[03/28/16]
No, he loves me. He just makes me cry a lot.
It is like this: outside, the rain falls in a gray, relentless curtain, but inside all is gay and bright, and smells like gingerbread, and eggnong, and minty chocolate. Mimi smiles as Hikari flashes a picture with a classic Polaroid, a gift she had helped pick herself. In the picture, her teeth glisten and nobody notices her eyes do, too. Underneath uneven wool Christmas sweaters, his fingers tease the discs of her column and she has to suppress a gasp, or a giggle, or a moan.
His hands are like art; a soft palm here, a calloused pad there. He touches with a purpose, but far less than she'd like and soon, he has busied himself with champagne and an old, out-of-tune guitar, and she is kneading dough and pushing blackberries into tiny, artsy folds. From the other side of the room he watches her, and when midnight comes she is not surprised by the kiss he plants on her lips.
They meet under the mistletoe, but end up on the roof, beneath a blanket of stars and a carpet of crisp gray snow. Soft mounds of flesh, curious, attentive buds of nerves, sad, berry-red lips. He weighs a breast in his hand and he marvels at the softness of it, and she wonders why he couldn't do that sooner. He only says he doesn't like being rushed, and now she can feel the cold air on her back, but once again it is far too late.
It is like this: the way he touched her that night; he was more than fingers, and palms, and hooded eyes, and sharp teeth, teeth, teeth. And she knows, in her heart, and in her gut, that she could Sunder the world four times over, and still love him; and that is, perhaps, why and how she did. And that is, perhaps, why she cannot look away when he does.
It is the day before Christmas, and she already knows where this ends. When she speaks his name (大和), she is kissing his father, and grandfather, and all the men before him who have conspired to give him a name so sharp, and hard, and old. They don't speak when he is taciturn like that, and she is reminded of that story about a gilded violin, and how sad it was that for all it was worth, it could not play music.
"You are so beautiful," he murmurs for the umpteenth time, biting on her collarbones, still tasting salt.
Loving Yamato does not make her patient, or noble, or kind. It is hard, the effort of it stealing the breath out of her and making her feel like a delinquent, like she is stealing time and love that do not belong to her, or joint-smoking hearts behind school buildings. Like he is hurting, and maybe she wants to save him. And maybe it's beautiful, but mostly it's real.
And mostly, it hurts.
Author's Notes: There is a poem I read once and I only remembered the last line, which is a variation of the one here. It's funny, how these things come to you like that. The characters between parenthesis are the actual kanji for Yamato's name. It felt important to include that, somehow.