Title: Hanging by a Moment
Fandom: Get Backers
Characters: Midou Ban x Kudo Himiko
Prompt: #071, Time
Word Count: 520
Rating: G

Author's Notes: So many italics. And it's a very general sort of fic; if you take out certain things it can pertain to any couple you think would fit it at all.

In any case, here it is. : )

They don't throw the occasional sappy, sneaking glance at each other.

They don't have moments when their eyes meet, and they blush, and look away.

They don't try to touch each other more than need be; there's no way of telling, then, if they'd feel a thrill each time one felt the other brush by.

They are very, very much aware of each other. Not in the way that stretches nerves and makes the senses tingle in anticipation; not in the way that they become so tense, so focused on each other that the very air between them hums and sings so loud, so loud and everyone around them senses it while they themselves wonder if the other can feel it.

Not that way.

But they are aware, they are aware. It is like standing back to back to each other, not touching, a few feet away; facing out and facing others, but always with a sixth sense that is tuned to the presence behind. The sixth sense is not focused and is in fact rather dim; it is more something that was always there and thus is comforting and old and overlooked in its familiarity.

(Perhaps it is because they don't focus that this bond changes slightly, ever so slightly, day by day.)

They do find themselves idly staring in the other's direction, at times (like when the sun slants golden through the Honky Tonk windows to warm brown skin, or when cigarette smoke wreathes gray upwards and softens the sharp planes of a half-foreign face), but there is no embarrassment in this self-discovery. There is a certain pleasantness in seeing the other, but there is no wild thumping of an amorous heart.

They do look each other straight in the eyes, sometimes by chance, sometimes on purpose (blue snaps sharply, purple answers coolly, and then both shades soften in wry admittance of hello); there is always a greeting, and always an acknowledgement.

They do know that they are both not touchy-feely people, and at the same time, they know exactly how heavy or exactly how light a hand on the shoulder needs to be to comfort, or to soothe, or to encourage, or to stop; they know how a light punch to the shoulder can give a much-needed answer to an unasked question.

They are aware of each other. They know that even if the air between them isn't humming ROMANCE, there is that attunement to each other that is different from that they give to everyone else. They know that there is something there, something hiding, and it's not uncomfortable or awkward, and its coming will be the most normal thing in the world and the most earthshaking, but it's not now, it's not yet.

They're both hanging in this long moment before something that may or may not become; they're reading each other, watching each other, not on tiptoe and not with bated breath—they're both waiting for the go, waiting for the signal that will make them turn, so he can fully face her, and she can fully face him.

It's only a matter of time.

-End-

I'm standing here until you make me move
I'm hanging by a moment here with you.

--Hanging by a Moment by Lifehouse