It's been longer than forever since I last looked at this story, or its companion piece, but all the same I haven't forgotten about it. In the name of resurrecting the various works that I've been neglecting for so long, I thought I'd start here.
There isn't much to explain about this one. I'm just trying to weave a coherent narrative out of a bunch of prompts, and this was the idea that came to me.
And really . . . as short as this one is, I think maybe it serves a purpose in its shortness.
At least, that's the hope.
I'm slowly getting back into it, y'all. A bit more patience, I beg. I'll figure it out.
.
Noa liked to drive with the top down, particularly when the weather was . . . bright. Ryou wrestled with why, and had come up with three possible reasons. One, he was vain, and liked to show himself off. This was evidenced by the fact that—more than semi-regularly but not quite enough to be called often—the black sheep of the Kaiba family tended to drive without a shirt on.
Two: he liked the feeling of wind on his face. This one seemed more likely, because as much as Noa liked to pretend that he was an insufferable narcissist, Ryou had been around such people before. Noa wasn't nearly as good at hiding his subtle shifts in mood and character as he thought he was, and Ryou had picked up on more than a few signs that he was . . . softening.
A narcissist? Perhaps. Insufferable? Hardly.
Vanity just didn't seem to fit Noa Kaiba's psychology. He had no time for such nonsense. He judged, weighed, and measured himself by different criteria.
The third possibility — which Ryou happened upon during the drive out to the Kaiba family's first (but hopefully annual) camping trip — was probably the one that mattered.
Noa liked the heat.
He never turned on the air conditioner, and always seemed to relish stoplights and intersections. It always took him some time before he'd pull out of a parking lot. He sometimes just looked at the sun. These things, Ryou hadn't really ever noticed before. But being on the road with someone for three hours allowed for a lot of little things to crop up.
"Was it . . . cold?" Ryou asked eventually. "In the other . . . world."
Noa frowned. Seemed to mull this over. Rubbed at his chin. "I don't remember." He chuckled. "Guess I blocked it out of my conscious memory or . . . whatever. But sometimes, I flash back to there. I . . . feel myself slip back. Into that space. That god-space. Where all was mine to control, to manipulate, to tweak. To be. And I . . . think it was frigid."
Ryou leaned against Noa's shoulder and stared out at the unwinding highway, saying nothing else because he couldn't think of anything to add.
Except warmth.