[Gazefic] Going home
beta'd by the most amazing dictionarysays ♥.
originally written for jrockurisumasu and posted there. take a good look, because this is the first and last time you see me writing this pairing.
Going home
Kai enters the dressing room and it’s this kind of day, the kind of day when Reita looks as if he’s killed someone, eyes like bullets and smoking, hair sharp like a blade that could cut through skin and stone; Ruki is standing in front of a mirror and the air around him seems disturbed and darkened and he is in the middle of it like he is ready to spin too, with everything red, oh god. It’s either everyone’s on drugs or Kai got the wrong door but then again he gets the wrong door every day. Electricity buzzes through the room and stings his fingertips.
But really it’s just that everyone gets a bit strange around this time of year. Uruha sways into the dressing room right after him and announces he’s a vampire.
“You know, every band has them,” he claims. “A diva, a mother figure and a vampire.”
“Don’t you mean a diva, a mother figure and a guy with a drinking problem?” Kai asks, although being the mother figure, he isn’t sure if he is trying to be funny or just going along with this for the sake of not losing his mind.
“You’re forgetting about a guy with questionable sexual preferences,” Ruki says, not turning away from the mirror. He’s applying glitter or stardust or whatever it is to his face (it glows in the dark).
“Where is he, by the way?” Reita looks around and Kai wonders how come they all decided it’s Aoi because if anyone asked him, he’d say it’s all four of them (five of them; no one asks anyway).
“Locked in the bathroom.”
“Has he locked himself or has someone locked him?”
Uruha gives Reita a look of how would I know? with a bit of does it matter? around his eyebrows and plops down on the couch, where he picks up a porn magazine and starts to look through it without much interest.
xxx
After spending the night drinking and pissing each other off, Aoi drags Reita away, determined to prove that rather than the guy with questionable sexual preferences he’s the guy everyone wants to fuck, Uruha is still a vampire and that leaves just the two of them.
Going home with Ruki is not a good idea, but if Kai doesn’t go, Ruki will get mugged or hit by a car, his body will get smeared all over the road in forty seven pieces at a distance of three kilometres and Kai will be blamed. Unable to stand the guilt, after six months of mourning he will emigrate to Africa and help starving children for the rest of his life. But the African sun will get him sunburnt in a matter of hours and Ruki will never forgive him because not only is it unhealthy but it looks damn awful. So while Kai knows going home with Ruki is not a good idea, it’s not like he has a choice.
They were playing a rendition of Uruha in Wonderland and Ruki still has eat me scribbled on his cheek with eyeliner, which he isn’t aware of as he stumbles down the curb to cross the road. Kai follows, not entirely sober himself, but his vision is just a little out of focus and his steps are more steady than not, something that can’t be said about Ruki, who seems to be floating rather than walking. And it must be a flood, a flood has come, because there’s a wave that washes Ruki away and Kai can’t catch up with him.
“Did I burn you?” Ruki will ask later, sitting without pants and smoking, the hand with a cigarette reaching over Kai to the ash tray. Kai will feel like they are locked in a smoky bubble, there is a safety sphere over them and they don’t need to bother with what’s outside. Not for a while. The bubble will shake with Ruki’s words but it won’t break.
“No.”
He wouldn’t notice if he did.
xxx
Kai is lying in the hotel bed while in the room next to his Uruha is fucking Ruki and he is fucking him good and hard. Kai knows because he can hear all the noises through the wall. Ruki is moaning as if he was paid for it and it’s similar in sound but so much different at the core from what it was like that night.
He wanted to just get Ruki home and disappear into the night, perhaps taking twice as long as he needed to walk to his own flat, arriving there sober, if a bit more miserable. Ruki would have none of that.
“Come, come, come,” he chanted fervently as he took Kai’s wrist and dragged him inside, not bothering about taking their shoes off. “Lock the door. Lock the door!”
His shout was sharp but his words were slurring, he was shaking and Kai could see there was something wrong with Ruki, something, perhaps, like a breakdown, coming, rising to the surface, the wave, the flood from before, which Ruki seemed to be afraid of, seemed to think, it was going to wash them both away. Kai believed him. There was nothing else he could do but believe him.
“Come on,” Ruki dragged him straight to the bedroom. His fists twisted desperately into Kai’s shirt, his lips were dry and hot and Kai looked down at him and embraced him. There was nothing else he thought he could do.
Next were Ruki’s hands, moving in a frenzy, sneaking under Kai’s clothes, taking them off, lips seeking his, kisses constantly breaking halfway, loud inhales of air in between, no thoughts, only motion. As soon as Kai’s fingertips brushed Ruki’s collarbones, he knew he was addicted to the milky skin, to the milky touch; he sunk head first like a burning warship in the middle of a battle; with no hope. But there was no time and space for poetic comparisons and melancholy, Ruki was too impatient and Kai didn’t mind. They ended up on the messy bed, exchanging messy kisses as they were kicking off their pants, throwing things to the floor, making things fall over, breaking things. For once Ruki didn’t care about making general disorder in his room and for once Kai didn’t even notice. There was only bare skin.
“Kai,” Ruki breathed under him. All this time Ruki had been emitting all kinds of sounds, sighs and moans and whispers, not shy about it at all. He liked hearing his own voice, or he had to hear his own voice, to make sure he was still there, Kai didn’t know. Kai didn’t need to know. He was thrusting into him and Ruki said his name and he arched and it felt like seeing him like that was all Kai had been living for. Even if there was smudged eyeliner on Ruki’s cheek, he was drunk and he just wanted a fuck. The truth was, he just wanted something, someone to fill the void inside him, so that it wouldn’t eat at him so painfully (it ate at him the most painfully on nights when there was smudged eyeliner on his cheek and he was drunk). Kai wished he could be enough to do that.
It was like going two hundred kilometres per hour and coming to a crash at a wall; too fast, too hard.
Afterwards, Ruki’s lips were marking a path down his spine. It was hot but Kai could barely contain a shiver. He was lying on his side, his back turned to Ruki so he didn’t see him. He only felt him rolling off and heard him stretching on the bed and the rustle as Ruki was making himself comfortable on the pillow.
“I was wondering if I should go red next,” Ruki said in a sleepy voice. “What do you think? Reita says blond rocks but what does he know anyway…aaah’m tired.”
Kai sighed. This was hopeless.
xxx
Kai enters the dressing room and it’s this kind of day, either he’s on drugs or it’s a déjà vu, but then he’s living one big fucking déjà vu, running in circles day after day. Ruki is standing at the mirror applying something to his face (it’s less of a face, more of a work of art these days anyway) and Kai can only see the back of his head, burning like a flame, and his reflection. He thinks this is how he always sees Ruki. Only his back, because Ruki is always steps ahead, rushing forward, with his face reflecting in every smooth surface, but never up front because Kai needs to stay behind to pick up the pieces Ruki has lost in his mad dash. It’s the universal balance that keeps things from cracking and falling.
“Kai, have you considered piercing your lip?” Ruki’s hand is suddenly wandering over his face, touching his lips, stroking his cheeks. Ruki could have shoved it down his pants and Kai wouldn’t be any more affected. His blood is turning into liquid ice and he wonders if Ruki can feel it under the skin he’s touching. But Ruki’s touch doesn’t reach so deep.
“No, not really.”
“He’d look like Aoi,” Reita offers his insight without glancing away from the screen of his mobile phone.
“No way. Kai’s not even half as hot,” Aoi flicks cigarette ash to someone’s half-full cup of coffee. “No offense.”
Someone snorts at that, Ruki’s hand is gone. Kai smiles involuntarily because he remembers that time when they were re-piercing Aoi’s belly button after having drunk a considerable amount of the vodka they were supposed to use for sterilising. The task fell upon Kai, as Ruki and Reita turned very white in the face at the sight of a needle and Aoi swore he would rather die than entrust his sexy abdomen to Uruha (who was nursing the remains of the vodka and didn’t give a damn). There was lots of blood, the needle went in askew and when Kai suggested piercing again, Aoi refused cooperation. It was scary and pretty frantic then but now it only makes Kai smile. He thinks that time really changes perspective of things. He thinks that perhaps one day he will look in the mirror at his back without red marks left by Ruki’s nails and he will just smile with nostalgia.
Uruha sways into the dressing room and claims he’s the Snow Queen. Kai wishes spring would come until he remembers that it’s even worse in spring. Then he wishes he had a gun.
xxx
Ruki dreams about dying young and with a big noise and fireworks in the background and that he’ll become a legend.
“Then we’ll have to play with Uruha on vocals,” there is an evil shine to Reita’s face as he says it.
“You wanna destroy my band?”
“Since when is it your band?”
“Since you’re all my bitches.”
Reita gives him a finger, Aoi snorts, Kai doesn’t care (they left Uruha in the hotel bar, which is where they often leave him; he will emerge after hours of drinking, radiating a cat-like smile and energy as if he had just been born; it’s scary).
They’re walking the streets without a crystallised goal, there were some vague ideas about fresh air and food and bonding (“and hookers and booze,” was Aoi’s suggestion, but they told him to stay with Uruha in that case), somehow they’re stuck on the fresh air for now. It’s cold and the evening sky is pink and the streetlamps are orange. That’s really simple scenery, Kai thinks, simple like a cardboard cut out except that it’s not that flat but it seems to be folding at the edges. It seems to be folding in on him and Kai wonders what it would be like if he was cut out of cardboard. He can imagine the band in some undefined future after Ruki dies (with a bang and fireworks in the background obviously), Uruha takes over singing, there is a cardboard Kai on drums and Aoi starts turning tricks backstage to earn some money but mostly because he’s bored and desperate. Only Reita stays the same, because he will always stay the same, blond and spiky and full of wrongly directed faith.
It would be a disaster and Kai knows he can’t let that happen. He will not turn into cardboard. Uruha will not sing. Aoi will not-alright, maybe that’s a bit too much to swear by. But Ruki will not die. Suddenly he’s so sure of it, there’s not one thing in life he is surer of, the Earth will turn out to be rectangular before it, Ruki is going to live forever. It’s an epiphany and it’s bursting through Kai’s chest and he wants to share it with the world - or at least with his band mates, for lack of the whole world gathered in the street at the moment. His band mates don’t seem to realise the solemnity of the situation, though, Kai notices. Aoi is lighting a cigarette and Reita is holding a glove and waving it in the air, they’re standing in front of a little restaurant and seem to be bickering about whether to go in or not (“food,” say Reita’s eyes; “I like to push your buttons,” says Aoi’s smile). Kai looks around for Ruki, who has wandered ahead with no intention to stop and Kai knows he has to follow him before Ruki falls down one rabbit hole or another. It’s such a repetitive feeling, it’s somewhere between funnily tragic and tragically funny.
“Ruki!”
All this time running, all this time chasing after Ruki, Kai has never once called after him to stop. This is a first, and like all firsts, it’s a bit shaky inside but feigning tough confidence. Ruki turns around. There’s hair sticking from under a black beanie and thankfully he’s not wearing sunglasses (all those times they wore sunglasses in the dark, Kai thinks they’ll eventually trip and kill themselves). His face seems white, only coloured by the artificial lights of the street, only sharp around the eyes. He’s cold, Kai can see that in the way his fists are pushed into his pockets and his elbows squeeze tightly to his sides, but he waits.
Kai breaks into a run and just when he’s within arm’s reach, Ruki resumes walking.
“Where are you going?” Kai walks a step behind Ruki’s left shoulder. The shoulder shrugs.
“I just feel like going,” his voice is metallic, almost solidifying in the air.
There is a city in the water. It’s not really a city, just splashes of lights and reflections floating on the surface, but it’s just as good as, if not better. Splashes and reflections is all that there is after all, it’s what cities are made of, what we are made of, what our dreams are made of. The city invites you in and looking down at the water from the bridge, you may wonder what’s on the other side. The other side always looks a little bit more glamorous, more shining and golden, until you break the surface and realise that it’s caught in this thin line of a border between, where you can never be, while you’re just going deep, deep down in the dark.
Snow starts to fall from the pink sky.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think the world is crashing down.”
That makes Ruki finally stop and turn and look at Kai seriously, at first examining if it’s a mockery and once he’s sure, his expression changes. There’s a bit of fear, a bit of comprehension, but mostly icy bites on his cheeks and melting snowflakes in his hair.
“Wanna watch from the bridge?”
Kai nods and Ruki doesn’t look at him anymore as they walk side by side. Kai’s hand remains out of his pocket in case Ruki wants to hold it, just squeeze it once, just brush it with his fingertips. It’s only turning into a hard piece of ice. Ruki’s soft whisper of I’m sorry gets lost in the collar of his jacket. The night town welcomes them with spread arms and legs, as it welcomes everyone and anyone. Their breaths are white in the wintry air.
xxx
originally written for jrockurisumasu and posted there. take a good look, because this is the first and last time you see me writing this pairing.
Going home
Kai enters the dressing room and it’s this kind of day, the kind of day when Reita looks as if he’s killed someone, eyes like bullets and smoking, hair sharp like a blade that could cut through skin and stone; Ruki is standing in front of a mirror and the air around him seems disturbed and darkened and he is in the middle of it like he is ready to spin too, with everything red, oh god. It’s either everyone’s on drugs or Kai got the wrong door but then again he gets the wrong door every day. Electricity buzzes through the room and stings his fingertips.
But really it’s just that everyone gets a bit strange around this time of year. Uruha sways into the dressing room right after him and announces he’s a vampire.
“You know, every band has them,” he claims. “A diva, a mother figure and a vampire.”
“Don’t you mean a diva, a mother figure and a guy with a drinking problem?” Kai asks, although being the mother figure, he isn’t sure if he is trying to be funny or just going along with this for the sake of not losing his mind.
“You’re forgetting about a guy with questionable sexual preferences,” Ruki says, not turning away from the mirror. He’s applying glitter or stardust or whatever it is to his face (it glows in the dark).
“Where is he, by the way?” Reita looks around and Kai wonders how come they all decided it’s Aoi because if anyone asked him, he’d say it’s all four of them (five of them; no one asks anyway).
“Locked in the bathroom.”
“Has he locked himself or has someone locked him?”
Uruha gives Reita a look of how would I know? with a bit of does it matter? around his eyebrows and plops down on the couch, where he picks up a porn magazine and starts to look through it without much interest.
xxx
After spending the night drinking and pissing each other off, Aoi drags Reita away, determined to prove that rather than the guy with questionable sexual preferences he’s the guy everyone wants to fuck, Uruha is still a vampire and that leaves just the two of them.
Going home with Ruki is not a good idea, but if Kai doesn’t go, Ruki will get mugged or hit by a car, his body will get smeared all over the road in forty seven pieces at a distance of three kilometres and Kai will be blamed. Unable to stand the guilt, after six months of mourning he will emigrate to Africa and help starving children for the rest of his life. But the African sun will get him sunburnt in a matter of hours and Ruki will never forgive him because not only is it unhealthy but it looks damn awful. So while Kai knows going home with Ruki is not a good idea, it’s not like he has a choice.
They were playing a rendition of Uruha in Wonderland and Ruki still has eat me scribbled on his cheek with eyeliner, which he isn’t aware of as he stumbles down the curb to cross the road. Kai follows, not entirely sober himself, but his vision is just a little out of focus and his steps are more steady than not, something that can’t be said about Ruki, who seems to be floating rather than walking. And it must be a flood, a flood has come, because there’s a wave that washes Ruki away and Kai can’t catch up with him.
“Did I burn you?” Ruki will ask later, sitting without pants and smoking, the hand with a cigarette reaching over Kai to the ash tray. Kai will feel like they are locked in a smoky bubble, there is a safety sphere over them and they don’t need to bother with what’s outside. Not for a while. The bubble will shake with Ruki’s words but it won’t break.
“No.”
He wouldn’t notice if he did.
xxx
Kai is lying in the hotel bed while in the room next to his Uruha is fucking Ruki and he is fucking him good and hard. Kai knows because he can hear all the noises through the wall. Ruki is moaning as if he was paid for it and it’s similar in sound but so much different at the core from what it was like that night.
He wanted to just get Ruki home and disappear into the night, perhaps taking twice as long as he needed to walk to his own flat, arriving there sober, if a bit more miserable. Ruki would have none of that.
“Come, come, come,” he chanted fervently as he took Kai’s wrist and dragged him inside, not bothering about taking their shoes off. “Lock the door. Lock the door!”
His shout was sharp but his words were slurring, he was shaking and Kai could see there was something wrong with Ruki, something, perhaps, like a breakdown, coming, rising to the surface, the wave, the flood from before, which Ruki seemed to be afraid of, seemed to think, it was going to wash them both away. Kai believed him. There was nothing else he could do but believe him.
“Come on,” Ruki dragged him straight to the bedroom. His fists twisted desperately into Kai’s shirt, his lips were dry and hot and Kai looked down at him and embraced him. There was nothing else he thought he could do.
Next were Ruki’s hands, moving in a frenzy, sneaking under Kai’s clothes, taking them off, lips seeking his, kisses constantly breaking halfway, loud inhales of air in between, no thoughts, only motion. As soon as Kai’s fingertips brushed Ruki’s collarbones, he knew he was addicted to the milky skin, to the milky touch; he sunk head first like a burning warship in the middle of a battle; with no hope. But there was no time and space for poetic comparisons and melancholy, Ruki was too impatient and Kai didn’t mind. They ended up on the messy bed, exchanging messy kisses as they were kicking off their pants, throwing things to the floor, making things fall over, breaking things. For once Ruki didn’t care about making general disorder in his room and for once Kai didn’t even notice. There was only bare skin.
“Kai,” Ruki breathed under him. All this time Ruki had been emitting all kinds of sounds, sighs and moans and whispers, not shy about it at all. He liked hearing his own voice, or he had to hear his own voice, to make sure he was still there, Kai didn’t know. Kai didn’t need to know. He was thrusting into him and Ruki said his name and he arched and it felt like seeing him like that was all Kai had been living for. Even if there was smudged eyeliner on Ruki’s cheek, he was drunk and he just wanted a fuck. The truth was, he just wanted something, someone to fill the void inside him, so that it wouldn’t eat at him so painfully (it ate at him the most painfully on nights when there was smudged eyeliner on his cheek and he was drunk). Kai wished he could be enough to do that.
It was like going two hundred kilometres per hour and coming to a crash at a wall; too fast, too hard.
Afterwards, Ruki’s lips were marking a path down his spine. It was hot but Kai could barely contain a shiver. He was lying on his side, his back turned to Ruki so he didn’t see him. He only felt him rolling off and heard him stretching on the bed and the rustle as Ruki was making himself comfortable on the pillow.
“I was wondering if I should go red next,” Ruki said in a sleepy voice. “What do you think? Reita says blond rocks but what does he know anyway…aaah’m tired.”
Kai sighed. This was hopeless.
xxx
Kai enters the dressing room and it’s this kind of day, either he’s on drugs or it’s a déjà vu, but then he’s living one big fucking déjà vu, running in circles day after day. Ruki is standing at the mirror applying something to his face (it’s less of a face, more of a work of art these days anyway) and Kai can only see the back of his head, burning like a flame, and his reflection. He thinks this is how he always sees Ruki. Only his back, because Ruki is always steps ahead, rushing forward, with his face reflecting in every smooth surface, but never up front because Kai needs to stay behind to pick up the pieces Ruki has lost in his mad dash. It’s the universal balance that keeps things from cracking and falling.
“Kai, have you considered piercing your lip?” Ruki’s hand is suddenly wandering over his face, touching his lips, stroking his cheeks. Ruki could have shoved it down his pants and Kai wouldn’t be any more affected. His blood is turning into liquid ice and he wonders if Ruki can feel it under the skin he’s touching. But Ruki’s touch doesn’t reach so deep.
“No, not really.”
“He’d look like Aoi,” Reita offers his insight without glancing away from the screen of his mobile phone.
“No way. Kai’s not even half as hot,” Aoi flicks cigarette ash to someone’s half-full cup of coffee. “No offense.”
Someone snorts at that, Ruki’s hand is gone. Kai smiles involuntarily because he remembers that time when they were re-piercing Aoi’s belly button after having drunk a considerable amount of the vodka they were supposed to use for sterilising. The task fell upon Kai, as Ruki and Reita turned very white in the face at the sight of a needle and Aoi swore he would rather die than entrust his sexy abdomen to Uruha (who was nursing the remains of the vodka and didn’t give a damn). There was lots of blood, the needle went in askew and when Kai suggested piercing again, Aoi refused cooperation. It was scary and pretty frantic then but now it only makes Kai smile. He thinks that time really changes perspective of things. He thinks that perhaps one day he will look in the mirror at his back without red marks left by Ruki’s nails and he will just smile with nostalgia.
Uruha sways into the dressing room and claims he’s the Snow Queen. Kai wishes spring would come until he remembers that it’s even worse in spring. Then he wishes he had a gun.
xxx
Ruki dreams about dying young and with a big noise and fireworks in the background and that he’ll become a legend.
“Then we’ll have to play with Uruha on vocals,” there is an evil shine to Reita’s face as he says it.
“You wanna destroy my band?”
“Since when is it your band?”
“Since you’re all my bitches.”
Reita gives him a finger, Aoi snorts, Kai doesn’t care (they left Uruha in the hotel bar, which is where they often leave him; he will emerge after hours of drinking, radiating a cat-like smile and energy as if he had just been born; it’s scary).
They’re walking the streets without a crystallised goal, there were some vague ideas about fresh air and food and bonding (“and hookers and booze,” was Aoi’s suggestion, but they told him to stay with Uruha in that case), somehow they’re stuck on the fresh air for now. It’s cold and the evening sky is pink and the streetlamps are orange. That’s really simple scenery, Kai thinks, simple like a cardboard cut out except that it’s not that flat but it seems to be folding at the edges. It seems to be folding in on him and Kai wonders what it would be like if he was cut out of cardboard. He can imagine the band in some undefined future after Ruki dies (with a bang and fireworks in the background obviously), Uruha takes over singing, there is a cardboard Kai on drums and Aoi starts turning tricks backstage to earn some money but mostly because he’s bored and desperate. Only Reita stays the same, because he will always stay the same, blond and spiky and full of wrongly directed faith.
It would be a disaster and Kai knows he can’t let that happen. He will not turn into cardboard. Uruha will not sing. Aoi will not-alright, maybe that’s a bit too much to swear by. But Ruki will not die. Suddenly he’s so sure of it, there’s not one thing in life he is surer of, the Earth will turn out to be rectangular before it, Ruki is going to live forever. It’s an epiphany and it’s bursting through Kai’s chest and he wants to share it with the world - or at least with his band mates, for lack of the whole world gathered in the street at the moment. His band mates don’t seem to realise the solemnity of the situation, though, Kai notices. Aoi is lighting a cigarette and Reita is holding a glove and waving it in the air, they’re standing in front of a little restaurant and seem to be bickering about whether to go in or not (“food,” say Reita’s eyes; “I like to push your buttons,” says Aoi’s smile). Kai looks around for Ruki, who has wandered ahead with no intention to stop and Kai knows he has to follow him before Ruki falls down one rabbit hole or another. It’s such a repetitive feeling, it’s somewhere between funnily tragic and tragically funny.
“Ruki!”
All this time running, all this time chasing after Ruki, Kai has never once called after him to stop. This is a first, and like all firsts, it’s a bit shaky inside but feigning tough confidence. Ruki turns around. There’s hair sticking from under a black beanie and thankfully he’s not wearing sunglasses (all those times they wore sunglasses in the dark, Kai thinks they’ll eventually trip and kill themselves). His face seems white, only coloured by the artificial lights of the street, only sharp around the eyes. He’s cold, Kai can see that in the way his fists are pushed into his pockets and his elbows squeeze tightly to his sides, but he waits.
Kai breaks into a run and just when he’s within arm’s reach, Ruki resumes walking.
“Where are you going?” Kai walks a step behind Ruki’s left shoulder. The shoulder shrugs.
“I just feel like going,” his voice is metallic, almost solidifying in the air.
There is a city in the water. It’s not really a city, just splashes of lights and reflections floating on the surface, but it’s just as good as, if not better. Splashes and reflections is all that there is after all, it’s what cities are made of, what we are made of, what our dreams are made of. The city invites you in and looking down at the water from the bridge, you may wonder what’s on the other side. The other side always looks a little bit more glamorous, more shining and golden, until you break the surface and realise that it’s caught in this thin line of a border between, where you can never be, while you’re just going deep, deep down in the dark.
Snow starts to fall from the pink sky.
“What’s wrong?”
“I think the world is crashing down.”
That makes Ruki finally stop and turn and look at Kai seriously, at first examining if it’s a mockery and once he’s sure, his expression changes. There’s a bit of fear, a bit of comprehension, but mostly icy bites on his cheeks and melting snowflakes in his hair.
“Wanna watch from the bridge?”
Kai nods and Ruki doesn’t look at him anymore as they walk side by side. Kai’s hand remains out of his pocket in case Ruki wants to hold it, just squeeze it once, just brush it with his fingertips. It’s only turning into a hard piece of ice. Ruki’s soft whisper of I’m sorry gets lost in the collar of his jacket. The night town welcomes them with spread arms and legs, as it welcomes everyone and anyone. Their breaths are white in the wintry air.
xxx