Disclaimer: Minekura owns all that is Wild Adapter.

Warnings: Language, yaoi bits

Notes: A gift story for the always-wonderful Lux. Complete, in five parts. Feedback is always appreciated, and thank you.

Note 2: Just to let readers know, this story was written/posted before dice 26 of WA came out. That chapter and those following (which will later be collected into vol. 5) tell the story of what happened between Kubota and Tokitoh during their first year. Thus, this story (and Long Way Around, another Kubotoki-beginning fic) slides into AU-land.

At First

In bed, with the late night quiet blanketing the streets outside, Kubota lay alone.

Sight

The gray January sky loomed above him, and with every step, his breath did a poor job of matching its form and color. Less than a second, and it had already disappeared in the cold air around him, like it had never existed.

He took out a cigarette and let its gray smoke breathe for him, since today, his air was not constant enough. He walked back home, slow and steady. In his hand, he held the bag of food he'd bought at the 7-11 only minutes before. It weighed nothing, but his arm still drooped, and the bag banged on his leg with every step, almost as if that was its way of breathing, of existing.

Since he was watching his feet on the sidewalk, he noticed her sandals first. As his gaze rose up, he saw her black, tightly-wound kimono, her clasped, pale hands, and her grim face, as gray as the sky above.

For a moment, his heart did stop, but not his feet. As she bowed low to him, he walked past her. He felt the bag of food bang against his leg, and he saw his breath stream out in a gray, disappearing line, and he walked, and he walked.

"I am alive," He spoke low with his gray air, but there was nothing to say after that.

Is this what he had wanted, back then, with his hands so tight on my coat...

"Ramen tonight." Another night where he would sit in his dark living room, tasting salty noodles, and feeling nothing else.

He looked up and sighed, and saw that his air disappeared right into the cloud-filled sky.

Alive, yes, but feeling nothing else.

Was this all that there was to be? Was this all there was to find?

He looked back down as he turned the corner into the alley behind his building. The bag banged against his leg, and a slight chill blew his gray breath back into his face, and he saw, underneath that looming sky-

A body.

Rumpled clothes, ashen face, a hand lying across, its fur and long nails like those of a wild animal, eyes closed-

For a moment, his heart stopped, but not his feet. He had to put down the bag first, and when he picked it back up, it seemed much heavier. And when he walked, he saw two clouds of breath, one far fainter than the other.

Faint, yes, but still there.

He didn't know why that relieved him, just as he wasn't quite sure why he carried this faintly-breathing weight, but still he walked, and he walked.