throat, stifled in the steam that envelops Fuji as he exits the shower.
By the time he gets dressed and locks up Fuji is gone, but there were hearts with smiley faces drawn delicately with a thin finger in the mist on his spectacles.