Written for Rare Male Slash Exchange 2022.
"You really are a creature of habit, aren'tcha?"
The words settle slowly into the thick summer-evening air. It's humid enough to drown in, and down here in the Realground, bound by all the laws of biology and physics, Sanae's T-shirt is soaked through and clinging to his back with sweat. But there's still a little good daylight left, and he's going to make the most of it.
There's not another soul in sight; folks take one look at the hasty sigils he's sprayed on the pavement and suddenly have somewhere else to be. But he's not alone.
I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.
Joshua's body might be elsewhere—sprawled across his throne, like as not—but the part of him that matters is here. With his higher senses damped down along with his vibe, Sanae mostly picks up on an electrostatic buzz across his skin, a shimmer in the unfocused corners of his vision. But Joshua's voice rings loud and clear inside his head.
"You've always liked hovering while I work."
I'm not hovering. I don't hover.
"Sure you don't." It's not like Joshua's hearing him in the literal sense, but Sanae still raises his voice above the long hiss of his spray can, out of habit. It's all finishing touches now—tidying up messy edges, filling in gaps. "Must be imagining you always getting underfoot back in the day."
Feeling nostalgic, are we, Mr. H?
"And calling me Mr. H after all this time—there's no nostalgia there?"
The impression of an indignant huff plops itself down in Sanae's working memory, and Joshua falls silent.
Twilight's falling, but Sanae's wrapped up his work just in time. A brand-new CAT original's splashed across the wall in front of him, just waiting for the work that needs a bit more oomph than he can muster down here in the Realground. He gathers up his supplies, and then it barely takes a second to push his vibe back up and shift across planes. His higher senses all kick back on in a rush, like yanking off some big metaphysical blindfold—and there's Joshua, waiting. Bright, powerful, and familiar.
"You know..." He drags out the words, trying to puzzle out his thoughts even as he gets to work programming his new piece with all the usual mass imprinting keywords. He's a smart guy, he can multitask. "You should come down to the RG and hang out sometime."
It's not like there'll be consequences if Joshua doesn't. Hell, he could confine himself to the Shibuya River until the day his equal hunts him down and steals his throne, and still accomplish all that's asked of him as the Composer; but "can" and "should" are very different beasts, and the isolation, only ever speaking to Sanae or to his Conductor, can't be doing him any favors.
"Spending some time with your living constituents might—"
BANG. A spray can explodes in his bag. It's his only warning before a wave of psychic energy crashes down on him, so strong he can't pick out anything more nuanced than what and why and no. He wasn't expecting it—doesn't usually keep his guard up around Joshua, of all people—and it takes a second to even process, let alone tune out the worst of it so he can think his own thoughts.
"Hey, whoa." He reaches for the strongest concentration of Joshua's attention. It's nothing like physical touch, but the brush of Sanae's Soul against Joshua's own is still familiar, a comfort, and the onslaught of negativity slows. Doesn't stop, though.
You know I can't do that!
"Do I?" It's a gamble, pushing back instead of backing off—but if Joshua really had his mind made up, he wouldn't still be here arguing.
I have to supervise the Game—
"When it's actually running, yeah."
Joshua doesn't quite say/think ugh, but the general idea certainly comes across. But if he's annoyed, he's not freaking out, and Sanae'll take that as progress. I'm not like you! I can't just travel between planes on a whim.
His Composer, trying to lecture him on inter-planar travel? Joshua's in no mood to be teased just now, so Sanae bites his tongue—but it is funny. "Look," he says, quiet, soft. "I'm not gonna force you into anything." Like Joshua would even let him try. "But you're just as capable of downtuning as any Reaper, Josh. And sure, you're not like me, but I am like me. I'm not so restrained down there that I couldn't drag you back up to safety if I—"
And... there he goes. All trace of his presence vanishes in a heartbeat, and Sanae's alone with his paint and a half-programmed mural.
"...had to. Nice chat, J."
Workday done and cafe locked up behind him, Sanae spins the keys around his finger as he studies a pale figure lingering just out of range of the modulation field that encompasses WildKat.
It's been an awful long time since he's seen Joshua in a plain old human form, but he's just as familiar as he's ever been. Oh, sure, it's not the same form he was once trapped in. He's taller now, hair artfully messy instead of badly in need of a trim; a long, open-weave cardigan obscures the details of his frame, billowing in the slightest breeze and woven through with an iridescent thread that shimmers in the sunlight. But there's always been something timeless about him, an androgynous beauty that would suit a museum just as well as a billboard. Makes it hard to be objective about how much time's actually passed.
Joshua's eyes are sharp, wary, as Sanae pockets his keys and shrugs off the modulation field to tune up to the Underground. He stiffens when Sanae flings an arm around his shoulders—but only for a moment.
"Hello to you too, Mr. H." He doesn't hug Sanae back, but it's more than enough to have him relax into the embrace. "Fancy seeing you here."
Like there's anywhere else they would meet but where it all started.
Sanae squeezes him tight for as long as he thinks he can get away with it—then keeps on squeezing, until Joshua jabs a sharp elbow right into his ribs and squirms out of his grasp. "One would think," Joshua says, with all the haughty superiority he can muster, "you, of all people, wouldn't be so attached to such human physicality."
But he's only able to hold on to that disdain for a moment before breaking out in a grin that lights up his whole face.
"Busy this evening?"
"Always got time for you, boss. Anything specific you had in mind?"
"For now..." Joshua shifts his weight away from the edge of WildKat's modulation field, like it might suck him in, or try to bite. "I'd just like to walk for a bit, if you don't mind."
Sanae doesn't mind a bit. Just coaxing him out from the River is a big step, and frankly more than Sanae had expected. They don't need to plan a fancy date to make it meaningful, and if Joshua decides he wants to drop down to the RG for a bit as they go, well, pushing the issue would be a great way to make sure he won't. "Shall we, then?" he says, nodding down Cat Street towards Miyashita Park, and Joshua falls into step close beside him as they head off.
"This is..." Joshua stops under a tree to reach out and lay a hand against its trunk. "I'd forgotten how different it is, experiencing Shibuya like this. It should feel so limiting, and yet..."
And yet it's anything but. Sure, you sense more things, taking in the whole city at once, and that comes in handy keeping tabs on the Reapers' Game, but it just can't compare to being right in the thick of it—to the constant, unfiltered flood of info from all five mundane senses. A tight macro shot's no more limiting than a wide-angle panorama. A general overview of almost 200,000 people serves its purpose... and so does an intimate little one-on-one with a single tree.
Still, that wide shot is useful, and there's always something going on that could use a bit of the Composer's attention, even in the downtime between Games. Joshua's sixth-sense awareness of the various shops' modulation fields lets him weave around them without a second thought, but he keeps stopping short, distracted by something halfway across the city. After the third time Sanae has to stop and wait for his attention to drift back to the here and now, he just grabs Joshua's hand and urges him along.
When Joshua settles back into his body, something like embarrassment flickers through him, so quick Sanae can only just catch it before it's gone. "Not much of a date, is it, if my attention is quite literally elsewhere."
From Joshua, a concession like that constitutes a heartfelt apology. And while Sanae's processing that thought, Joshua slides his hand out of Sanae's to grab Sanae by the wrist instead, tugging Sanae toward him and swiping his sunglasses before leaning in to kiss him.
It's weird, is Sanae's first thought.
Kissing his Composer at his full vibe frequency is an experience more spiritual than physical. It's pure energy crashing over him with the full weight of a city's hopes and dreams. It's Joshua so open and unguarded that it's hard to map out the boundary between their thoughts. It's so much raw, unfiltered intimacy that it would burn a human's Soul right down to nothing.
This is tactile sensation and the taste of skin, power kept carefully in check, and it's not bad, kissing Joshua could never be bad... but yeah, it's pretty damn weird. And before he can quite wrap his head around it all, Joshua starts laughing.
He tries to stifle it, to his credit, but it's just no use—he has to step back, giggling helplessly into the hand still holding Sanae's sunglasses. "'Weird'?" he manages to gasp out, but just uttering the word sets him off again and Sanae doubts he could stop it if he tried.
"And here I thought I was the one ruining our date." Breathless and flushed, hair falling in his face, Joshua finally regains his voice. "All our time together, everything we've tried... you've been reprimanded twice for fucking me in ways your superiors think I am incapable of consenting to, and this is your limit? The line you cannot cross is a single chaste kiss? That's what strikes you as weird?"
"Well, when you put it like that..." Joshua graciously allows Sanae to steal his sunglasses back, and putting them on gives him a second to try and collect what remains of his dignity. "Didn't say it was bad weird, did I? 'S just—different."
"I'll grant you that." Joshua flips his bangs back out of his face, and then, composure regained, takes it on himself to be the one tugging Sanae further down the street.
He's more present now—comfortable enough, Sanae thinks, to let Shibuya mind her own business for an evening. The RG crowds swell as they get closer to the station, and Joshua's attention flits from bags to shoes to hairstyles, soaking up the little things his bird's eye view of the city doesn't offer. He's always had a sharp eye for detail.
Sanae hasn't forotten the proposition that got Joshua here in the first place. He just doesn't see much point in pushing it just now, when Joshua's willingly made more progress than he'd really dared to hope for. But Joshua hasn't forgotten either. The two of them slip unseen through the people congregating around Hachiko's statue, then stop—so suddenly that Sanae nearly crashes right into Joshua—at the edge of the modulation field that surrounds Shibukyu Stationside.
For a long moment Joshua just stands there, right on the threshold. He stares down the modulator decal like it's slighted him personally. Finally, he steps over—and in the blink of an eye he shifts.
It's not a big change, really—a few inches shorter, face a little softer. But it's what's inside that counts, and judging by the look on his face he's not liking just how far the modulation field had to lock his Imagination down. Still, he seems more irritated than upset, and though the look he shoots Sanae as Sanae joins him in the RG is closer to a glare than anything else, he leads the way towards Sunshine without complaint.
"Your treat," he announces, with a finality that defies argument. He orders chicken nuggets and a water, and steals one of Sanae's fries as they find a table.
He doesn't talk much as they eat, brushing Sanae off with one-word answers until Sanae gets the hint and shuts his mouth. It's hard to get a good read on him like this, with him keeping a tight hold on whatever the modulation field hasn't locked down for him, but he doesn't seem upset, exactly, or anything like scared. Stressed, on edge, but handling it well. He eats his nuggets plain, then stares across the table at Sanae, watching him finish his burger in judgmental silence. Only when Sanae's dealt with their trash does he make any indication he'd really like to leave, heading outside at a pace that's just too dignified to be a run.
"'Come hang out in the RG, Joshua.'" The words spill out the second he's escaped the modulation field, like he was keeping them bottled up inside along with all his powers. Sanae follows at a leisurely pace as Joshua dramatically throws himself down upon the railing behind Hachiko. "'Spend some time with your human constituents, Joshua!' Well, now I have, and it was terrible, so I certainly hope you're happy."
"That bad, huh?"
"Worse. Indescribably worse."
Sanae takes a seat next to Joshua, who scoffs and yanks his cardigan out from under Sanae's ass. He fusses with it for a minute, bunching the fabric up in his hands, smoothing it out over his lap; eventually, though, he stills, and sighs.
"Your little suggestion made me think, I'll admit. And... that's just not where I belong anymore. Or rather—it's never been where I belonged." He tips his head back to take in the canopy of leaves above him, and beyond that Tokyo's sunset sky, boxed in by skyscrapers and the shimmering boundaries of Shibuya's UG. "But I'm sure I don't have to tell you that."
He doesn't, no. Sanae doesn't know why, and if the higher-ups have any idea they're not talking, but Joshua's always been too bright, too sharp, to ever truly call the Realground home. Was it cruel to burden an innocent child with that much higher knowledge, cutting his mortal life so short when he couldn't stand being made to look but not touch? Or was it a gift—an invitation to someone who was Composer material from the very start?
Does he have any right to judge, when he himself welcomed Joshua into the Game with open arms?
"I gave up that life voluntarily, Mr. H. I know you don't agree," he's quick to add, glancing at Sanae as though daring him to interject. "But I knew what I was getting into. I knew what I wanted."
That's debatable. But Sanae lets it go, this time. They've fought about this plenty over the years, and Joshua so rarely allows himself to be vulnerable that Sanae's not about to give him second thoughts. This isn't exactly what he'd had in mind when he'd made his little suggestion, but it might just be something even better. So he keeps his mouth shut and lets Joshua vent.
"When I became Composer, I just assumed I would have to leave all this behind as well. Abandon this form entirely, and seclude myself in the heart of the Shibuya River. That's another sacrifice I was willing to make, even as you tried to convince me I didn't have to." And Sanae had tried. But Joshua, then as now, had been stubborn as anything, and utterly prepared to defend his newfound title to the death. The very idea of a middle ground between reckless and paranoid had registered as a threat. "I realized my mistake eventually. But by then I'd had a great deal of time to convince myself that I didn't miss this form anyway. That it had nothing to offer me. That it was... weak, and below my new station. It's so obvious, now, that..."
He doesn't say it. Sanae would be a little worried if he did, frankly. But he doesn't need to hear the words to know how that sentence ends: I was wrong.
In the wake of his almost-confession, silence stretches out between them long enough that Sanae itches to break it. Joshua seems far away again, eyes downcast as he fusses with his hair.
"Thank you, Mr. H," he finally says. "I... needed this. The reminder that as much as Shibuya is my domain and my responsibility... it will always be my home. And I am always welcome."
What can Sanae even say to that? It's true, every word, and he's grateful beyond measure that Joshua's finally managed to puzzle it all out; words seem an utterly inadequate way to convey any of that. But Joshua doesn't seem to mind his lack of response. Quite the opposite—he's grinning, now, mischief in his eyes as he turns to Sanae and confiscates his sunglasses for a second time.
"That's quite enough vulnerability for one night, I think. Now... what do you say we see just how weird human kissing can get?"