"And if I swallow anything evil,
Put your finger down my throat;
If I shiver, please give me a blanket--
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat."
--The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes"
On the one day when rain would have been most appropriate, the sky yielded nothing, staying as maddeningly clear blue as ever. He'd received orders from one of their superiors that morning--something about a new procedure for field expenses--and he'd known it would be trouble. The sinking, sick feeling registered at the back of his brain as something tinged with the deep blues and blacks of dangerous frost; when he brought up the subject in the afternoon meeting, it solidified into a hard and bitter taste in his throat.
Absurdly, he'd found himself thinking of one of Yutaka's bad jokes in the moment before he launched into the explanation he'd prepared.
So an optimist and a pessimist are talking, right? The pessimist says, "Bah, things can't get any worse." And the optimist says, "Oh yes they can!"
Terazuma and Tsuzuki both (for once--it was one of perhaps three times he'd ever seen them in agreement) got upset, and angry, and there was a lot of shouting; of course when Tsuzuki was unhappy, Kurosaki glared daggers at anyone he felt might be responsible, and the rest of the meeting degenerated into a mess of yelling which only stopped when Konoe finally shooed everyone back to work.
Tatsumi knew, with an awful black certainty, that it would be days before his co-workers either realised that they were shooting the messenger or simply let their grudges slide. And, truthfully, he'd taken far worse falls before; he was almost certain that there were a few people in Sapporo who'd been wanting to rip him to shreds since the eighties. He didn't mind it when his co-workers inevitably got upset over procedures he'd had no hand in creating--it was, after all, his job.
He just wished that he could shrug off the vaguely hollow feeling that came afterwards.
Sitting in his office was fine, was even pleasant, when it was his choice to do so and when he had something to be typed up or filed. It was a safe haven when he could choose it over, say, the break room or the lab.
When being anywhere else meant that his presence would attract icy looks or the occasional snide comment, his office was just a small room with four walls and a window.
A quick rattle startled him out of his thoughts--he'd left the door unlocked, and it swung open; the light in the corridor outside struck something brilliant, a dazzle of blond hair. The concept of knocking first, apparently, might take another thirty years to register.
"Hey," Watari said. "I just got done clearing up a whole bunch of bugs in the new search engine, thought you'd want to know about it. Turns out we might not have to re-enter all the data by hand if I can get the minidisc drive on my laptop to work for more than two minutes..."
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
What happened next was something he didn't understand at all: he had always been extremely talented when it came to hiding his feelings, burying his weariness or weakness or anything secret beneath careful empty words. He prided himself, in a sort of chilled and solitary way, on being totally unreadable.
Watari cocked his head to one side and fixed him with a concerned frown. "Hey. You okay?"
It wasn't a question anyone asked him often. It wasn't even one he really considered most of the time. His feelings only ever seemed clear for interpretation long after they had faded into washed-out memories; he had rarely ever found himself thinking that the day he was living out was a good or bad one.
But Watari asked, because he wanted to know.
Realisation broke across him like a sudden high tide, all exhaustion and cold and twinges of resentful loneliness.
"No."
There was silence, and then the door clicked shut and Watari was sitting on the desk next to him, one hand curled tentatively around his shoulder. He leaned into the touch gratefully, like a plant stretching to the sun; his cheek came to rest against the hollow of Watari's shoulder, and he breathed in the familiar smell of chemicals and water and body heat. There was a heartbeat steady and quiet beneath his ear, and yellow hair cast a fine mist over the room where it spilled across his field of vision.
"You wanna tell me about it?"
Tatsumi closed his eyes. Despite the fact that they had known each other for years, had shared a bed and explored countless small touches, this felt new. It seemed as if the rusted latch on a window inside him had at last crumbled and fallen away, and all he had to do to see the sky was to pull down the rotting curtains that blocked his view.
"I think I'm not having a very good day."
Watari stroked his hair, the rhythm slow and soothing, and listened.
Put your finger down my throat;
If I shiver, please give me a blanket--
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat."
--The Who, "Behind Blue Eyes"
On the one day when rain would have been most appropriate, the sky yielded nothing, staying as maddeningly clear blue as ever. He'd received orders from one of their superiors that morning--something about a new procedure for field expenses--and he'd known it would be trouble. The sinking, sick feeling registered at the back of his brain as something tinged with the deep blues and blacks of dangerous frost; when he brought up the subject in the afternoon meeting, it solidified into a hard and bitter taste in his throat.
Absurdly, he'd found himself thinking of one of Yutaka's bad jokes in the moment before he launched into the explanation he'd prepared.
So an optimist and a pessimist are talking, right? The pessimist says, "Bah, things can't get any worse." And the optimist says, "Oh yes they can!"
Terazuma and Tsuzuki both (for once--it was one of perhaps three times he'd ever seen them in agreement) got upset, and angry, and there was a lot of shouting; of course when Tsuzuki was unhappy, Kurosaki glared daggers at anyone he felt might be responsible, and the rest of the meeting degenerated into a mess of yelling which only stopped when Konoe finally shooed everyone back to work.
Tatsumi knew, with an awful black certainty, that it would be days before his co-workers either realised that they were shooting the messenger or simply let their grudges slide. And, truthfully, he'd taken far worse falls before; he was almost certain that there were a few people in Sapporo who'd been wanting to rip him to shreds since the eighties. He didn't mind it when his co-workers inevitably got upset over procedures he'd had no hand in creating--it was, after all, his job.
He just wished that he could shrug off the vaguely hollow feeling that came afterwards.
Sitting in his office was fine, was even pleasant, when it was his choice to do so and when he had something to be typed up or filed. It was a safe haven when he could choose it over, say, the break room or the lab.
When being anywhere else meant that his presence would attract icy looks or the occasional snide comment, his office was just a small room with four walls and a window.
A quick rattle startled him out of his thoughts--he'd left the door unlocked, and it swung open; the light in the corridor outside struck something brilliant, a dazzle of blond hair. The concept of knocking first, apparently, might take another thirty years to register.
"Hey," Watari said. "I just got done clearing up a whole bunch of bugs in the new search engine, thought you'd want to know about it. Turns out we might not have to re-enter all the data by hand if I can get the minidisc drive on my laptop to work for more than two minutes..."
"Thank you. I appreciate it."
What happened next was something he didn't understand at all: he had always been extremely talented when it came to hiding his feelings, burying his weariness or weakness or anything secret beneath careful empty words. He prided himself, in a sort of chilled and solitary way, on being totally unreadable.
Watari cocked his head to one side and fixed him with a concerned frown. "Hey. You okay?"
It wasn't a question anyone asked him often. It wasn't even one he really considered most of the time. His feelings only ever seemed clear for interpretation long after they had faded into washed-out memories; he had rarely ever found himself thinking that the day he was living out was a good or bad one.
But Watari asked, because he wanted to know.
Realisation broke across him like a sudden high tide, all exhaustion and cold and twinges of resentful loneliness.
"No."
There was silence, and then the door clicked shut and Watari was sitting on the desk next to him, one hand curled tentatively around his shoulder. He leaned into the touch gratefully, like a plant stretching to the sun; his cheek came to rest against the hollow of Watari's shoulder, and he breathed in the familiar smell of chemicals and water and body heat. There was a heartbeat steady and quiet beneath his ear, and yellow hair cast a fine mist over the room where it spilled across his field of vision.
"You wanna tell me about it?"
Tatsumi closed his eyes. Despite the fact that they had known each other for years, had shared a bed and explored countless small touches, this felt new. It seemed as if the rusted latch on a window inside him had at last crumbled and fallen away, and all he had to do to see the sky was to pull down the rotting curtains that blocked his view.
"I think I'm not having a very good day."
Watari stroked his hair, the rhythm slow and soothing, and listened.