Author's Note:
Oddness and Lady Macbeth syndrome abound, plus another unsupported/unrefuted character quirk. ^_~
*`-,--
Kakyou's blood seemed to stick to his hand.
He'd changed his shirt, his coat, washed his hand until the skin was raw and red--and still he could feel slippery liquid between his fingers, clotting under his fingernails. The smell seemed to coat him like a second skin, tangy and coppery and sweet with decay. Sumeragi leaned back against the bathroom wall, fighting down dry-heaves. Beyond the bathroom door, his apartment was dark; he could faintly hear rain whispering against the one wide glass window in the adjacent room.
He closed his eyes.
There were small warm hands on his face, and wide red eyes staring sightlessly into his. With some surprise, he realised that her eyelashes were the same pure white as her long hair.
"Oh," was all the Princess said.
Was she all right? He reached up to cover one of her tiny hands with his own; the black leather of his own glove made the edge of his vision a blurred yin-yang.
The red darkness of her eyes shifted and flickered; her lips moved as if forming a silent prayer.
No. This was enough.
He pulled his consciousness away from his younger self and padded out of the bathroom. The darkness rushed at his one good eye--for a moment, he felt entirely blind, and the feeling was disconcerting. Sumeragi counted his steps until his hands found thick fabric; he tugged the curtain aside a little at a time, letting the watery grey light creep in by degrees.
Fuuma was standing on his balcony, smoking a cigarette.
Sumeragi fought back a growl, even as his heart sank under a ripple of fear. The Dark Kamui gave him a perversely cheerful grin, and turned enough so that he could see the brown lump of a wrapped package tucked under his arm. For a moment he considered just pushing the curtain shut again and going back into the bathroom to put his hand under the water--but Fuuma tapped the package, grinning, and curiosity tugged insistently and shamefully at his mind.
He unlocked the plate-glass door and slid it back.
Chill air slapped against his cheeks; cold, stinging raindrops pattered into his hair and the fabric of his turtleneck.
"You did very well, Sakurazukamori." The Dark Kamui exhaled a long streamer of smoke. "But you left before I could give you this..." He indicated the package under his arm with a casual gesture.
"What is it?"
"Something you should have. Take it."
Sumeragi fully expected to feel the contours of a human head under the brown paper as he took it; to his surprise it was relatively flat, and the thing inside flopped gently as he turned it over in his hands.
"Don't be a stranger," Fuuma added, and then hoisted himself up and over the handrail to leap away into the rain.
Water trickled down the back of Sumeragi's neck, snaking into his shirt to soak his skin with cold.
He stepped inside and closed the door, then crossed the room and dropped the package on the foot of his bed. For a moment he simply stared at it: the thing lay in a motionless, compact brown heap, like the body of a dead dog.
Then he sat down beside it and, with a single decisive motion, ripped back the paper.
The thing inside slithered and bunched up--it was definitely fabric--and as Sumeragi peeled the damp brown paper away, his eye involuntarily traced the long line of a fold in the cloth...
Of a sleeve.
He dropped the package with a startled cry.
No, his fevered brain insisted. This isn't. He didn't... he couldn't have.
Cautiously, he took a handful of the soft, heavy fabric and pulled.
The thing was very long and very black, and as he lifted it its shape began to become apparent. What at first looked like no more than dark haphazard folds rearranged themselves into lapels, sleeves, a collar, planes and angles whose shapes he already knew well...
It was Seishirou's coat.
The hole in the back where his hand had gone through was completely mended; the fabric bore none of the stiffness of dried blood. It was as immaculate as it had been that day they'd met again at the Nakano Sun Plaza; Sumeragi was too dazed to wonder who could have taken the time to clean and sew it.
A wild impulse struck him, and he pushed his face into the coat.
He breathed in, and the Sakurazukamori filled his lungs, layer after dark layer of complicated beauty. He smelled rain, earth, cigarettes, a hint of cologne and body heat, the faintest touch of sakura and green tea. No one else could possibly have built up a smell this rich--and there was no combination of elements as heady as this one anywhere in the world.
He slid one hand into the sleeve, and hesitantly pulled up the fabric until the coat's shoulder covered his shoulder; then, with a little more confidence, slid into the other sleeve and tugged it up. The dark material bunched up briefly, and then settled; the coat fit him well, if loosely.
In a way, he realised, all that was left of the Sakurazukamori belonged to him--the hunter's marks on his hands, his missing eye so like Seishirou's, the black trenchcoat slung in shadowy elegance around his thin body. Hopeless love rose to stop his breath for a moment: he wished, desperately, that he could just stand up, face the mirror, and find Seishirou waiting for him on the other side of the silvered glass.
Sumeragi realised, with a little shock of pain, that he hadn't seen Seishirou out of this coat once he came back to Tokyo.
And he hadn't noticed, when he cradled the dying man in his arms, how very soft it was.
He began to rock back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly that the darkness overwhelmed anything he might have seen through Subaru's eyes.
Sumeragi wanted to cry. He wanted to bury his face deeper in the lining of this coat and just scream out his grief, but no sound or tears came--only a cold-edged numbness, creeping up from beneath his shoulders to wrap itself around his throat.
He rocked, pulling the coat tighter around himself, until the emptiness in his chest exhausted him and he fell asleep.
* * *
The Sakurazukamori dreamed.
He hung in mid-air, and floating slowly across his line of vision was a snowfall of pink petals, bright against the darkness of his dreamscape. They swirled around him without sound or scent--just little soft slashes of light on endless velvet dark.
He held out his hand, and the slow whirlwind stopped entirely. Silence rang in his ears as he reached forward to take one of the petals; the tiny slip of sakura was like silk against his fingertips when he touched it.
For a moment the image stayed perfectly still, that flower petal in his hand and a thousand others hanging in the space around him like a giant cage.
And then it changed.
The sakura petal darkened, and its shape shifted; he blinked, and it was a drop of blood, warm and unnaturally bright on his fingertip. Sumeragi looked up, and the petals around him were drawing themselves up into little red spheres, beads of blood in every direction as far as he could see.
Then they fell.
The red rain drove straight at him, soaking him in its slickness and smell, coating his tongue with a strong metallic taste when he opened his mouth to cry out. It was all over him, it was part of him, dissolving through his skin and into his own veins, turning his body to liquid and pulling him down into the endless tide, so that he was both swept ahead by it and master of it, the waves roaring wherever his frightened thoughts took them...
He woke with a start, still wrapped in the dead man's coat.
And, all at once, he knew what the dream had meant.
* * *
Even in the rain, the Tree was resplendent, green and black against the muted greys that painted the rest of Ueno Park. Its shape, dark and wide and gnarled with age, dominated Sumeragi's field of vision; as he came closer, he felt a faint prickle at the back of his mind--the magic here lay thick in the air between the raindrops, and it tugged him forward like a shyly insistent child.
As he drew closer, one hesitant step at a time, the park around him became greyer and greyer, fading into darkness as the sense of power around him grew stronger. The Tree itself changed, too, its green leaves slowly curling into tight buds which unfolded again as pink flowers, as magnificently bright as they would have been in the warm height of spring.
The foam of blossoms swayed, ever so slightly, and a voice--no, a chorus of voices--flooded Sumeragi's understanding.
Welcome, Sakurazukamori.
He thrust his hands into the trenchcoat pockets, and after a moment's hesitation, addressed the thing aloud.
"Did you send me that dream?"
Something akin to a light chuckle shivered across his mind.
You would have come sooner or later, regardless of whether the dream was of My creation.
He hesitated, but the thing reached out to him again, reaching into his consciousness with a warmth so unexpected he couldn't help but move closer.
When you come to Me, part of your soul is already destroyed.
Sumeragi felt, at the distant edges of his power, the bright laughing Subaru he had once been.
When you inherit Me, part of you already cries out for the blood you know you will spill.
One of the voices was a little louder than the rest, a little deeper. Sumeragi thought of Seishirou's weight against his shoulder, the last soft breath against his ear...
It does not matter what drives you.
...and nine years before that, a single moment frozen in time: Seishirou bending over him to share some wicked little confidence, the warm sigh of a smile stirring his hair and making his heart pound...
Every one of My guardians binds himself to Me long before ever the title falls on his shoulders.
...he had believed so strongly, had wanted nothing more than to bury himself in the darkness of Seishirou's coat, his ears deaf to everything but their twin heartbeats...
Every one of My guardians loses something precious.
There was a wave of numbing comfort--not unlike the dark taste of each day's first cigarette, using poison to kill his awareness of his body's latent protests. He was engulfed in sympathy, in whispered promises of revenge, in the fierce call of something needing him...
Sumeragi Subaru. I know. I know you hurt. I know you feel as if you will never stop bleeding inside. But, My Sumeragi, My child--bring Me souls and I will wrap you in their warmth. I will take the flow of love within them and pour it over you.
I will want you.
I will stay with you.
I will stop the hurt.
Sakura petals caressed his cheek, threaded through his hair, wafted scent against his forehead.
Sumeragi linked his slender arms around one of the tree's solid, smooth branches; a cluster of flowers leaned forward to stroke his face.
He wept then.
* * *
This time, when he sank into grief-exhausted sleep, the darkness blotted out any dreams; when he woke, he needed only a moment to get his bearings before retreating from the Tree's dark sphere of illusion. The little wash of feeling that nudged at his mind as he left was like a fleeting goodbye kiss; when it passed, he noticed with some shock that his hand felt clean again, that the blood smell no longer teased the edges of his senses.
He walked--he didn't care where, really, as long as it was away--and hardly knew where he was going until he looked up and found himself within sight of the Metropolitan Government Building.
It won't hurt to get to know your colleagues, Sumeragi-kun.
The sudden, itching need for a cigarette washed over him, and he fumbled in his pocket for one.
Had anyone seen him, blood-stained and struggling to stay upright, as he left the building? He didn't want to have to fight off security guards or frightened government interns... still, if they were used to the Dark Kamui's comings and goings, the building's other inhabitants might simply have conditioned themselves to ignore the handful of people whose business only took place below the ground level.
A little too late, he remembered he hadn't put his cigarettes and lighter into the pocket of Seishirou's coat. His fingers curled around nothing but pocket lint just as he stopped short of the Government Building's front steps.
"Shit," he muttered aloud.
"Something wrong, Sumeragi-san?"
Alarm spiked through him, and out of sheer reflex he began to gather energy as he turned. A single clear shot would buy him enough time to run--
It was Yuuto.
"I didn't mean to startle you." The watercaster lifted his hands, spreading his fingers as if holding out a sign: Look, I'm harmless. "Just thought I'd say hello, and... well, you look as if you've lost something."
His smile was a gentleman's, all concern and kindness, and it caught Sumeragi off-guard. He had no reason to believe it was sincere--after all, only a few days before, a meeting like this might have resulted in a fight to the death--but at the same time, the light touch of interest in his tone was a little disarming. He'd gotten used to Kamui's fretting over him; the boy needed stability, and had seemed to find some reassurance in seeing him at least pretend to act content. But this almost teasing friendliness...
Only one other person had ever been so casually kind to him, and those kindnesses had always been dangerously empty, sharp-edged beneath the politeness.
"Sumeragi-san?"
He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it.
"I just... forgot my cigarettes, is all."
"Ah, that's right... you're a smoker." For a moment he looked as if he were about to admonish Sumeragi with the familiar litany of Smoking will destroy your health--and then, much to the Sakurazukamori's surprise, he pulled a small dark pack from the pocket of his trenchcoat.
"Would you like one?"
Sumeragi blinked. "I... didn't know you smoked."
"I don't, usually. Just every so often, when I feel like it, or when I've had a very long day at work." He ran a hand through his hair with a playfully sheepish smile. "I don't recommend desk jobs, really."
Sumeragi groped for an appropriate response, trying to cover up his sudden unease. Why was this banter making him so damn nervous? "I've never had one."
"Ah... lucky you. Here, sit down."
With a wonderfully fluid ease, Yuuto brushed past him to sit on one of the long stone steps, then gestured at the space next to him. Sumeragi hesitated, then sat; a light breeze began to kick up as he did so, and he caught the smell of rain-washed stone, clean and uncomplicated.
Yuuto took two cigarettes from the pack, and offered one out politely; Sumeragi blinked at it for a moment before realising--
"It's... black."
"They're clove cigarettes." The watercaster set his cigarette between his lips and then dug around in his trouser pocket. "Part clove, and part tobacco... not quite as strong as the 'real thing', but good. Annnd... aha, I knew I had matches in here."
There was a dry rattling sound somewhere on his blind side; Sumeragi turned to face him just as the match hissed into life. Quickly, without thinking, he lifted his own cigarette to his mouth and leaned in, nosing towards the flame.
The first mouthful of smoke came as a surprise.
It tasted like chocolate first and foremost--bitter chocolate, dark and almost too sweet. As he held the smoke on his tongue the taste mellowed, just a little, until it was like honey and cinnamon and tea, all held together by the familiar dusty taste of tobacco.
He exhaled very, very slowly.
"Good, isn't it?" Yuuto's smile broadened just a bit as he took a drag off of his own cigarette. "Sweet."
"Yeah..." He took the thing carefully between two fingers and then ran his tongue across his lower lip thoughtfully. His mind was full of sakura and blood and rain, full of the strange little details that had haunted him all day. Seishirou's coat loose and soft around his shoulders, the Tree's odd version of an embrace, Yuuto's smile, the layers of sweet taste in his mouth.
He closed his eyes.
"Subaru-san, the Princess--"
"Is she all right? Is there anything we can do?"
He glanced up quickly, and there were two young women--twins, in elaborate ceremonial robes--standing on the threshold. As his gaze swept towards them, he caught a brief sweep of motion: one girl had been clutching the other's wrist, and had let go when she knew their visitors would see.
Sumeragi opened his eyes and looked down at the flat, long curve that was the back of his hand.
"Sweet," he echoed.
Oddness and Lady Macbeth syndrome abound, plus another unsupported/unrefuted character quirk. ^_~
*`-,--
Kakyou's blood seemed to stick to his hand.
He'd changed his shirt, his coat, washed his hand until the skin was raw and red--and still he could feel slippery liquid between his fingers, clotting under his fingernails. The smell seemed to coat him like a second skin, tangy and coppery and sweet with decay. Sumeragi leaned back against the bathroom wall, fighting down dry-heaves. Beyond the bathroom door, his apartment was dark; he could faintly hear rain whispering against the one wide glass window in the adjacent room.
He closed his eyes.
There were small warm hands on his face, and wide red eyes staring sightlessly into his. With some surprise, he realised that her eyelashes were the same pure white as her long hair.
"Oh," was all the Princess said.
Was she all right? He reached up to cover one of her tiny hands with his own; the black leather of his own glove made the edge of his vision a blurred yin-yang.
The red darkness of her eyes shifted and flickered; her lips moved as if forming a silent prayer.
No. This was enough.
He pulled his consciousness away from his younger self and padded out of the bathroom. The darkness rushed at his one good eye--for a moment, he felt entirely blind, and the feeling was disconcerting. Sumeragi counted his steps until his hands found thick fabric; he tugged the curtain aside a little at a time, letting the watery grey light creep in by degrees.
Fuuma was standing on his balcony, smoking a cigarette.
Sumeragi fought back a growl, even as his heart sank under a ripple of fear. The Dark Kamui gave him a perversely cheerful grin, and turned enough so that he could see the brown lump of a wrapped package tucked under his arm. For a moment he considered just pushing the curtain shut again and going back into the bathroom to put his hand under the water--but Fuuma tapped the package, grinning, and curiosity tugged insistently and shamefully at his mind.
He unlocked the plate-glass door and slid it back.
Chill air slapped against his cheeks; cold, stinging raindrops pattered into his hair and the fabric of his turtleneck.
"You did very well, Sakurazukamori." The Dark Kamui exhaled a long streamer of smoke. "But you left before I could give you this..." He indicated the package under his arm with a casual gesture.
"What is it?"
"Something you should have. Take it."
Sumeragi fully expected to feel the contours of a human head under the brown paper as he took it; to his surprise it was relatively flat, and the thing inside flopped gently as he turned it over in his hands.
"Don't be a stranger," Fuuma added, and then hoisted himself up and over the handrail to leap away into the rain.
Water trickled down the back of Sumeragi's neck, snaking into his shirt to soak his skin with cold.
He stepped inside and closed the door, then crossed the room and dropped the package on the foot of his bed. For a moment he simply stared at it: the thing lay in a motionless, compact brown heap, like the body of a dead dog.
Then he sat down beside it and, with a single decisive motion, ripped back the paper.
The thing inside slithered and bunched up--it was definitely fabric--and as Sumeragi peeled the damp brown paper away, his eye involuntarily traced the long line of a fold in the cloth...
Of a sleeve.
He dropped the package with a startled cry.
No, his fevered brain insisted. This isn't. He didn't... he couldn't have.
Cautiously, he took a handful of the soft, heavy fabric and pulled.
The thing was very long and very black, and as he lifted it its shape began to become apparent. What at first looked like no more than dark haphazard folds rearranged themselves into lapels, sleeves, a collar, planes and angles whose shapes he already knew well...
It was Seishirou's coat.
The hole in the back where his hand had gone through was completely mended; the fabric bore none of the stiffness of dried blood. It was as immaculate as it had been that day they'd met again at the Nakano Sun Plaza; Sumeragi was too dazed to wonder who could have taken the time to clean and sew it.
A wild impulse struck him, and he pushed his face into the coat.
He breathed in, and the Sakurazukamori filled his lungs, layer after dark layer of complicated beauty. He smelled rain, earth, cigarettes, a hint of cologne and body heat, the faintest touch of sakura and green tea. No one else could possibly have built up a smell this rich--and there was no combination of elements as heady as this one anywhere in the world.
He slid one hand into the sleeve, and hesitantly pulled up the fabric until the coat's shoulder covered his shoulder; then, with a little more confidence, slid into the other sleeve and tugged it up. The dark material bunched up briefly, and then settled; the coat fit him well, if loosely.
In a way, he realised, all that was left of the Sakurazukamori belonged to him--the hunter's marks on his hands, his missing eye so like Seishirou's, the black trenchcoat slung in shadowy elegance around his thin body. Hopeless love rose to stop his breath for a moment: he wished, desperately, that he could just stand up, face the mirror, and find Seishirou waiting for him on the other side of the silvered glass.
Sumeragi realised, with a little shock of pain, that he hadn't seen Seishirou out of this coat once he came back to Tokyo.
And he hadn't noticed, when he cradled the dying man in his arms, how very soft it was.
He began to rock back and forth, squeezing his eyes shut so tightly that the darkness overwhelmed anything he might have seen through Subaru's eyes.
Sumeragi wanted to cry. He wanted to bury his face deeper in the lining of this coat and just scream out his grief, but no sound or tears came--only a cold-edged numbness, creeping up from beneath his shoulders to wrap itself around his throat.
He rocked, pulling the coat tighter around himself, until the emptiness in his chest exhausted him and he fell asleep.
* * *
The Sakurazukamori dreamed.
He hung in mid-air, and floating slowly across his line of vision was a snowfall of pink petals, bright against the darkness of his dreamscape. They swirled around him without sound or scent--just little soft slashes of light on endless velvet dark.
He held out his hand, and the slow whirlwind stopped entirely. Silence rang in his ears as he reached forward to take one of the petals; the tiny slip of sakura was like silk against his fingertips when he touched it.
For a moment the image stayed perfectly still, that flower petal in his hand and a thousand others hanging in the space around him like a giant cage.
And then it changed.
The sakura petal darkened, and its shape shifted; he blinked, and it was a drop of blood, warm and unnaturally bright on his fingertip. Sumeragi looked up, and the petals around him were drawing themselves up into little red spheres, beads of blood in every direction as far as he could see.
Then they fell.
The red rain drove straight at him, soaking him in its slickness and smell, coating his tongue with a strong metallic taste when he opened his mouth to cry out. It was all over him, it was part of him, dissolving through his skin and into his own veins, turning his body to liquid and pulling him down into the endless tide, so that he was both swept ahead by it and master of it, the waves roaring wherever his frightened thoughts took them...
He woke with a start, still wrapped in the dead man's coat.
And, all at once, he knew what the dream had meant.
* * *
Even in the rain, the Tree was resplendent, green and black against the muted greys that painted the rest of Ueno Park. Its shape, dark and wide and gnarled with age, dominated Sumeragi's field of vision; as he came closer, he felt a faint prickle at the back of his mind--the magic here lay thick in the air between the raindrops, and it tugged him forward like a shyly insistent child.
As he drew closer, one hesitant step at a time, the park around him became greyer and greyer, fading into darkness as the sense of power around him grew stronger. The Tree itself changed, too, its green leaves slowly curling into tight buds which unfolded again as pink flowers, as magnificently bright as they would have been in the warm height of spring.
The foam of blossoms swayed, ever so slightly, and a voice--no, a chorus of voices--flooded Sumeragi's understanding.
Welcome, Sakurazukamori.
He thrust his hands into the trenchcoat pockets, and after a moment's hesitation, addressed the thing aloud.
"Did you send me that dream?"
Something akin to a light chuckle shivered across his mind.
You would have come sooner or later, regardless of whether the dream was of My creation.
He hesitated, but the thing reached out to him again, reaching into his consciousness with a warmth so unexpected he couldn't help but move closer.
When you come to Me, part of your soul is already destroyed.
Sumeragi felt, at the distant edges of his power, the bright laughing Subaru he had once been.
When you inherit Me, part of you already cries out for the blood you know you will spill.
One of the voices was a little louder than the rest, a little deeper. Sumeragi thought of Seishirou's weight against his shoulder, the last soft breath against his ear...
It does not matter what drives you.
...and nine years before that, a single moment frozen in time: Seishirou bending over him to share some wicked little confidence, the warm sigh of a smile stirring his hair and making his heart pound...
Every one of My guardians binds himself to Me long before ever the title falls on his shoulders.
...he had believed so strongly, had wanted nothing more than to bury himself in the darkness of Seishirou's coat, his ears deaf to everything but their twin heartbeats...
Every one of My guardians loses something precious.
There was a wave of numbing comfort--not unlike the dark taste of each day's first cigarette, using poison to kill his awareness of his body's latent protests. He was engulfed in sympathy, in whispered promises of revenge, in the fierce call of something needing him...
Sumeragi Subaru. I know. I know you hurt. I know you feel as if you will never stop bleeding inside. But, My Sumeragi, My child--bring Me souls and I will wrap you in their warmth. I will take the flow of love within them and pour it over you.
I will want you.
I will stay with you.
I will stop the hurt.
Sakura petals caressed his cheek, threaded through his hair, wafted scent against his forehead.
Sumeragi linked his slender arms around one of the tree's solid, smooth branches; a cluster of flowers leaned forward to stroke his face.
He wept then.
* * *
This time, when he sank into grief-exhausted sleep, the darkness blotted out any dreams; when he woke, he needed only a moment to get his bearings before retreating from the Tree's dark sphere of illusion. The little wash of feeling that nudged at his mind as he left was like a fleeting goodbye kiss; when it passed, he noticed with some shock that his hand felt clean again, that the blood smell no longer teased the edges of his senses.
He walked--he didn't care where, really, as long as it was away--and hardly knew where he was going until he looked up and found himself within sight of the Metropolitan Government Building.
It won't hurt to get to know your colleagues, Sumeragi-kun.
The sudden, itching need for a cigarette washed over him, and he fumbled in his pocket for one.
Had anyone seen him, blood-stained and struggling to stay upright, as he left the building? He didn't want to have to fight off security guards or frightened government interns... still, if they were used to the Dark Kamui's comings and goings, the building's other inhabitants might simply have conditioned themselves to ignore the handful of people whose business only took place below the ground level.
A little too late, he remembered he hadn't put his cigarettes and lighter into the pocket of Seishirou's coat. His fingers curled around nothing but pocket lint just as he stopped short of the Government Building's front steps.
"Shit," he muttered aloud.
"Something wrong, Sumeragi-san?"
Alarm spiked through him, and out of sheer reflex he began to gather energy as he turned. A single clear shot would buy him enough time to run--
It was Yuuto.
"I didn't mean to startle you." The watercaster lifted his hands, spreading his fingers as if holding out a sign: Look, I'm harmless. "Just thought I'd say hello, and... well, you look as if you've lost something."
His smile was a gentleman's, all concern and kindness, and it caught Sumeragi off-guard. He had no reason to believe it was sincere--after all, only a few days before, a meeting like this might have resulted in a fight to the death--but at the same time, the light touch of interest in his tone was a little disarming. He'd gotten used to Kamui's fretting over him; the boy needed stability, and had seemed to find some reassurance in seeing him at least pretend to act content. But this almost teasing friendliness...
Only one other person had ever been so casually kind to him, and those kindnesses had always been dangerously empty, sharp-edged beneath the politeness.
"Sumeragi-san?"
He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it.
"I just... forgot my cigarettes, is all."
"Ah, that's right... you're a smoker." For a moment he looked as if he were about to admonish Sumeragi with the familiar litany of Smoking will destroy your health--and then, much to the Sakurazukamori's surprise, he pulled a small dark pack from the pocket of his trenchcoat.
"Would you like one?"
Sumeragi blinked. "I... didn't know you smoked."
"I don't, usually. Just every so often, when I feel like it, or when I've had a very long day at work." He ran a hand through his hair with a playfully sheepish smile. "I don't recommend desk jobs, really."
Sumeragi groped for an appropriate response, trying to cover up his sudden unease. Why was this banter making him so damn nervous? "I've never had one."
"Ah... lucky you. Here, sit down."
With a wonderfully fluid ease, Yuuto brushed past him to sit on one of the long stone steps, then gestured at the space next to him. Sumeragi hesitated, then sat; a light breeze began to kick up as he did so, and he caught the smell of rain-washed stone, clean and uncomplicated.
Yuuto took two cigarettes from the pack, and offered one out politely; Sumeragi blinked at it for a moment before realising--
"It's... black."
"They're clove cigarettes." The watercaster set his cigarette between his lips and then dug around in his trouser pocket. "Part clove, and part tobacco... not quite as strong as the 'real thing', but good. Annnd... aha, I knew I had matches in here."
There was a dry rattling sound somewhere on his blind side; Sumeragi turned to face him just as the match hissed into life. Quickly, without thinking, he lifted his own cigarette to his mouth and leaned in, nosing towards the flame.
The first mouthful of smoke came as a surprise.
It tasted like chocolate first and foremost--bitter chocolate, dark and almost too sweet. As he held the smoke on his tongue the taste mellowed, just a little, until it was like honey and cinnamon and tea, all held together by the familiar dusty taste of tobacco.
He exhaled very, very slowly.
"Good, isn't it?" Yuuto's smile broadened just a bit as he took a drag off of his own cigarette. "Sweet."
"Yeah..." He took the thing carefully between two fingers and then ran his tongue across his lower lip thoughtfully. His mind was full of sakura and blood and rain, full of the strange little details that had haunted him all day. Seishirou's coat loose and soft around his shoulders, the Tree's odd version of an embrace, Yuuto's smile, the layers of sweet taste in his mouth.
He closed his eyes.
"Subaru-san, the Princess--"
"Is she all right? Is there anything we can do?"
He glanced up quickly, and there were two young women--twins, in elaborate ceremonial robes--standing on the threshold. As his gaze swept towards them, he caught a brief sweep of motion: one girl had been clutching the other's wrist, and had let go when she knew their visitors would see.
Sumeragi opened his eyes and looked down at the flat, long curve that was the back of his hand.
"Sweet," he echoed.