"Your freezing speech bubbles
seem to hold your words aloft
I want the smoky clouds of laughter
to swim about me forever more...
...the shells crack under our shoes like punctuation points
the planets bend between us
a hundred million suns and stars...
...it's all for you
It's all for you..."
- Snow Patrol, "The Planets Bend Between Us"
=o=o=o=
"The moon is full, tonight," Watanuki remarks, taking a drag off of that long, thin pipe he favors so much these days.
"Mm." Doumeki grunts in response, tipping back his sake.
Watanuki sighs, directing a sidelong glare at his drinking companion. "Your manners have really not improved over the years."
Doumeki shrugs, looking up at the moon as if he really sees it, and isn't just avoiding Watanuki's gaze. "Who's here to impress?"
Watanuki blinks, then slowly turns back to the view of the garden and that endless night sky. He's too practiced now to be caught fidgeting, but Doumeki notices that although Watanuki habitually lifts the pipe to his lips, he forgets to breathe in the smoke.
After all this time, as they've grown older, they've become careful with their words. Nothing ever means what it seems. There is so very much they cannot say without fear of hurting the other, or worse, pushing the other away.
It's a game they've been playing for years, now, only the fun disappeared long ago, and no one is really keeping score.
"How is school going? I heard they asked you to be an assistant professor of the folklore department," Watanuki comments after a length pause, lazily blowing out smoke and watching it drift out towards the starlight.
"Yeah. It's not a bad gig, and maybe I can learn more." Doumeki takes another sip of his sake, and Watanuki wants to ask, learn more about what?, but Doumeki's shoulders hunch up just a bit and Watanuki hears the unspoken, maybe I can find out how to bring her back for you.
"How is Kohane-chan doing?" Watanuki asks quickly.
I don't want to talk about this.
"She's a really hard worker. I think she wants my job, honestly," Doumeki responds, the sound of his deep voice ringing into his glass.
Sorry. I know.
"Hm, you better watch out, then. Don't get lazy." A pause, and then Watanuki adjusts the hem of his kimono. "You should…be careful not to work too hard, though."
Don't apologize. I'm just…you know how I get about it.
"Aa. I won't." Doumeki considers finishing off the sake before setting his glass aside and leaning back on his hands, looking up at the moon and the smoke curling up from Watanuki's pipe into the sky. "How about you? Working too hard?"
Isn't there anything I can do? I feel so useless.
Watanuki snorts, pulling his legs up so he can sit more comfortably. "How can I work with a giant idiot like you sleeping on my porch and drinking all my sake every night? It's impossible to get anything done with you around all the damn time."
You're here, so that's enough for now.
"I'll keep coming back, then." Doumeki's voice is carefully calm, in that serious way he used to say things when they were in high school, the way he used to annoy Watanuki just for the fun of it.
Purposefully, he says this like it's a joke.
He has to, because if he says it seriously, the way they both know he means it, it would do too much to their relationship.
Watanuki takes a very quiet breath and absentmindedly reaches up to adjust his glasses, as if he even needs to. He fiddles with his pipe, turning it this way and that. He pushes his kimono sleeve up, then pulls it back down. And then, he exhales.
"…Moron. Like I need you around that much." Watanuki responds with his deadpan humor, in that dry voice he started to use a few years ago, the one that covers up a multitude of emotions.
Doumeki hears every single sentiment behind those words.
The gratitude, the embarrassment, the awkwardness, and the vague beginnings of that word they have been skirting around for some time now.
They sit together for a long time, in companionable silence, drinking in each other's presence. The air is thick with words they want to say, but in a comfortable sort of way. There will be time for another conversation, when the time is right. They tell themselves there will be time, even if they know their time together is borrowed, and they will have to pay it back sooner than they'd like.
Carefully, making it seem casual, Doumeki offers an outstretched palm to Watanuki while looking up at the moon.
Not meeting Doumeki's gaze, for all the world looking as though he doesn't notice anything out of the ordinary, Watanuki takes Doumeki's hand in his own.
The words they speak are a necessary farce to keep them both going, to keep them sane. Watanuki knows it, deep in his heart, that Doumeki, his Doumeki, will die before she comes back. He doesn't think Doumeki knows it just yet, but he'll figure it out if Watanuki lets it slip, if their eyes meet, because they know each other so well, inside and out. But it's a truth Watanuki doesn't even want to let himself find out, not yet.
For his part, Doumeki knows Watanuki stands in a different timeline now. He senses the strange otherness radiating from Watanuki, the feeling that he belongs outside of time and space, the feeling that he's landed in from some other dimension. Doumeki doesn't know the details, but he knows Watanuki is slipping through his fingers like sand, and that in time he will begin to slip through Doumeki's fingers like water. And in more time still, Doumeki will lose him.
"Hitsuzen," Doumeki whispers, and it is a word that Watanuki has not heard in so, so long, and it echoes in his mind along with her voice. But when she said it, it was happy-sad. When Doumeki says it, it's rueful, longing, bittersweet—with more of an edge than Watanuki would have thought him capable of.
It's what brought us together, it brought you to me, even if it ends badly…
"Hitsuzen," Watanuki agrees in a soft murmur, leaning to the side to let his head rest against Doumeki's broad shoulder. In Watanuki's mouth, the word takes on a grim resignation, but he half-laughs when he says it, almost like someone laughing through tears.
It's what will keep us together. Don't look ahead.
Watanuki's grip on Doumeki's hand tightens.
…Don't look ahead.
=o=o=o=
And so ends Chapter 2! I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up, but I know it won't be more than a couple months from now at the latest. Please let me know what you liked or disliked, any feedback is welcome!
- kohimiruku
