on triumphant(?) returns
How long since I posted actual fic? Oy.
So. I'm not a HUGE Lady Antebellum fan, but I enjoy a couple of their songs. "I Run to You" got me thinking about Shizuka, and after that I sort of blinked and this thing was staring back at me from my laptop. I've got REAL WORK to do, dammit. Why does fandom rear its head at the worst possible times?
Ah well. If I tell you this fic is rated absolutely G, will you believe me?
Title: Precipitation
Characters: Shizuka, Himawari
Spoilers: Well, I mean, yeah. Subtle ones. Mostly this is speculation.
Summary: The first time they sleep together, it is raining.
The first time they sleep together, it is raining.
* * *
Shizuka opens his window for a moment to feel the soft rush of wind on his face. The trees outside rustle with the promise of a summer storm; the air has that pressure like a breath held too long, waiting to be released.
His cell phone rings. He glances at the name on the display and answers it before the second ring.
“Hello.”
“Doumeki-kun,” says Himawari. Then, after a brief pause, “Shizuka.”
It’s the first time she’s ever addressed him by his first name, and without an honorific. He digests the change, and the tone of her voice.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
There is a humorless laugh on the other end of the line.
“Of course,” she says, and he knows she isn’t.
“Where are you?”
Another pause. “I don’t know. I stopped checking street signs an hour ago. Not too far from your temple, I think.”
“You’re in Tokyo?” She is supposed to be hours away in Fukushima, where she attends university. Something is very wrong.
“Yes.”
He is already putting on a coat. “It’s going to rain,” he says.
“I know.”
She is far too quiet, the reply too dull. He is alarmed, but says nothing and grabs an umbrella and a sweatshirt, tucking both under his arm. He pads down the hallway to the front entrance, slipping on his shoes in economic movements. Sixty seconds have passed, and he is out the door.
* * *
He makes sure she doesn’t hang up while he searches for her. They don’t speak unless they must: he asking for directions, she giving vague landmarks. Half an hour passes, and he is about two miles from the temple when he finds her sitting on the swings in a small neighborhood park. By this time the air has cooled and the sky has darkened to dusk-black. Her hair is unbound, whipping across her face in the gusts of wind. She doesn’t end the phone call until he is standing in front of her, and even then she won’t meet his eyes.
Without a word he holds out the sweatshirt. She tugs it over her head, struggling to pull the heavy mass of her hair out from beneath the hood. The sleeves are too long, but she slides them up until her hands are free of the cuffs, and then links her fingers together in her lap.
“Why did you come?” she asks, eyes fixed on the ground.
He shrugs. “Why did you call?”
She doesn’t answer. Thunder rumbles low in the distance: a warning. He looks up at the thick gray clouds as the first drops of rain begin to fall. He offers the umbrella. “Take it,” he says.
She looks up then. The green of her eyes flickers with secrets and shadows.
“Let it rain,” she says. “There’s no point trying to stop it.”
He lowers his hand.
* * *
When they reach the temple they are both soaked to the skin. Himawari’s hair is a bedraggled mess and the borrowed sweatshirt sags from her small frame. Shizuka lends her a yukata that is too big, but will at least be sufficient coverage. He lets her have the bedroom while he changes in the bathroom. His mother, he discovers on a quick search of the house, has gone to visit a friend, and will probably not return until late tonight when the storm has passed. It is up to him to make dinner.
He has begun to try staying away from the shop for short periods of time. The last few months have been a slow process of adjustment. Watanuki doesn’t seem to notice his sudden absences, or if he does, he doesn’t comment. Perhaps he doesn’t care. At any rate, the separation has made it necessary for Shizuka to start making himself small meals. He only eats as much as he needs to, regardless of how hungry he is; no matter what he makes, the taste is bitter and bland and pales in comparison to the food he receives at the shop. It is edible, though not enjoyable.
Himawari, when she emerges from his room in the yukata, smiles at the sight of him in an apron. She hesitates, then offers to help him.
He thinks about it. They are inside the temple grounds, which might be enough to counteract her curse. He hasn’t eaten anyone’s food but Watanuki’s - and his own - in so long that he is, to be honest, curious what he will discover about her, and whether it is anything he doesn’t already know.
In the end, he nods and motions to another apron. At the very least, whatever she makes should taste better than his attempts.
* * *
Dinner leaves him deep in thought. She insists on cleaning the dishes herself, so he has plenty of time to indulge in speculation.
The food tasted...odd. It wasn’t bad, but it had a strange tang to it, and an aftertaste. He has never eaten anything like it, even though the meal they prepared together is a simple dish that they’ve both had before, when Watanuki brought them lunches at school.
He pauses, frowns. Perhaps it is because it was not Watanuki, but the two of them who cooked it? Or pehaps it is because they made the meal together that the taste was so different. For whatever reason, things have changed. He and Himawari do not have the luxury of stopped time, so they will have to change too.
* * *
“I should go,” she says, sometime later. The heavy rain is now accompanied by occasional rolls of thunder, momentary flashes of lightning. They are sitting at the low kotatsu in the small dining area with cups of green tea. She’d made them, and he is surprised to taste a hint of sweetness. It isn’t the tang from dinner, but something new, different.
He sips, considers. “No,” he says at last after a boom of thunder that reverberates in the echoing silence surrounding them. “You shouldn’t.”
A faint smile curves her lips. “You worry too much.”
That wouldn’t happen, he thinks, if his friends wouldn’t risk so much. “You can stay here.”
The smile fades into a frown. “Won’t your mother be…uncomfortable?”
“It will be all right,” he says, and hopes it’s the truth.
* * *
He sets up a futon for her in the spare room, offers her another yukata to change into for bed. She refuses with a polite shake of her head, and they bid each other goodnight in the same careful, courteous way.
He can’t sleep, just lies in his bed listening to the storm building, listening to the silence between the wind and the rain.
Himawari is too thin, he thinks, closing his eyes. Too tired, too quiet. The cheerful, smiling girl of his youth is lost to the gentle trickle of time, and those green eyes are full of shadows now. She hadn’t addressed him by name at all since that single instance over the phone. He wonders if she’s been alone all this time, since she moved away. He can’t protect her there, and she has no one else. She must keep her distance from the rest of the world, and he thinks the loneliness of it must be devastating. He doesn’t wonder why she isn’t in Fukushima right now, doesn’t wonder why she chose to come back to Tokyo without warning, doesn’t pretend confusion as to why she’s here in his temple. He only marvels that she waited this long to return.
A knock on his door makes him blink his eyes open. His mother, he thinks, back from her visit.
“Come in.”
But it is Himawari who pushes open the door and looks at him with those tired eyes, shadowed and secretive and sad.
“I don’t like storms,” she says. He almost can’t hear her over the rain scrabbling at the window like tiny clawed hands searching for an entry.
He sits up, unsure. She stands in the doorway, her hands linked together, her eyes averted. Lightning teases the sky, chased by thunder.
“I always feel,” she says, on a hitched breath, “so small, in the middle of all the chaos.”
He doesn’t stop to think about it. He doesn’t question it, or her. He just slides over, looks up.
“Himawari,” he says.
She hesitates for a bare moment - thinking, always thinking about that distance - before crossing the room to him.
* * *
The storm is gone in the morning, and so is she. The yukata she’d borrowed is gone, too, and he thinks that’s a sign. Of what, he isn’t sure, but he can be patient.
He sips at his tea - he’d made it this time, and that sweetness is gone, but he thinks some of the bitterness might be, too.
His mother makes her way into the kitchen with a curious glance around.
“Good morning,” she murmurs, and he returns the greeting as she sits at the table and pours herself a cup of tea. The silence between them carries a light tension, and he waits.
“Shizuka,” says his mother at last. He hears the anxiety in her voice. “You - you had a girl in your bed last night.”
“Yes,” he says, because his mother doesn’t miss much, and because there is no point in denial. It’s the truth, after all, and it is probably best to prepare his mother for the future and the likelihood of Himawari’s return.
She will come back, he knows.
“It isn’t proper,” his mother insists. “This is a temple, for one thing. Such...behavior is inappropriate.”
He thinks Himawari’s behavior was very appropriate, given the circumstances. Where else could she seek refuge if not in a temple? But he knows his mother will not understand, so he says nothing.
“I realize you’re a young man,” his mother continues, and he sees right away where the conversation is going.
“We’re friends,” he tells her, more to stave off the rest of her sentence than to reassure her. “She needed me.” He realizes it’s not much of an explanation - is really more of a complication, at that - but it’s the simplest truth he can tell.
“I see.” She doesn’t, but she is willing to trust him, and he appreciates that. “In that case, please let me know if you plan to have…friends over.”
Shizuka regards his mother with a searching look.
“All right.” He is resigned now to her assumptions, harmless as they are, and finishes his tea in a single swallow.
“Is she a nice girl?” his mother wants to know.
“Yes.”
“Does she work?”
“She’s a university student.”
“Ah,” says his mother, her tone one of enlightenment. “A classmate of yours?”
“No,” Shizuka says. “Her school is in Fukushima.”
“That’s quite a distance,” she observes, a furrow in her brow. “Did you go to high school with her?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” she says again. Another short pause before she switches tactics. “Does she come from a good family?”
He doesn’t sigh. Wants to, but doesn’t. “I’ve never met them.”
“Hmm.” Undaunted, his mother eyes him with a new light in her eyes. The worry of only a few moments ago has vanished, replaced by calculation and interest. “A good student, I hope?”
“Yes.”
“Is she very pretty?”
His mother isn’t a subtle woman. “I suppose.”
“It would be nice to have another woman around the house.”
Shizuka gives up and makes a noncommittal noise.
“And from what I can tell, the two of you are very...close.”
For a moment the words throw him back, years into the past when things were simpler - if such a term could apply - and there weren’t so many questions as now.
“We are,” he says after a pause.
His mother hesitates too.
“Shizuka,” she says. “I worry about you. You never seem interested in anything besides your studies and the temple. I wouldn’t mind if you had a - a friend come over once in a while, if it makes you happy.”
The slight irritation fades. He looks at her and sees the lines on her face, the gray at her temples.
“I’ll ask her to dinner tonight,” he says.
“Good.” She smiles at him. He turns to go. “Shizuka.”
He stops, turns back.
“Some girls balk at the idea of marrying into a temple family.”
Not a subtle woman.
“Himawari won’t,” he says.
It’s the truth, after all, and it’s probably best to prepare himself for the future.
So. I'm not a HUGE Lady Antebellum fan, but I enjoy a couple of their songs. "I Run to You" got me thinking about Shizuka, and after that I sort of blinked and this thing was staring back at me from my laptop. I've got REAL WORK to do, dammit. Why does fandom rear its head at the worst possible times?
Ah well. If I tell you this fic is rated absolutely G, will you believe me?
Title: Precipitation
Characters: Shizuka, Himawari
Spoilers: Well, I mean, yeah. Subtle ones. Mostly this is speculation.
Summary: The first time they sleep together, it is raining.
The first time they sleep together, it is raining.
* * *
Shizuka opens his window for a moment to feel the soft rush of wind on his face. The trees outside rustle with the promise of a summer storm; the air has that pressure like a breath held too long, waiting to be released.
His cell phone rings. He glances at the name on the display and answers it before the second ring.
“Hello.”
“Doumeki-kun,” says Himawari. Then, after a brief pause, “Shizuka.”
It’s the first time she’s ever addressed him by his first name, and without an honorific. He digests the change, and the tone of her voice.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
There is a humorless laugh on the other end of the line.
“Of course,” she says, and he knows she isn’t.
“Where are you?”
Another pause. “I don’t know. I stopped checking street signs an hour ago. Not too far from your temple, I think.”
“You’re in Tokyo?” She is supposed to be hours away in Fukushima, where she attends university. Something is very wrong.
“Yes.”
He is already putting on a coat. “It’s going to rain,” he says.
“I know.”
She is far too quiet, the reply too dull. He is alarmed, but says nothing and grabs an umbrella and a sweatshirt, tucking both under his arm. He pads down the hallway to the front entrance, slipping on his shoes in economic movements. Sixty seconds have passed, and he is out the door.
* * *
He makes sure she doesn’t hang up while he searches for her. They don’t speak unless they must: he asking for directions, she giving vague landmarks. Half an hour passes, and he is about two miles from the temple when he finds her sitting on the swings in a small neighborhood park. By this time the air has cooled and the sky has darkened to dusk-black. Her hair is unbound, whipping across her face in the gusts of wind. She doesn’t end the phone call until he is standing in front of her, and even then she won’t meet his eyes.
Without a word he holds out the sweatshirt. She tugs it over her head, struggling to pull the heavy mass of her hair out from beneath the hood. The sleeves are too long, but she slides them up until her hands are free of the cuffs, and then links her fingers together in her lap.
“Why did you come?” she asks, eyes fixed on the ground.
He shrugs. “Why did you call?”
She doesn’t answer. Thunder rumbles low in the distance: a warning. He looks up at the thick gray clouds as the first drops of rain begin to fall. He offers the umbrella. “Take it,” he says.
She looks up then. The green of her eyes flickers with secrets and shadows.
“Let it rain,” she says. “There’s no point trying to stop it.”
He lowers his hand.
* * *
When they reach the temple they are both soaked to the skin. Himawari’s hair is a bedraggled mess and the borrowed sweatshirt sags from her small frame. Shizuka lends her a yukata that is too big, but will at least be sufficient coverage. He lets her have the bedroom while he changes in the bathroom. His mother, he discovers on a quick search of the house, has gone to visit a friend, and will probably not return until late tonight when the storm has passed. It is up to him to make dinner.
He has begun to try staying away from the shop for short periods of time. The last few months have been a slow process of adjustment. Watanuki doesn’t seem to notice his sudden absences, or if he does, he doesn’t comment. Perhaps he doesn’t care. At any rate, the separation has made it necessary for Shizuka to start making himself small meals. He only eats as much as he needs to, regardless of how hungry he is; no matter what he makes, the taste is bitter and bland and pales in comparison to the food he receives at the shop. It is edible, though not enjoyable.
Himawari, when she emerges from his room in the yukata, smiles at the sight of him in an apron. She hesitates, then offers to help him.
He thinks about it. They are inside the temple grounds, which might be enough to counteract her curse. He hasn’t eaten anyone’s food but Watanuki’s - and his own - in so long that he is, to be honest, curious what he will discover about her, and whether it is anything he doesn’t already know.
In the end, he nods and motions to another apron. At the very least, whatever she makes should taste better than his attempts.
* * *
Dinner leaves him deep in thought. She insists on cleaning the dishes herself, so he has plenty of time to indulge in speculation.
The food tasted...odd. It wasn’t bad, but it had a strange tang to it, and an aftertaste. He has never eaten anything like it, even though the meal they prepared together is a simple dish that they’ve both had before, when Watanuki brought them lunches at school.
He pauses, frowns. Perhaps it is because it was not Watanuki, but the two of them who cooked it? Or pehaps it is because they made the meal together that the taste was so different. For whatever reason, things have changed. He and Himawari do not have the luxury of stopped time, so they will have to change too.
* * *
“I should go,” she says, sometime later. The heavy rain is now accompanied by occasional rolls of thunder, momentary flashes of lightning. They are sitting at the low kotatsu in the small dining area with cups of green tea. She’d made them, and he is surprised to taste a hint of sweetness. It isn’t the tang from dinner, but something new, different.
He sips, considers. “No,” he says at last after a boom of thunder that reverberates in the echoing silence surrounding them. “You shouldn’t.”
A faint smile curves her lips. “You worry too much.”
That wouldn’t happen, he thinks, if his friends wouldn’t risk so much. “You can stay here.”
The smile fades into a frown. “Won’t your mother be…uncomfortable?”
“It will be all right,” he says, and hopes it’s the truth.
* * *
He sets up a futon for her in the spare room, offers her another yukata to change into for bed. She refuses with a polite shake of her head, and they bid each other goodnight in the same careful, courteous way.
He can’t sleep, just lies in his bed listening to the storm building, listening to the silence between the wind and the rain.
Himawari is too thin, he thinks, closing his eyes. Too tired, too quiet. The cheerful, smiling girl of his youth is lost to the gentle trickle of time, and those green eyes are full of shadows now. She hadn’t addressed him by name at all since that single instance over the phone. He wonders if she’s been alone all this time, since she moved away. He can’t protect her there, and she has no one else. She must keep her distance from the rest of the world, and he thinks the loneliness of it must be devastating. He doesn’t wonder why she isn’t in Fukushima right now, doesn’t wonder why she chose to come back to Tokyo without warning, doesn’t pretend confusion as to why she’s here in his temple. He only marvels that she waited this long to return.
A knock on his door makes him blink his eyes open. His mother, he thinks, back from her visit.
“Come in.”
But it is Himawari who pushes open the door and looks at him with those tired eyes, shadowed and secretive and sad.
“I don’t like storms,” she says. He almost can’t hear her over the rain scrabbling at the window like tiny clawed hands searching for an entry.
He sits up, unsure. She stands in the doorway, her hands linked together, her eyes averted. Lightning teases the sky, chased by thunder.
“I always feel,” she says, on a hitched breath, “so small, in the middle of all the chaos.”
He doesn’t stop to think about it. He doesn’t question it, or her. He just slides over, looks up.
“Himawari,” he says.
She hesitates for a bare moment - thinking, always thinking about that distance - before crossing the room to him.
* * *
The storm is gone in the morning, and so is she. The yukata she’d borrowed is gone, too, and he thinks that’s a sign. Of what, he isn’t sure, but he can be patient.
He sips at his tea - he’d made it this time, and that sweetness is gone, but he thinks some of the bitterness might be, too.
His mother makes her way into the kitchen with a curious glance around.
“Good morning,” she murmurs, and he returns the greeting as she sits at the table and pours herself a cup of tea. The silence between them carries a light tension, and he waits.
“Shizuka,” says his mother at last. He hears the anxiety in her voice. “You - you had a girl in your bed last night.”
“Yes,” he says, because his mother doesn’t miss much, and because there is no point in denial. It’s the truth, after all, and it is probably best to prepare his mother for the future and the likelihood of Himawari’s return.
She will come back, he knows.
“It isn’t proper,” his mother insists. “This is a temple, for one thing. Such...behavior is inappropriate.”
He thinks Himawari’s behavior was very appropriate, given the circumstances. Where else could she seek refuge if not in a temple? But he knows his mother will not understand, so he says nothing.
“I realize you’re a young man,” his mother continues, and he sees right away where the conversation is going.
“We’re friends,” he tells her, more to stave off the rest of her sentence than to reassure her. “She needed me.” He realizes it’s not much of an explanation - is really more of a complication, at that - but it’s the simplest truth he can tell.
“I see.” She doesn’t, but she is willing to trust him, and he appreciates that. “In that case, please let me know if you plan to have…friends over.”
Shizuka regards his mother with a searching look.
“All right.” He is resigned now to her assumptions, harmless as they are, and finishes his tea in a single swallow.
“Is she a nice girl?” his mother wants to know.
“Yes.”
“Does she work?”
“She’s a university student.”
“Ah,” says his mother, her tone one of enlightenment. “A classmate of yours?”
“No,” Shizuka says. “Her school is in Fukushima.”
“That’s quite a distance,” she observes, a furrow in her brow. “Did you go to high school with her?”
“Yes.”
“I see,” she says again. Another short pause before she switches tactics. “Does she come from a good family?”
He doesn’t sigh. Wants to, but doesn’t. “I’ve never met them.”
“Hmm.” Undaunted, his mother eyes him with a new light in her eyes. The worry of only a few moments ago has vanished, replaced by calculation and interest. “A good student, I hope?”
“Yes.”
“Is she very pretty?”
His mother isn’t a subtle woman. “I suppose.”
“It would be nice to have another woman around the house.”
Shizuka gives up and makes a noncommittal noise.
“And from what I can tell, the two of you are very...close.”
For a moment the words throw him back, years into the past when things were simpler - if such a term could apply - and there weren’t so many questions as now.
“We are,” he says after a pause.
His mother hesitates too.
“Shizuka,” she says. “I worry about you. You never seem interested in anything besides your studies and the temple. I wouldn’t mind if you had a - a friend come over once in a while, if it makes you happy.”
The slight irritation fades. He looks at her and sees the lines on her face, the gray at her temples.
“I’ll ask her to dinner tonight,” he says.
“Good.” She smiles at him. He turns to go. “Shizuka.”
He stops, turns back.
“Some girls balk at the idea of marrying into a temple family.”
Not a subtle woman.
“Himawari won’t,” he says.
It’s the truth, after all, and it’s probably best to prepare himself for the future.