Author: Lodestar
Warning: Random plot may give rise to some OOC-isms, but I hope not.
Disclaimer: Yami no Matsuei is copyrighted to Yoko Matushita and associates. I claim no ownership and intend no disrespect
At first it had seemed too quiet.
That had been the real shock, the thing that had spun him out of the sea of barely- waking dreams he had floated into. He'd spent three weeks, almost, living a mechanical life. Walking without seeing, being without thinking.
And then something in him had noticed how still it was.
It made sense. He'd picked the house for it's secluded nature- set on a hill at the very end of what might once have been a town full of life and the sweet dreams and hopes that fill living minds as naturally as air fills the lungs. Now it was a haven for the old and spent, a place where people spoke of the ones who had left, if they spoke at all, and where death was an old friend. Living was something almost spoken of in the past tense.
Perfect for him, he'd thought.
He hadn't expected to be bothered by the calm of it all.
It was astonishing, discovering that he was no longer conditioned to enjoy the very thing he thought he'd been longing for with every fiber. He was constantly expecting the light touch of a hand on his head, or the warmth of a smile aimed at his back as he stared out the window into absolute blankness. Every way he turned, there was a bright-eyed phantasm opening its arms to him.
For the first time, he discovered that he was afraid of being alone.
But fear, at least, was no stranger, and he treated it as he always did. Feelings were cut away as surely as if he'd taken a physical knife and stuck it through his chest (funny to think that he could do that now, that it has happened to him, meaty squish and the shriek of bone.)
Be calm. Stay collected. Remember to forget and re-learn how not to care.
He tried taking long walks into the country. If he wasn't in a house, he couldn't think about why it wasn't a home. He would try and loose himself in the twists of a road or the colors of a plant, only to find himself thinking of eyes and arms and the twists and turns of a relationship he'd left behind himself.
He only attempted flying once. That action was connected with only one part of his life, and that part of his life was connected with only one person. Really, it was the only connection he'd ever made.
Then he'd realize that even though his feet were on the ground, his head was in the clouds anyway, and he'd go back and do something stupid like rip the phone out of the wall, even though it wasn't about to ring (was it?)
He made himself feasts. But now that he had the peace he had so many times longed for, when childish plaints had rung in his ears, he found that he couldn't focus. Everything tasted the same, and everything was burnt. Besides, he'd never wanted to learn for himself. He grew frustrated and threw the cooking book in the trash and went out to buy something more engaging to read.
He began to eat words.
At first he read nothing but the classics. When he could take no more of them he turned to the greats of science fiction, a genre that was at least logical. Then he ran out of that and into the waiting arms of high fantasy. He flirted with occult fiction and gothic horror, but dropped them with a cynical laugh and went on to plays, poetry, treatises on life in the modern world.
He stopped bothering to keep his books on shelves. There was no more room for them, and no point when no one dared or wished to pass through his house anyway. They grew in stacks that fell over into piles that fused together into walls that prevented him from walking across the living room in a straight line.
He went back in time to the first novels ever written and found them dry and unpalatable with their high-strung moralism that barely masked the bawdy melodrama. He grew sick of it all and itched to write his own papers on the origins of prose. At least he was no longer small and lost, and the silence had been replaced by words and words.
He found himself becoming bored and saw the lines blurring together, and felt that a change was in order. For the first time he picked up a modern bodice-ripper and was disgusted, then came back to it a week later with a certain sense of morbid fascination. He ate up the trash with the rest, learning every formula backwards and forwards until he could have written one himself as easily as bought the next paperback.
Days were without incident, nights were without dreams. The moon waxed and waned and the remembered thrill of terror for a past overcome did not come. The cherry blossoms bloomed, and he smelled them without allowing the scent to register as something connected with him, something that had slipped over, under, around as a promise was made under the night sky.
He had, in fact, forgotten that promise.
He told himself so.
One day became another day became another day became the day that someone opened his front door.
It's a very rude thing to have done, he thinks, dog-earing his latest volume and setting it aside. Perhaps they had knocked, and he hadn't heard. He stands up-
-and, for the first time in a long time, it's very silent again.
He has to think for a moment about how to work his throat to make the words come out. When they do, they're soft and scratched, as if he's been ill. An incurable disease. "Tsuzuki. What are you doing here?"
"I've been looking for you." Which is no answer at all, but gives a hundred other questions and reaffirmations nonetheless.
"That was stupid of you." He sits back down, reaching aimlessly for a book, any book.
Fingers catch his wrist. How does the man move so quickly? "It's been a year."
"Has it?" He didn't know that. Another year that counts for nothing, inside or out. "That's auspicious."
His skin tingles from the touch and from the anger that runs over him like currents of electricity, so that his head snaps back and his eyes fly wide open and don't really see.
Apparently one can forget a lot about shielding in a year.
He was never very good at keeping him out anyway. One of the reasons he-
"Hisoka!"
He realizes he's still looking stupidly at nothing even though the feelings have stopped and he's being cradled from behind, close against his partner's (ex's) chest as he blinks foolishly at the sea of books he almost hit face first.
"Let go of me." He remembers to protest.
He takes his guest into the kitchen, where the books haven't forced entry yet. He makes tea, because tea doesn't go stale and everything else might have. They sit, two familiar strangers across a table and a gulf of thoughts waiting to be voiced.
"I told you I was leaving."
"Yes. But you didn't tell me why."
"Because I-" he pauses, starts over. "Because you... Because. It was too much, all at once. I wanted to think. I couldn't live with it."
"You can't live at all."
Was that bitterness? Surely not. "I just needed time. I asked you to wait-"
"And then you disappeared for a year."
"I'm an extremist."
"I guess!"
"But you've found me now."
He doesn't know what else to say. He supposes that an apology is in order, but 'forgive me' seems clichŽ, 'I'm sorry' incredibly trite. As if this whole situation isn't. It might as well have come out of one of his stories.
Besides, if this is so, then it's Tsuzuki's scene. It's always the hero who starts things in these situations. Whatever his shortcomings, Tsuzuki's always made a handsome hero. This is the scene where he's supposed to overcome Hisoka's every protest, or profess undying love. The man should be down on his knees, or something.
"We could still use you... as a Shinigami."
"Don't you have a new partner yet?"
"No one's stayed."
He's forgotten something vital, he realizes, watching guardedly as they both lift their cups to cover the awkward moments. His story, his and this man's... it never goes anywhere. Every day, for all of eternity, they are the same people, with the same routines, the same false fronts and acceptable lies.
It's as if they're players in some grand and glorious picaresque. A thousand wonderful adventures, a thousand lives changed, and the main character's still the same- and affable fool with the luck of the world and an unbreakable charm of ignorance.
They tried to change that, and Hisoka ran.
Which means that Tsuzuki won't do it again. He's asking Hisoka to go back one year, one week, and six hours, to pretend that they never stopped being partners, no more and no less.
It would be worse than this year been, for both of them.
But this time has at least had a purpose. It's taught him something vital, although he didn't know it until now.
They say there are only twelve plots in the world, and every book must follow one of them. In the real world, the possibilities are endless. But ultimately, you are no different than any other author. All you can do is accept that fact, pick up your pen and forge ahead, because if you don't not a single word will ever be written in the book of your life.
There are no stories without plots. There can be no static waiting, hiding from the world. The novel in its original form is dead, and realism has reared a head that is neither ugly nor beautiful, but only what an inspired artist can make of it.
He's ready to start a new chapter.
This is why he reaches across the table and intercepts Tsuzuki's hands as they wrap together nervously.
"I don't want to be your partner."
Puzzled violet eyes dart from his face to his hands and back again, half hurt and half hope. "You mean you won't come back with me."
" I didn't say that." This is the hard part, and all he wants to do is let go of the fingers that have twisted lightly against his own, duck his head and avoid that piercing stare. He's never said something like this before, never even needed to. "I want. I. I. Want to be your lover."
The words run across their pages in indelible ink, in heart's blood, which is rushing up to stain both their cheeks a faintly mottled pink. Then Tsuzuki leans across the table to kiss him, and for the first time in a year, a week, and he really can't keep track of how many hours or minutes just now ( they've all felt a thousand times longer anyway) he's feeling the sensation of other lips pressed light on his.
He realizes now that all the books in all the world would never be enough to make him truly forget this. It might have been a good attempt, but he couldn't really forget how to tilt his head just so, so they're as close together as possible, or how Tsuzuki's hair tickles against his temples, or the way his skin tastes.
They haven't been together for a year. There's no way this will be easy. There will be more to say, more to do, more opportunities for him to make up for the terrible mistake he's made than the sharpest, most well-read mind can dream or dread. But he's prepared for that.
And then?
They'll live happily ever after.
Constructive Criticism?