(X, S/K) No Angel Came
This is in response to shineko's challenge for a die-hard S&S fan to write a GOOD S/K fic. Well, this is quite possibly the most miserable thing I've ever written, so it must be S/K. Watch out for spelling errors, as I currently don't have access to a spellcheck and I feel distinctly bleary-eyed.
Title: No Angel Came
Author: crazylittleme @ vnilla
Fandom: X
Pairing: Subaru/Kamui, sort of.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and assorted others own everything. Not mine!
Author's Notes: Written because I wanted to play with the typical S/K scenario of Subaru and Kamui sharing an apartment after the Promised Day. This is NOT an S/K fic, unless you count unrequited love. Very, very dark, as the warnings say. Not a happy fic.
--
The room is empty, dark, and cold, but he doesn't expect anything less. Oh, there is furniture in it, to be true--his fingertips ghost across the moon-cool surface of a table before withdrawing abruptly--but there is no sense of presence here, no sign that someone breathes here. And, in truth, perhaps no one does.
He cracks the blinds to let the light in, but the sun is weak and watery in January, a siphoned shadow of its normal glow. Rather than soften the room's interior, it casts a light of stark monochrome, every edge of furniture jagged and harsh. Kamui wonders how he never noticed how many sharp angles everyday objects had before. It's an uncomfortable realization.
The door clicks with a sound exactly unlike a gunshot yet the sound carries the same finality.
"What are you doing here?"
Five words, in a voice as monochrome and lifeless as this room, flat as if compressed by layers and layers of grief and suffering. The weight Subaru carries on his shoulders shows in his voice, in the dead lassitude of his eyes, one green, one amber. Kamui shudders as the amber eye catches the thin sunlight.
"You need me, Subaru." Kamui is proud of himself; his tone does not waver, his hands do not shake. He offers no empty promises, no excuses, nothing more than simple truth. There is nothing more that can ever be offered to a man that has lived a life based on one profound lie. Built himself up around that lie until that which is Sumeragi Subaru seems to have been stripped away from him like the rest of his illusions. Kamui feels a cold stab of terror as he follows through with that train of thought and wonders how much of the Subaru he loves ever was real. How much existed only because of another person, how much was a glorious illusion crafted by the Sakurazukamori.
He takes a step forward, wanting to cry. This is his tragic flaw, this not caring about the how or why this new persona, clinging with all the strength of his being to he whom he loved in the beginning, Once loved, always loved, and Subaru is no exception. There is no one left for him to hold to his heart other than this man, this shattered shell.
Subaru sees all of this with the impartial grace of a god, a god neither good nor evil but simply an observer of the affairs of men. He who loved passionately now feels nothing at all. He who could not see the truth now sees, a clarity that comes with ease. The irony in this is bitter, bitter, and though the flavor rolls on his tongue, it stirs nothing within him.
"Stay then, if you like."
And though Kamui knows better than to think that he can make Subaru love him, he smiles and lets himself, for the first time in a long time, begin to hope.
* * * * *
He's learning how to cook, and doing an admirable job of it, if he does say so himself. He can't bring himself to attend school anymore, so he occupies himself with watching cooking shows and sketching during the commercial breaks. Kamui has no pictures of the Seals, and he is afraid that he will forget their faces. Line after line of pencil details the tender curve of a woman's cheek, the kindly smile of a man. They died together, in each others' arms, and he remembers the expression of joy on Karen's face when someone, someone cried for her.
Others are difficult to get exactly right. Kotori died over eight months ago, and though he still sees her gentle face in his dreams, it is softly muted by his feelings for her. She was so good, so pure, the antithesis of all that 1999 had symbolized. It was her face that called forth his kekkai, because he wanted to protect her hope for the future. Make her immortal, in a way, by allowing that hope to live on. Her ghost stood between Kamui and Fuuma on the Promised Day, and it was Kotori and Kamui alike that Fuuma whispered goodbye to as the Shinken slid neatly between his ribs.
He sketches Subaru as he first saw him, one hand outstretched, face filled with concern and a terrible empathy. Filled. A face three-dimensional and complex, a face that could barely contain the undercurrent of feeling beneath it. Kamui can't sketch Subaru now, because he doesn't look real on paper.
He never seems real anymore.
* * * * *
Sometimes he manages to engage Subaru in conversation, however brief. He cherishes these small instances, these precious few words. They are dull, colorless, but he hears something wonderful in them. If Subaru is still alive, still involved in the world in some small way, there is hope. Not for love, never for the love Subaru carries for Seishirou, but for the friend he used to know. The friend he loves.
He winces at the sight of blood on Subaru's gloves, but that is when he is most inclined to speak, so he swallows the bile rising in his throat and asks him quite casually how his day was.
"Like a closet," Subaru answers once, and then removes a cigarette from his pack, flicking on his lighter as Kamui tries to make heads or tails of the statement.
Several seconds pass into silence, borne away with the cigarette smoke. Kamui hasn't started smoking, but he no longer coughs when Subaru does this. He wonders how long it took Subaru to master the casual elegance which with he inhales and exhales, if it took years to develop or no time at all. He smokes a lot more than Kamui remembers from the old days; perhaps he needs to hold something in his hands. They seem empty without the scars of the Sakurazukamori.
"Everything hung in its place and put in boxes if it doesn't hang," Subaru elaborates at last, and then Kamui nods, recognizing the comparison as a statement on the mundanity of his life. Subaru's fingers tap nervously on the cigarette carton as Kamui considers this, framing a response to fit accordingly. The initial question, "Then why don't you come out of the closet?" makes his lips twitch with inappropriate humor at the pun, and he bites down viciously on his lower lip to prevent that mirth from spilling forth. The hysterical desire to laugh persists, but it swims beneath the salt tang of blood.
"If you're dissatisfied with life, why not change?" he inquires at length, speaking around the new cut in his mouth.
Subaru's glance is so dispassionate that Kamui flinches from it, as though some part of his inner self is drained away in the face of such absolute apathy.
"When I was younger," he says, and every word is layered and laden with meaning, "I used to hide in my sister's closet."
* * * * *
He runs hands over soft skin, smooth and white as marble, and yet he cannot avoid this sense of not belonging. Marble exists to be sculpted under expert hands, teased and chipped and scarred into a thing of breathtaking beauty. He feels like an apprentice attempting to finish his late master's not-quite-finished last work, inexpert hands fumbling where artisan's hands once explored.
Subaru lies quiet on the bed, a distant, abstracted look to his eyes, as if what is happening now is of no particular consequence, a moment of boredom to be endured as best as possible. And it seems that whenever light falls on the Sumeragi that it bleeds away all color and sharpens every angle to a razor, files away at even the soft curves until they appear rough as sandpaper. Moonlight washes his face of the little color it has and makes it glow like a ghost's.
Valentine's Day. Kamui's eyes burn with hot tears even as his fingers linger in the soft midnight of Subaru's hair; he cannot believe the stupidity and naivete that lead him to do this. He wants Subaru to feel safe and happy and has always associated touches with both of those. So he drew Subaru to him this night and tried to make him feel something and it doesn't seem to be working, not at all.
The press of skin on skin is suddenly very cold; Subaru is no more warm than the marble he compares him to. Kamui is nervous, afraid even, but Subaru's unnatural stillness make this easier, strangely enough. His hands look tiny as they trail across Subaru's chest, across and up to trace the collarbone, back down to trace the prominent line of every rib, down further to the slightly more yielding skin of the stomach. And Kamui flushes as his index finger dips down still further, tracing the metal line of a belt buckle.
Subaru sighs at the tap of finger on metal, and Kamui glances at his face, startled. Was it a sign of resignation or a sigh indicating some interest after all? Subaru's eyes are shut and he cannot read his face, if anything was there to read in the first place.
He doesn't want to proceed further, not yet. His inner romantic tells him that there should be kissing first, and he listens, though he ignores the underlying message of that romanticism: Your partner should love you, should relish every moment of this. His lips ghost across Subaru's and then leave when they elicit no response, gentle, gentle, over that skin, as if afraid that the other man will break.
Then one faintly trembling hand betrays him and he slips, just enough so that teeth scrape lightly across the sensitive skin of Subaru's stomach. A slight hiss hangs in the air, a quick exhalation of breath that can only have come from Subaru. Kamui looks up once more.
Subaru's eyes are still shut, his face tilted up. And yet there is the slightest tint of color to his cheeks, lips softly parted to allow that small sound an exit. Kamui is dizzied; he feels like Pygmalion, loving a statue so beautiful that the gods allowed that statue to come to life.
"Seishirou-san..."
Kamui manages to make it to the bathroom before he throws up, damned by the merest breath of a whisper of a name on Subaru's lips.
* * * * *
It's the anniversary of his return to Tokyo, and Kamui makes sure to light a candle for the Monou family, for the four lives he destroyed merely by existing. His fingers have been shaky as of late, and it takes three tries before a match finally sputters to life. He lit a candle for his mother three days ago, and he let it burn to a stub before he threw it away.
The candle is a cheerful little light, totally out of place in this apartment, Kamui thinks to himself as he slices the vegetables. The apartment is rigidly neat, more a product of Subaru's desire to have everything in its exact place than any particular neatness on Kamui's part. He's picked up the habit of putting things back exactly where he found them, that's all. But cooking--that's a domestic task he likes, probably the only one. His dishes have improved considerably after four months of cooking shows and cutting out recipes.
Subaru eats all of his creations, from the exquisite to the awful, with the same non-expression on his face. He never criticizes or praises, never says much of anything at all. He picks at his food, eating barely enough to sustain life, and Kamui knows better than to try to make him eat. The way the skin stretches over Subaru's bones bothers him, but speaking to him about his eating habits would only gain him a blank stare.
Still, cooking dinner is one of the few bright spots in his day, a single ray of light marred only by the gritty glitter of a scattering of dust motes. Pop music twirls and wheels around the kitchen as he stirs ingredients together, creating what he hopes will be a culinary masterpiece. It certainly looked good when he saw it on TV.
It's then he notices that he cut himself while cutting the vegetables. The blood is bright and crimson, welling from his finger to drip down his hand, pooling in the faint dip of a scar until all of it is outlined in that bold red color. He stops stirring, puts the bowl down to stare in fascination. It's a deep cut. Why didn't he feel it?
Why doesn't he feel it now?
Giggles bubble past his lips, giggles that rise higher and higher into a trembling falsetto. He presses a hand over his mouth to stop himself and then he's crying as he laughs, hiccupping and tasting cracked salt on his lips. He kneels on the kitchen floor, drops of blood spattering on the tiles, and he rocks back and forth and back and forth.
He knows what despair tastes like.
* * * * *
The anniversary of the Sakurazukamori's death waits to swoop down upon them like a bird of prey, much like the man himself. Except Kamui can see the date coming, and so can Subaru, and there is a subtle change to the air of the apartment. Now some of Subaru's silences are filled with pain, and Kamui can no longer muster the spirit to break them. Instead he turns up the radio as loud as it can go, and even though he knows all the words by now, he never sings along.
The faint trembling Kamui noticed in his arms has increased tenfold, byproduct of a sudden, manic energy. He mops the floor twice in one week. He alphabetizes Subaru's small collection of CDs, then moves on to his larger collection of books. He paces the floor of the living room at night, unable to fall asleep on the couch. He sketches incessantly, face after face after face as if he's searching for something, anything, anything at all.
When the day dawns, both Kamui and Subaru are already up, the former making an elaborate breakfast for one, the latter already out on one of his many mysterious errands. The tension crackles like lightning inside the apartment, made all the more terrifying by its being contained in so small a space.
His pencil falls on the paper like magic, long elegant lines scratching their way out of soft pencil lead. He draws feverishly, as if a demon possesses him, and it is not until a face begins to stare at him from the page that he knows who he draws. Sakurazukamori, one blank white eye and the other a malevolent amber, smile cool and knowing, as if to say, He is mine. Kamui stares at that face as he sketches it, hating its smugness.
But then a jerk of the pencil softens that expression, and Kamui is forced to acknowledge the truth revealed in his artistry, that this is the Sakurazukamori he remembers from Rainbow Bridge, this and not the other one. There is a touch of sadness to this face, a resignation. This is the face that Subaru loves beyond life itself. He's been drawing for hours and at last it is done and he can no longer think for exhaustion. Had he been thinking, he never would have fallen into a doze with his sketchbook open.
He jerks awake at night when he feels his sketchbook being lifted, and his mouth shapes into a dim O of horror as Subaru focuses on today's drawing. He cringes, preparing himself for a look of despair, a harsh word or even a blow. The shaking is back again, and it feels as though the fragile bones of his wrists are about to snap in half.
Without a flicker of feeling or even recognition, Subaru places the sketchbook on the coffee table after a moment and leaves the room.
* * * * *
He does not cook today, or sketch, or do any of the frantic cleaning and pacing back and forth that served to occupy his waking hours for the past seven or so months. He throws away a dying houseplant that he bought in a vain effort to brighten the apartment, and then he sweeps up the small pile of leaves and dirt it left in its wake. He folds clothes neatly into a suitcase, gathers his few possessions and places them in a backpack. He is ready.
He takes down the yellow curtains he put up to filter out the harsh quality of the sunlight; the curtains never really mellowed it, anyway. He throws these out, too, for he's certain that Subaru will have no use for them. He's certain that Subaru won't even notice that they're gone.
Now he can only wait until Subaru gets home, for he still needs a sense of closure. Needs to give him one last chance to display some sort of feeling before he leaves and cuts him out of his life forever. Even in the process of giving up all hope, Kamui still retains that one, single shred, a shred he will not abandon until it is destroyed by Subaru's apathy. And destroyed it undoubtedly will be.
Kamui is done crying; he's too numb by now to cry, anyway. Funny how not even Fuuma could break his bright hopes of winning the other boy back, getting him to be his old self again. Yet a little more than half a year of cutting himself to ribbons on Subaru's calm indifference had at last broken him beyond repair, and no Sakurazukamori has any use whatsoever for a broken toy.
The door clicks with a sound exactly unlike a gunshot yet the sound carries the same finality.
Subaru only spares the suitcase by the door the merest of second glances before his gaze meets Kamui's.
"I'm leaving."
Subaru's non-expression does not change as he nods, and he does not turn to look as Kamui walks out the door.
Title: No Angel Came
Author: crazylittleme @ vnilla
Fandom: X
Pairing: Subaru/Kamui, sort of.
Rating: R
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling and assorted others own everything. Not mine!
Author's Notes: Written because I wanted to play with the typical S/K scenario of Subaru and Kamui sharing an apartment after the Promised Day. This is NOT an S/K fic, unless you count unrequited love. Very, very dark, as the warnings say. Not a happy fic.
--
The room is empty, dark, and cold, but he doesn't expect anything less. Oh, there is furniture in it, to be true--his fingertips ghost across the moon-cool surface of a table before withdrawing abruptly--but there is no sense of presence here, no sign that someone breathes here. And, in truth, perhaps no one does.
He cracks the blinds to let the light in, but the sun is weak and watery in January, a siphoned shadow of its normal glow. Rather than soften the room's interior, it casts a light of stark monochrome, every edge of furniture jagged and harsh. Kamui wonders how he never noticed how many sharp angles everyday objects had before. It's an uncomfortable realization.
The door clicks with a sound exactly unlike a gunshot yet the sound carries the same finality.
"What are you doing here?"
Five words, in a voice as monochrome and lifeless as this room, flat as if compressed by layers and layers of grief and suffering. The weight Subaru carries on his shoulders shows in his voice, in the dead lassitude of his eyes, one green, one amber. Kamui shudders as the amber eye catches the thin sunlight.
"You need me, Subaru." Kamui is proud of himself; his tone does not waver, his hands do not shake. He offers no empty promises, no excuses, nothing more than simple truth. There is nothing more that can ever be offered to a man that has lived a life based on one profound lie. Built himself up around that lie until that which is Sumeragi Subaru seems to have been stripped away from him like the rest of his illusions. Kamui feels a cold stab of terror as he follows through with that train of thought and wonders how much of the Subaru he loves ever was real. How much existed only because of another person, how much was a glorious illusion crafted by the Sakurazukamori.
He takes a step forward, wanting to cry. This is his tragic flaw, this not caring about the how or why this new persona, clinging with all the strength of his being to he whom he loved in the beginning, Once loved, always loved, and Subaru is no exception. There is no one left for him to hold to his heart other than this man, this shattered shell.
Subaru sees all of this with the impartial grace of a god, a god neither good nor evil but simply an observer of the affairs of men. He who loved passionately now feels nothing at all. He who could not see the truth now sees, a clarity that comes with ease. The irony in this is bitter, bitter, and though the flavor rolls on his tongue, it stirs nothing within him.
"Stay then, if you like."
And though Kamui knows better than to think that he can make Subaru love him, he smiles and lets himself, for the first time in a long time, begin to hope.
* * * * *
He's learning how to cook, and doing an admirable job of it, if he does say so himself. He can't bring himself to attend school anymore, so he occupies himself with watching cooking shows and sketching during the commercial breaks. Kamui has no pictures of the Seals, and he is afraid that he will forget their faces. Line after line of pencil details the tender curve of a woman's cheek, the kindly smile of a man. They died together, in each others' arms, and he remembers the expression of joy on Karen's face when someone, someone cried for her.
Others are difficult to get exactly right. Kotori died over eight months ago, and though he still sees her gentle face in his dreams, it is softly muted by his feelings for her. She was so good, so pure, the antithesis of all that 1999 had symbolized. It was her face that called forth his kekkai, because he wanted to protect her hope for the future. Make her immortal, in a way, by allowing that hope to live on. Her ghost stood between Kamui and Fuuma on the Promised Day, and it was Kotori and Kamui alike that Fuuma whispered goodbye to as the Shinken slid neatly between his ribs.
He sketches Subaru as he first saw him, one hand outstretched, face filled with concern and a terrible empathy. Filled. A face three-dimensional and complex, a face that could barely contain the undercurrent of feeling beneath it. Kamui can't sketch Subaru now, because he doesn't look real on paper.
He never seems real anymore.
* * * * *
Sometimes he manages to engage Subaru in conversation, however brief. He cherishes these small instances, these precious few words. They are dull, colorless, but he hears something wonderful in them. If Subaru is still alive, still involved in the world in some small way, there is hope. Not for love, never for the love Subaru carries for Seishirou, but for the friend he used to know. The friend he loves.
He winces at the sight of blood on Subaru's gloves, but that is when he is most inclined to speak, so he swallows the bile rising in his throat and asks him quite casually how his day was.
"Like a closet," Subaru answers once, and then removes a cigarette from his pack, flicking on his lighter as Kamui tries to make heads or tails of the statement.
Several seconds pass into silence, borne away with the cigarette smoke. Kamui hasn't started smoking, but he no longer coughs when Subaru does this. He wonders how long it took Subaru to master the casual elegance which with he inhales and exhales, if it took years to develop or no time at all. He smokes a lot more than Kamui remembers from the old days; perhaps he needs to hold something in his hands. They seem empty without the scars of the Sakurazukamori.
"Everything hung in its place and put in boxes if it doesn't hang," Subaru elaborates at last, and then Kamui nods, recognizing the comparison as a statement on the mundanity of his life. Subaru's fingers tap nervously on the cigarette carton as Kamui considers this, framing a response to fit accordingly. The initial question, "Then why don't you come out of the closet?" makes his lips twitch with inappropriate humor at the pun, and he bites down viciously on his lower lip to prevent that mirth from spilling forth. The hysterical desire to laugh persists, but it swims beneath the salt tang of blood.
"If you're dissatisfied with life, why not change?" he inquires at length, speaking around the new cut in his mouth.
Subaru's glance is so dispassionate that Kamui flinches from it, as though some part of his inner self is drained away in the face of such absolute apathy.
"When I was younger," he says, and every word is layered and laden with meaning, "I used to hide in my sister's closet."
* * * * *
He runs hands over soft skin, smooth and white as marble, and yet he cannot avoid this sense of not belonging. Marble exists to be sculpted under expert hands, teased and chipped and scarred into a thing of breathtaking beauty. He feels like an apprentice attempting to finish his late master's not-quite-finished last work, inexpert hands fumbling where artisan's hands once explored.
Subaru lies quiet on the bed, a distant, abstracted look to his eyes, as if what is happening now is of no particular consequence, a moment of boredom to be endured as best as possible. And it seems that whenever light falls on the Sumeragi that it bleeds away all color and sharpens every angle to a razor, files away at even the soft curves until they appear rough as sandpaper. Moonlight washes his face of the little color it has and makes it glow like a ghost's.
Valentine's Day. Kamui's eyes burn with hot tears even as his fingers linger in the soft midnight of Subaru's hair; he cannot believe the stupidity and naivete that lead him to do this. He wants Subaru to feel safe and happy and has always associated touches with both of those. So he drew Subaru to him this night and tried to make him feel something and it doesn't seem to be working, not at all.
The press of skin on skin is suddenly very cold; Subaru is no more warm than the marble he compares him to. Kamui is nervous, afraid even, but Subaru's unnatural stillness make this easier, strangely enough. His hands look tiny as they trail across Subaru's chest, across and up to trace the collarbone, back down to trace the prominent line of every rib, down further to the slightly more yielding skin of the stomach. And Kamui flushes as his index finger dips down still further, tracing the metal line of a belt buckle.
Subaru sighs at the tap of finger on metal, and Kamui glances at his face, startled. Was it a sign of resignation or a sigh indicating some interest after all? Subaru's eyes are shut and he cannot read his face, if anything was there to read in the first place.
He doesn't want to proceed further, not yet. His inner romantic tells him that there should be kissing first, and he listens, though he ignores the underlying message of that romanticism: Your partner should love you, should relish every moment of this. His lips ghost across Subaru's and then leave when they elicit no response, gentle, gentle, over that skin, as if afraid that the other man will break.
Then one faintly trembling hand betrays him and he slips, just enough so that teeth scrape lightly across the sensitive skin of Subaru's stomach. A slight hiss hangs in the air, a quick exhalation of breath that can only have come from Subaru. Kamui looks up once more.
Subaru's eyes are still shut, his face tilted up. And yet there is the slightest tint of color to his cheeks, lips softly parted to allow that small sound an exit. Kamui is dizzied; he feels like Pygmalion, loving a statue so beautiful that the gods allowed that statue to come to life.
"Seishirou-san..."
Kamui manages to make it to the bathroom before he throws up, damned by the merest breath of a whisper of a name on Subaru's lips.
* * * * *
It's the anniversary of his return to Tokyo, and Kamui makes sure to light a candle for the Monou family, for the four lives he destroyed merely by existing. His fingers have been shaky as of late, and it takes three tries before a match finally sputters to life. He lit a candle for his mother three days ago, and he let it burn to a stub before he threw it away.
The candle is a cheerful little light, totally out of place in this apartment, Kamui thinks to himself as he slices the vegetables. The apartment is rigidly neat, more a product of Subaru's desire to have everything in its exact place than any particular neatness on Kamui's part. He's picked up the habit of putting things back exactly where he found them, that's all. But cooking--that's a domestic task he likes, probably the only one. His dishes have improved considerably after four months of cooking shows and cutting out recipes.
Subaru eats all of his creations, from the exquisite to the awful, with the same non-expression on his face. He never criticizes or praises, never says much of anything at all. He picks at his food, eating barely enough to sustain life, and Kamui knows better than to try to make him eat. The way the skin stretches over Subaru's bones bothers him, but speaking to him about his eating habits would only gain him a blank stare.
Still, cooking dinner is one of the few bright spots in his day, a single ray of light marred only by the gritty glitter of a scattering of dust motes. Pop music twirls and wheels around the kitchen as he stirs ingredients together, creating what he hopes will be a culinary masterpiece. It certainly looked good when he saw it on TV.
It's then he notices that he cut himself while cutting the vegetables. The blood is bright and crimson, welling from his finger to drip down his hand, pooling in the faint dip of a scar until all of it is outlined in that bold red color. He stops stirring, puts the bowl down to stare in fascination. It's a deep cut. Why didn't he feel it?
Why doesn't he feel it now?
Giggles bubble past his lips, giggles that rise higher and higher into a trembling falsetto. He presses a hand over his mouth to stop himself and then he's crying as he laughs, hiccupping and tasting cracked salt on his lips. He kneels on the kitchen floor, drops of blood spattering on the tiles, and he rocks back and forth and back and forth.
He knows what despair tastes like.
* * * * *
The anniversary of the Sakurazukamori's death waits to swoop down upon them like a bird of prey, much like the man himself. Except Kamui can see the date coming, and so can Subaru, and there is a subtle change to the air of the apartment. Now some of Subaru's silences are filled with pain, and Kamui can no longer muster the spirit to break them. Instead he turns up the radio as loud as it can go, and even though he knows all the words by now, he never sings along.
The faint trembling Kamui noticed in his arms has increased tenfold, byproduct of a sudden, manic energy. He mops the floor twice in one week. He alphabetizes Subaru's small collection of CDs, then moves on to his larger collection of books. He paces the floor of the living room at night, unable to fall asleep on the couch. He sketches incessantly, face after face after face as if he's searching for something, anything, anything at all.
When the day dawns, both Kamui and Subaru are already up, the former making an elaborate breakfast for one, the latter already out on one of his many mysterious errands. The tension crackles like lightning inside the apartment, made all the more terrifying by its being contained in so small a space.
His pencil falls on the paper like magic, long elegant lines scratching their way out of soft pencil lead. He draws feverishly, as if a demon possesses him, and it is not until a face begins to stare at him from the page that he knows who he draws. Sakurazukamori, one blank white eye and the other a malevolent amber, smile cool and knowing, as if to say, He is mine. Kamui stares at that face as he sketches it, hating its smugness.
But then a jerk of the pencil softens that expression, and Kamui is forced to acknowledge the truth revealed in his artistry, that this is the Sakurazukamori he remembers from Rainbow Bridge, this and not the other one. There is a touch of sadness to this face, a resignation. This is the face that Subaru loves beyond life itself. He's been drawing for hours and at last it is done and he can no longer think for exhaustion. Had he been thinking, he never would have fallen into a doze with his sketchbook open.
He jerks awake at night when he feels his sketchbook being lifted, and his mouth shapes into a dim O of horror as Subaru focuses on today's drawing. He cringes, preparing himself for a look of despair, a harsh word or even a blow. The shaking is back again, and it feels as though the fragile bones of his wrists are about to snap in half.
Without a flicker of feeling or even recognition, Subaru places the sketchbook on the coffee table after a moment and leaves the room.
* * * * *
He does not cook today, or sketch, or do any of the frantic cleaning and pacing back and forth that served to occupy his waking hours for the past seven or so months. He throws away a dying houseplant that he bought in a vain effort to brighten the apartment, and then he sweeps up the small pile of leaves and dirt it left in its wake. He folds clothes neatly into a suitcase, gathers his few possessions and places them in a backpack. He is ready.
He takes down the yellow curtains he put up to filter out the harsh quality of the sunlight; the curtains never really mellowed it, anyway. He throws these out, too, for he's certain that Subaru will have no use for them. He's certain that Subaru won't even notice that they're gone.
Now he can only wait until Subaru gets home, for he still needs a sense of closure. Needs to give him one last chance to display some sort of feeling before he leaves and cuts him out of his life forever. Even in the process of giving up all hope, Kamui still retains that one, single shred, a shred he will not abandon until it is destroyed by Subaru's apathy. And destroyed it undoubtedly will be.
Kamui is done crying; he's too numb by now to cry, anyway. Funny how not even Fuuma could break his bright hopes of winning the other boy back, getting him to be his old self again. Yet a little more than half a year of cutting himself to ribbons on Subaru's calm indifference had at last broken him beyond repair, and no Sakurazukamori has any use whatsoever for a broken toy.
The door clicks with a sound exactly unlike a gunshot yet the sound carries the same finality.
Subaru only spares the suitcase by the door the merest of second glances before his gaze meets Kamui's.
"I'm leaving."
Subaru's non-expression does not change as he nods, and he does not turn to look as Kamui walks out the door.