To Rainbloom, from Iambic ♥
Title: Aftermath
Author: Iambic
Recipient: rainbloom
Series: Tokyo Babylon
Characters/Pairing: Seishirou/Subaru (Subaru POV)
Rating: PG for mentions of violence
Author Notes/Warnings: I tried to work in as many prompts as possible, but I was feeling way too mellow for the kind of happy you probably wanted.
You're not sure how it happened just now, but you're feeling strangely bright for having spent time with him. For the first time since Hokuto's death you're smiling at nothing, at the perforated cement beneath you and the stormclouds above that threaten dire results if passers-by don't make it under cover soon. Let it rain, you want to say to the heavens, because you don't care if you get wet. Hokuto isn't there to fuss. That gaping hole in your life has been covered over by the cobwebs of duty, and while you never forget, it is easier to let her ghost go.
You don't understand why it is that you're so content.
Happy is not the word. You were happy before, when Hokuto was alive and persisted to use you as a large doll every morning and Seishirou was a friendly veterinarian with a strange inclination to be touchy-feely with you. When you never believed that there was anything serious there - not danger, not betrayal. Not love. But the despair, the staggering ache that held you down for every minute - that has subsided.
Perhaps it's in the wonder of your continued existence - you were so sure that last night had been the last night for you. But when you woke up this morning you had recovered admirably from the shock of discovering otherwise, and had borrowed without asking a shirt of his because yours was too bloody to wear again, and left before he noticed his mistake.
If mistaken he had been. You aren't entirely sure how you could be quite so whole if he had really believed you to be dead. He is toying with you, you think, but in the strange peace you have found you're not actually that stressed about this. He has always been toying with you. The only difference is that these days, you recognise the toying for what it is.
You never fail to respond to it, but that's not really the point. You're being honest with yourself now, and you know your own flaws. You've known for a while that he is your greatest shortcoming.
His shirt is too big for you, far too big. You get some strange looks, but not nearly as many as you would have had you retained the bloodsoaked rag that was your own shirt. It had been a great battle last night, as your meetings often - nay, always - were. And again you'd emerged unscathed.
You could get used to this, you think. Or you have already grown accustomed to the brutal interactions, the expressions of what is too intense to be indifference and too perplexing to be hatred. You don't understand it. But like everything about him, you grow used to it - and maybe you'll learn to love it yet.
Author: Iambic
Recipient: rainbloom
Series: Tokyo Babylon
Characters/Pairing: Seishirou/Subaru (Subaru POV)
Rating: PG for mentions of violence
Author Notes/Warnings: I tried to work in as many prompts as possible, but I was feeling way too mellow for the kind of happy you probably wanted.
You're not sure how it happened just now, but you're feeling strangely bright for having spent time with him. For the first time since Hokuto's death you're smiling at nothing, at the perforated cement beneath you and the stormclouds above that threaten dire results if passers-by don't make it under cover soon. Let it rain, you want to say to the heavens, because you don't care if you get wet. Hokuto isn't there to fuss. That gaping hole in your life has been covered over by the cobwebs of duty, and while you never forget, it is easier to let her ghost go.
You don't understand why it is that you're so content.
Happy is not the word. You were happy before, when Hokuto was alive and persisted to use you as a large doll every morning and Seishirou was a friendly veterinarian with a strange inclination to be touchy-feely with you. When you never believed that there was anything serious there - not danger, not betrayal. Not love. But the despair, the staggering ache that held you down for every minute - that has subsided.
Perhaps it's in the wonder of your continued existence - you were so sure that last night had been the last night for you. But when you woke up this morning you had recovered admirably from the shock of discovering otherwise, and had borrowed without asking a shirt of his because yours was too bloody to wear again, and left before he noticed his mistake.
If mistaken he had been. You aren't entirely sure how you could be quite so whole if he had really believed you to be dead. He is toying with you, you think, but in the strange peace you have found you're not actually that stressed about this. He has always been toying with you. The only difference is that these days, you recognise the toying for what it is.
You never fail to respond to it, but that's not really the point. You're being honest with yourself now, and you know your own flaws. You've known for a while that he is your greatest shortcoming.
His shirt is too big for you, far too big. You get some strange looks, but not nearly as many as you would have had you retained the bloodsoaked rag that was your own shirt. It had been a great battle last night, as your meetings often - nay, always - were. And again you'd emerged unscathed.
You could get used to this, you think. Or you have already grown accustomed to the brutal interactions, the expressions of what is too intense to be indifference and too perplexing to be hatred. You don't understand it. But like everything about him, you grow used to it - and maybe you'll learn to love it yet.