Concept: Honda and Jou, friendship. Changes in life alter a friendship, but never really break it.
Rating: PG13
Standard disclaimer: No, I don't own it, it didn't happen...it's kinda pointless to sue me because I own very little besides some rats.
Breathe in, breathe out.
If a person did it enough it became less second nature and more a mental mantra to existence.
Life was strange, all of the little secrets and meaningful motions eventually faded and then it left a person with nothing but the most basic of desires, survival.
Sometimes survival felt like an excuse for having nothing better to do, it got very tedious quickly. And life was easier to measure in distance instead of actions.
The distance between best friends grew from playful tussled arm's length that all too often was even less because of youthful clumsiness into a wider span to fit more people between. Until at last 'best' friends came to mean less and less, until support became understanding that was shared by newcomers. It was nothing to be angry about, nothing to protest, change happened.
Firefly summers faded from memory, as slowly as the lazy heat that crept under a person's skin even in the shade of backyard trees that had suffered wear from when bright-eyed boys still had the ambition to climb them for a chance to see beyond the picket-fence forever they lived within.
But even forever had limits, written in the stone of stuff stronger than daydreams. The real world was never so very simple. It took more than it gave, and bright-eyed boys soon discovered that sometimes laugher was not the only sound that echoed. Anger could burn just as brightly and scars were roadmaps. But even that did not, could not, matter for the sake of a friend.
Maybe those black and white roadmaps were more important than lost chances anyway. Honda knew they both had their own fair share of that very thing. And once something was lost...well, it never really came back. Or at least it never returned the same as it had been. A part of growing up, growing older, the worst part.
Because nobody really wants to say goodbye.
Nobody ever wants to admit that 'best' friends ever have to part ways because life has other plans for them. Early morning arguments and late afternoon lazy games amounted to nothing more and nothing less than memories. And that were just the sort of thing to drive a person mad wondering if the sun still held the same golden-red hues and the night skies were the same inky cobalt when mirrored in the tawny gaze a million miles away. Or if perhaps he was the only one who still took notice of things that uncomplicated, of life that simple.
When friendship is torn by a hundred times of distance could anything ever really be easy again?
All that really remained was to wonder what came next and survive through it.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Survive for a while longer.
And try to remember the reasons why a person needed to.