TITLE: Where You Come From
AUTHOR: Amber
RATING: T
FANDOM: Wild Adapter
SUMMARY: Looking at where you come from and where you are.
DISCLAIMER: This is a fannish work. That means I'm taking someone else's hard work and tweaking it in completely unintended ways. However, I do so in a not-for-profit manner. Yay, legal.
NOTES: The general idea belongs to Ash, by which I mean that she suggested that Kubota give Tokitoh a birthday. This is more or less that. Also, conversations with Ash and with my mother have inspired various bits of this, to give credit where credit is due. Hurrah! Finally, love and gratitude to Meredith for all her help with this piece.
You're in front of the television when he gets home. That's nothing new, but he never seems bothered by it, so you don't plan to break your routine of passing the hours without him in another world.
You hear him come in, but you only pause your play when you hear the distinct sound of shuffling papers. He doesn't receive mail often, just another seeming disadvantage of a life spent shunning society, and the few envelopes that arrive each month fascinate you. You'd never admit this to him, because you hate his amusement at your fascination with what he takes for granted, with what anyone who hasn't lost a lifetime's memories considers mundane. Yet you can't help calling out when he drops a bright envelope into the trash.
"What?" He looks at you, noticing for the first time that you've left the couch to lean on the counter across from him.
"What was that?" you ask. The color of the envelope is something new, not some bill or advertisement. You think you saw a handwritten address, too.
Kubota shrugs, flicking the ashes of his cigarette into the sink and watching them disappear into the gray of the old dishwater. You did do that much today; you cleaned the kitchen. You thought he would want to cook tonight, but now he's looking sullen, more so than usual. "It was a birthday card," he says levelly, finally looking back at you.
"It's your birthday?" you ask immediately.
He tosses the cigarette butt into the sink. "Yesterday, actually." He walks over to you and wraps his arms around you from behind, whispering something about your supposedly being grateful that he was born. You don't quite catch it, don't respond, because you're still staring at the torn envelope, stained now with the food you threw away that morning.
"Must be nice, knowing where you come from," you say with a final glance at the trash. You shrug him off and walk back to the television.
"Depends where you come from," he counters. You turn back to him, but he's staring into the sink and lighting his second cigarette in five minutes. You go back to your game.
He drops onto the couch beside you a little while later, smelling of smoke, heavy and real at your side. His head drops onto your shoulder; he's watching you play, and it bothers you. He would never believe that you're better when he's not there, all distraction and expectation. You hit the wrong buttons, your timing and concentration shot. You give up, annoyed that he may think you spent his money on something you can't play, but when you move to stand, maybe to apologize, you see that his eyes are closed. All of this without a word, and this intimacy that comes so easy to him makes your skin crawl.
You attribute it to some forgotten trauma, an easy scapegoat -- why Kubota smokes, why you sometimes flinch at uninvited touches -- and you restart the game yet again, thinking morbidly that right now, you'd rather die than wake him.
He touches you at night, of course, but that seems different, unreal in the dark and the haze. Sleep is a whole different beast, tangles of arms and legs and blankets, all without intent, and it doesn't feel presumptuous: you wouldn't lie here in his narrow bed if you didn't want to be touched.
One arm is draped across your chest, and in the dim light you can see his fingertips brushing the mattress with every breath you take. You stop breathing, then, and before you start to feel dizzy, he growls and shifts behind you, drawing closer.
"Tokitoh," he murmurs, and his lips brush your shoulder where he is curled.
You start breathing again, shallow and almost scared at first, then slowing into the rhythm that will allow you both to sleep.
He needs you, you realize suddenly. He's accustomed to you. He knows how you breathe. You're his constant.
You close your eyes. Before you sleep, you think: Maybe this can be where you come from.
Once, you asked Kubota for a map of Nippon, some context as to where you were in the world. It wasn't a question a map could answer, but still, he did you one better, coming in at dusk one day with an old atlas under his arm.
He showed you where the two of you lived in Nippon and where Nippon lay in the world, then spent the evening explaining the nation's modern history. You imagined that the events he described were more recent than the maps he pointed to, cigarettes dangling from yellowed fingers above yellowed paper. He smoked an entire pack in that one evening without realizing, no more aware of the smoke going into his body than the words pouring out, and when you asked, he wouldn't tell you where he had heard some of the stories.
"It doesn't matter," he said, stone-faced again, disappearing out onto the balcony.
Some of the stories had sounded familiar, though you're sure that no one has told you these things in the last year. Maybe you had a family once who talked frequently over meals, or a best friend with a love of the past. More likely, it was something you learned in school, a place you know of but can't remember ever attending. You have no way to know whether you did.
You're remembering that conversation because today, Kubota said that he wants to take you somewhere, show you something, and when you asked where and what, he said, "Where you came from." You were too curious to argue, so now the two of you are walking in the rain. You're huddled inside of a sweatshirt, hood pulled over your hair, but Kubota seems not to notice the water even as it hits his glasses and obscures his vision.
You've been walking a while, in silence, when he takes your hand and steers you between two buildings. His hand is shaking, and you look up at him. You're about to ask whether he's cold, but he interrupts. "Do you remember anything?" he asks quietly, and you realize that this is it, the alley where he found you.
You look around. It's nothing special, nothing any different than a dozen alleys you passed on the way here. It seems slightly familiar, but whether that memory is dim fevered recollection or a fabrication resulting from his retelling of the day you met, you can't know. You drop Kubota's hand, walk a few steps, look around, touch a brick wall and a broken crate. "Nothing," you answer finally. When you look back at him, he's standing in darkness, yet you suspect that he is relieved.
You suddenly want to reassure him that whatever you remember someday, you won't leave him. You want to make yourself believe that, too, but you don't know how to start, how to state such an absolute with any kind of certainty.
You walk back toward him, your head down, frustrated, and he grabs your arm before you can get back to the street. Instead of shaking him off, you close the distance between you and rest your head on his wet shoulder. "This was just an idea," he says. "You may still remember." You nod against him, not sure you believe it, not even sure you want to. You feel petulant, like a child, at least as far as you think you know how a child feels, and you want him to love you and fight you and push you away and tell you that you're okay.
"This was supposed to be a gift," he continues, raising one hand to the back of your head and pressing it into your soaked hood. You're both shaking, from the chill in the air, maybe. You move closer and drape your arms around his waist, because at the moment, that's what you want to do, and you have no reason not to.
"For what?" you ask.
"A birthday of sorts," he says, pulling your hood down and letting the rain fall onto your hair, "to let you know where you come from."
You nod again, mutely, then you turn your face up to his, to the rain. It's cool on your skin, which is suddenly warm under his gaze, and you forget it when his lips touch yours for just a second, not even a kiss.
"Come on." He turns away and takes your arm. "Let's go see what Kou-san will feed us."
You move out onto the street together, where it's a little cleaner and a little lighter, and you glance back for a moment. Dirty walls and a glass-strewn alley in Yokohama, and you think, this is where you came from, and that's okay, for now; today is your birthday, and look where you are.