To Enki, from Dev Chieftain ♥
Title: Hands
Author: Dev_chieftain
Recipient: Enki (ldydragon7)
Series: Tsubasa
Characters: Sakura/Syaoran, Kurogane, Fai and Mokona also make appearances
Rating: PG-13 / R
Author Notes/Warnings: Hints of later events of comic than requested time era (pre-Tokyo) in final part.
Beta’d by: ”jennmenchi” and ”know_your_story”
Wrist
She’d known for a long time that Fai-san had a drinking problem. Unlike the people around her, who were busy and awake and active all the time, she, like Mokona, had endless hours behind her by now of watching and waiting, observing and reconstructing, and Fai-san spent more time with her than Syaoran or Kurogane-san did, so she knew him very well. It wasn’t that he got drunk, so much, because even when he did, it didn’t seem to last very long and he was quick to walk it off as best he could. It wasn’t that he acted weird about it, because the liquor was so much a part of their lives that it would have seemed stranger to her if he’d suddenly tried to abstain. Just something about the way he held himself-a hand that scratched his cheek, that rubbed his neck, a nervous twitch of touching his face and shoulders as if to make sure he was still there-when he was about to drink that told her.
Anything would do when it came to Fai-san’s drinking; he liked the clearer options, the vodka and something called ‘tequila’, because they mixed well with other things, were easily camouflaged so if the question ever arose, he could seem to be drinking less heavily than he was. He liked sweet things, or so it seemed, and he always wrapped his hands around his glass no matter the shape and squeezed, as though he drew warmth and comfort from within those smooth containers.
His behavior intrigued her ever more deeply the more she paid attention to it; the way he would spin a glass slowly with just forefinger and thumb on its mouth, watching the liquid spin inside with a distracted, tiny smile; the way he stroked the stems of wineglasses thoughtlessly, and often failed to notice Kurogane-san watching him, just as Kurogane-san failed to notice her watching Kurogane-san watch him; there was a certain method to his pouring of any given liquor that involved running his hands all along the bottle like a blind man learning to see before he opened it, supporting it gently as he poured it, and wiping off the mouth of the bottle with his forefinger, all the way up to the third knuckle, to be sure it didn’t dribble when he was done. This last often led to him nursing his hand momentarily to lick up what was spilled, another habit that attracted attention he seemed completely oblivious to. Had she not watched him so often and learned him so well, Sakura would have thought Fai-san was trying to tease Kurogane-san, for he so successfully attracted attention whenever and whatever he did.
He wasn’t, though; she could see that as clear as day. There was something between the two of them that had been growing slowly from the moment they met (or the moment she first really remembered seeing them, or anything), and it was innocent and new in the same way that her feelings for Syaoran were new. Something like friendship, but stronger, subtly. Had anyone asked her, she would have said simply that either man would willingly die for the other; but with Fai-san and Kurogane-san, that wasn’t exactly saying much. Pressed further, she would have had little answer except to say that they had probably each never met anyone like the other, and they were learning how to deal with it. Of course, no one ever really asked Sakura such questions, and though she was a very thoughtful girl who often had an excess of time to do her thinking, she was content with keeping those thoughts to herself.
Regardless of her thoughts about the developing friendship between Fai-san and Kurogane-san, and her awareness of the drinking problem of the former, she was unable to quantify how things changed when they arrived in Piffle country. Suffice it to say that things were definitely different between them than they had been before the group had been split apart; six months of interaction had occurred without her presence as an observer, and things were new in some ways and older in others. Fai-san still had a drinking problem, Kurogane-san still watched when Fai-san wasn’t looking, and they both seemed more tired than either was willing to admit.
This was why, when they purchased the home in which the five of them would be staying for the next however long, whilst they set about building vehicles for the dragonfly race, she said nothing against their nightly forays out into the streets of Piffle. Instead, she clasped her hands together, and when Fai-san asked if everything was all right, she laid them over his (rougher but still smooth compared to Kurogane-san’s or Syaoran’s, long-fingered and mysteriously pale even against her own skin) and asked him to just please be safe while he was out, and smiled at him.
“…you’ll make me fret I’ve done something to offend your highness if you smile like that, Sakura-chan,” he said with an effort at a facetious laugh, looking at her as intently as if she were a puzzle almost solved, concern showing behind his brilliant blue eyes. “We will be safe, I promise.”
“I know.” She smiled again, and shrugged very slightly, reaching up to adjust her hat-according to one of the salesladies, it was called a beret. “But you were gone a while, so I just don’t want us to all be separated again.” That hit a nerve, for he did the ritualistic scratching of the back of his neck that she associated with him drinking for hours on end, and she knew she had discerned the true purpose of their excursion even before he admitted it aloud.
“We’re not going to be going very far, Sakura-chan, just to ask around for parts and have a little drink or two,” he told her, smiling as reassuringly as one can smile when one is himself not particularly assured. It must have been very odd, she thought, to be in a land where he could not speak the native language and had been forced to remain silent for such a long time. Especially for Fai-san, who often did nothing but talk if the opportunity presented itself.
Still, she let him go at that, waving him away. “Then hurry! We need parts, and there’s only a month before the race anymore!”
This broke the slight gloom that had collected about him at the memory of being parted from their group (she assumed that it was gloom), and he took his leave of her with a joking comment about his dubious skills as a technician as he searched out Kurogane-san to be on their way.
What was interesting to her, though, over everything else was the way in which Fai-san laid his hands on Kurogane-san. One on his back between his shoulder-blades, one on his arm; and then with a flurry of motion, holding hands with him for a moment in midst of a loud and silly squeal as he pretended to take offense at some muttered words of irritation from his companion. Like he touched the wine bottles, or himself to make sure he was there when he needed to drink, Fai-san ran his hands all along Kurogane-san’s arms and chest and face and back and hands, flighty and curious as a sparrow.
This was new. She wondered if it meant that Fai-san had come to depend on the other man, or to accept him. Perhaps more important, she wondered what it meant that Kurogane-san simply accepted this invasion of his personal privacy with a stoic expression and something almost like fondness behind the façade of reticent resignation he wore like a shield against the world. They had become better friends in six months, that was no surprise; but there was something else, too.
For a moment, they had held hands.
For a moment, she had seen them clearly: confidants, the most deeply trusted person for either of them.
Palm
They walk out, and Fai is still strangely quieter than he was before all this, even though he’s talking a mile a minute in hushed tones about everything that comes into his mind, even if he can’t stop touching Kurogane as if to be certain he’s really still there. His hands are gesturing wildly one second and then poking Kurogane’s cheek the next as Fai says ‘haa, but you’d know about that, wouldn’t you? Of course you would, sly Kuro-sama!’ and launches off into yet another story about nothing of particular importance.
Sakura was watching them as they left, and said something to the magician that made him falter and think for a second or two. Observant and kind, that’s what the girl is. Kurogane’s glad to see her again, glad to see the kid again; glad to hear sense coming out of the magician’s mouth again. The nightly ritual hasn’t changed, because the previous evening saw him pressing his ear to the wall while Fai talked endlessly into the one next to his in low mutters, his voice rising and falling with emotion almost painfully. He laid his hands on that smooth, cool surface and grunted now and again-too softly to be made out as words, but “it’s all right”-just as he had for the last six months. That this is the same makes him feel a little less shaken by the world, and the change in the world. He thinks this might be true for the magician as well, for they are both striving to maintain the act that everything is completely unchanged from before.
He wants to scowl at the kid for not getting in six months worth of practice while he was gone, but can’t really blame Syaoran for not being forced to kick his legs and wait around and hope he wasn’t going to be stuck somewhere foreign for the rest of his life. He might blame the manjuu bun, except that would feel kind of silly and he’s pretty sure it would be sad if he did.
When they get where they’re going, it’s literally the closest possible bar to their home. Within walking distance, because they felt like walking and besides, the magician doesn’t like the way Kurogane drives. At their meandering pace, they reach their destination after the completion of three of Fai’s vivid stories. The magician is still talking and gesturing and making the air seem thicker where his fingertips trail somehow when Kurogane signals with two fingers for two drinks, and specifies that he wants the hardest liquor available.
“And then they made me their chief. By the way, your hair is on fire,” the magician says coyly, which fails to elicit a rise out of him but does earn a raised eyebrow and stern look as they’re served a shot each of something that looks potently amber.
Knocking back his drink before deigning to respond, Kurogane says in a wry undertone, “You’d make a really lousy chief, are you sure they weren’t drunk?”
Which, naturally, does exactly what it’s supposed to: Fai starts laughing. Kurogane has learned that a certain combination of veiled threat, seeming irritation and stoic silence has that effect of the other man-perhaps because it is clearly all show, or perhaps because at some time in the past it wasn’t and it’s a preconditioned response in the other man. They might not understand each other perfectly, but Kurogane can tolerate the guy with his magic-seeming hands, the palms with their bold lifelines (very long) and his oddly clear, swirling fingerpads. Sometimes his skin seems sallow and empty around his hands, as though he’s used them too much before and the result is a lingering sort of death in the skin and muscle there; others, it seems to hold all the light around the room, making Fai’s hands the clearest thing Kurogane can see.
“For your information, they were only drinking carrot juice. I mean, what would a rabbit-person get drunk on, anyway? That was why they taught me the dance. I think maybe they didn’t even know what a chief was, they just liked the word when I asked who their chief was so they told me I could be.” Here the magician smiled and winked and in general made it seem like he was sharing a great, vastly important secret. “I like the idea of being in charge, you know, I could order people to dance and sing and be happy and peaceful all of the time that way and life would just be an enormous wonderful party.”
Somehow Kurogane gets the odd feeling that people would follow this guy’s lead, if he were a leader; he shakes it off, and signals for a second round only to be cut off by the magician’s warm left hand. The skin is dry against even his own, as though there is some activity that has been drying them out and making them rough and almost cracked which Kurogane doesn’t know about. Perhaps working as a mechanic is not as easy for the magician as he makes it seem; or perhaps he hasn’t noticed.
“Let’s get something different,” Fai says brightly, and points at random to a vaguely wine-glass seeming drink that someone else is having up the bar. “Two of those, please!” he requests, handing over some of their credits without hesitation. Kurogane eyes the result when it arrives with mistrust-it’s almost neon green, he hardly has any reason to trust it-and tries it with trepidation.
He’s pleasantly surprised, as is the magician, who whoops when he’s set his drink down (after drinking half of it, and he shouldn’t pretend Kurogane doesn’t notice, but since he is Kurogane plans to leave it up to him to keep pretending until they’re home again, where he will either confront the other man about it or let the matter drop without further hesitation) and reaches up to wipe the salt that has crusted on his upper lip away from it.
Kurogane just licks his lips and watches, as the magician examines the salt on his skin and, hissing suddenly as if registering pain, sucks it away.
“Mm?”
“Skin’s cracked,” Fai explains around his knuckle, letting the hand go and pouting at it, shaking it out. “A little chapped too, probably. Doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure.”
“Any particular reason why they’re chapped?”
The magician shrugs, and grows more silent, and Kurogane drops it because he’s actually gotten fairly tired of the silence between them-the non-understanding, as well as the lack of words. Six months was just too long a time to be isolated as they were and not grow a little tired of such things, even if at the beginning of it all he’d thought it might be nice to have a little bit of quiet.
“The drink is good,” he comments, to get the magician talking again, and he’s judged right: it sets Fai off on a long and seemingly thoughtful evaluation of the drink-Margarita, it’s called-and its parts. One thing Kurogane has learned in the last several months is how to judge the other man’s mood based on his expression; talkative is how Kurogane would peg it, just now. Talkative works for Kurogane, because while the other man has had no one to talk to, Kurogane has been the subject of endless questioning and curiosity by those who knew he could answer for too many months now, and he is happy to just listen and be expected only to contribute by a grunt here or there at the appropriate moments.
He notices the magician rubbing his thumb along the now clean lip of his glass in a lull, and watches the way that almost translucent skin catches on the glass, rough and torn as it is.
“You know,” Fai says softly, because the bar is very busy now and they are leaning close to hear each other, so no one else can bother them. “I would have thought it would be more difficult to avoid using my magic than it has been so far.”
Kurogane doesn’t answer, but continues watching as Fai traces out a rune on the outside of his glass.
“I thought I would worry too much all of the time, and want to help everyone and feel powerless without magic. But here I am, and most of the time everyone is able to help themselves just fine, and even without my magic, I’m doing all right. I don’t have to use it to help; there’s no reason. Everybody does fine on their own.” He’s smiling fondly, as though this truth is a secret treasure, a surprise that he had not expected but is extremely glad to have received. “I don’t need it.”
Kurogane tries a gesture that he’s seen others do so often throughout the worlds that he imagines it can’t possibly be misconstrued. He puts his hand on the other man’s shoulder, and when Fai looks at him, he nods.
He wants to say a lot; mostly ‘you’re doing good’ and ‘yeah, we like you all right’. But he tries to just say it with the hand on the magician’s shoulder and the inclination of his head, and hopes that actions speak louder than words because, cowardly though it is, he’s not sure he could actually just say that out loud.
There’s a quirk at the corner of the other man’s lips, and Fai lays his right hand over Kurogane’s hand on his shoulder.
That means, as best as Kurogane can tell, Thanks.
Fingertips
She is watching where they’ve gone as He watches her through his eyes. And He is not he but they both covet her for different reasons, as she wraps her hands together and says brave things and offers to make tea. Mokona accepts, as does he, and He can’t smell or taste, only see, but he sees the cup that she pours for him, the reddish-brown tea (it has a funny name that Sakura can’t pronounce) and the smile that comes with it and He can only imagine how good it must taste, because she made it for them with her own two hands.
They are all waiting, both for the men to come back and for the night to come, because at night they will be doing shopping. They play games. She draws outside, a series of chalk squares that she was taught to draw by the girls back in Shara country before they altered the course of time itself; then she hops along the squares, and he watches slack-jawed, and He thinks: how beautiful she is.
While he does nothing, she encourages him to join her and he blushes, embarrassed, telling her he doesn’t know the rules and she must explain them first while Mokona dances from square to square, ignoring them and their young love. She reaches out, and seems to want to touch him, though he shies away and blushes before her hand ever makes contact with his skin.
While they do this, He speaks across time and space and through innumerable barriers, trying to pull him in with just His will alone. See what she is, this girl that you covet? She is beautiful and kind. She is something you covet, you alone.
It is difficult to speak to him, but He is stubborn. Let that be yours. That drive. That love. That heart. Grow. Change. Is she not beautiful? Is she not kind? Any man worth his while would love a girl like that. See how determined she is not only to help you, but to help herself? Do you not love her? Do you love her? Do you?
He will continue speaking to him until they cannot hear each other anymore.
And he answers, only vaguely, half-conscious even of his own existence, Yes. …of course I love her.
That doesn’t come from Him.
He knows it doesn’t.
Author: Dev_chieftain
Recipient: Enki (ldydragon7)
Series: Tsubasa
Characters: Sakura/Syaoran, Kurogane, Fai and Mokona also make appearances
Rating: PG-13 / R
Author Notes/Warnings: Hints of later events of comic than requested time era (pre-Tokyo) in final part.
Beta’d by: ”jennmenchi” and ”know_your_story”
Wrist
She’d known for a long time that Fai-san had a drinking problem. Unlike the people around her, who were busy and awake and active all the time, she, like Mokona, had endless hours behind her by now of watching and waiting, observing and reconstructing, and Fai-san spent more time with her than Syaoran or Kurogane-san did, so she knew him very well. It wasn’t that he got drunk, so much, because even when he did, it didn’t seem to last very long and he was quick to walk it off as best he could. It wasn’t that he acted weird about it, because the liquor was so much a part of their lives that it would have seemed stranger to her if he’d suddenly tried to abstain. Just something about the way he held himself-a hand that scratched his cheek, that rubbed his neck, a nervous twitch of touching his face and shoulders as if to make sure he was still there-when he was about to drink that told her.
Anything would do when it came to Fai-san’s drinking; he liked the clearer options, the vodka and something called ‘tequila’, because they mixed well with other things, were easily camouflaged so if the question ever arose, he could seem to be drinking less heavily than he was. He liked sweet things, or so it seemed, and he always wrapped his hands around his glass no matter the shape and squeezed, as though he drew warmth and comfort from within those smooth containers.
His behavior intrigued her ever more deeply the more she paid attention to it; the way he would spin a glass slowly with just forefinger and thumb on its mouth, watching the liquid spin inside with a distracted, tiny smile; the way he stroked the stems of wineglasses thoughtlessly, and often failed to notice Kurogane-san watching him, just as Kurogane-san failed to notice her watching Kurogane-san watch him; there was a certain method to his pouring of any given liquor that involved running his hands all along the bottle like a blind man learning to see before he opened it, supporting it gently as he poured it, and wiping off the mouth of the bottle with his forefinger, all the way up to the third knuckle, to be sure it didn’t dribble when he was done. This last often led to him nursing his hand momentarily to lick up what was spilled, another habit that attracted attention he seemed completely oblivious to. Had she not watched him so often and learned him so well, Sakura would have thought Fai-san was trying to tease Kurogane-san, for he so successfully attracted attention whenever and whatever he did.
He wasn’t, though; she could see that as clear as day. There was something between the two of them that had been growing slowly from the moment they met (or the moment she first really remembered seeing them, or anything), and it was innocent and new in the same way that her feelings for Syaoran were new. Something like friendship, but stronger, subtly. Had anyone asked her, she would have said simply that either man would willingly die for the other; but with Fai-san and Kurogane-san, that wasn’t exactly saying much. Pressed further, she would have had little answer except to say that they had probably each never met anyone like the other, and they were learning how to deal with it. Of course, no one ever really asked Sakura such questions, and though she was a very thoughtful girl who often had an excess of time to do her thinking, she was content with keeping those thoughts to herself.
Regardless of her thoughts about the developing friendship between Fai-san and Kurogane-san, and her awareness of the drinking problem of the former, she was unable to quantify how things changed when they arrived in Piffle country. Suffice it to say that things were definitely different between them than they had been before the group had been split apart; six months of interaction had occurred without her presence as an observer, and things were new in some ways and older in others. Fai-san still had a drinking problem, Kurogane-san still watched when Fai-san wasn’t looking, and they both seemed more tired than either was willing to admit.
This was why, when they purchased the home in which the five of them would be staying for the next however long, whilst they set about building vehicles for the dragonfly race, she said nothing against their nightly forays out into the streets of Piffle. Instead, she clasped her hands together, and when Fai-san asked if everything was all right, she laid them over his (rougher but still smooth compared to Kurogane-san’s or Syaoran’s, long-fingered and mysteriously pale even against her own skin) and asked him to just please be safe while he was out, and smiled at him.
“…you’ll make me fret I’ve done something to offend your highness if you smile like that, Sakura-chan,” he said with an effort at a facetious laugh, looking at her as intently as if she were a puzzle almost solved, concern showing behind his brilliant blue eyes. “We will be safe, I promise.”
“I know.” She smiled again, and shrugged very slightly, reaching up to adjust her hat-according to one of the salesladies, it was called a beret. “But you were gone a while, so I just don’t want us to all be separated again.” That hit a nerve, for he did the ritualistic scratching of the back of his neck that she associated with him drinking for hours on end, and she knew she had discerned the true purpose of their excursion even before he admitted it aloud.
“We’re not going to be going very far, Sakura-chan, just to ask around for parts and have a little drink or two,” he told her, smiling as reassuringly as one can smile when one is himself not particularly assured. It must have been very odd, she thought, to be in a land where he could not speak the native language and had been forced to remain silent for such a long time. Especially for Fai-san, who often did nothing but talk if the opportunity presented itself.
Still, she let him go at that, waving him away. “Then hurry! We need parts, and there’s only a month before the race anymore!”
This broke the slight gloom that had collected about him at the memory of being parted from their group (she assumed that it was gloom), and he took his leave of her with a joking comment about his dubious skills as a technician as he searched out Kurogane-san to be on their way.
What was interesting to her, though, over everything else was the way in which Fai-san laid his hands on Kurogane-san. One on his back between his shoulder-blades, one on his arm; and then with a flurry of motion, holding hands with him for a moment in midst of a loud and silly squeal as he pretended to take offense at some muttered words of irritation from his companion. Like he touched the wine bottles, or himself to make sure he was there when he needed to drink, Fai-san ran his hands all along Kurogane-san’s arms and chest and face and back and hands, flighty and curious as a sparrow.
This was new. She wondered if it meant that Fai-san had come to depend on the other man, or to accept him. Perhaps more important, she wondered what it meant that Kurogane-san simply accepted this invasion of his personal privacy with a stoic expression and something almost like fondness behind the façade of reticent resignation he wore like a shield against the world. They had become better friends in six months, that was no surprise; but there was something else, too.
For a moment, they had held hands.
For a moment, she had seen them clearly: confidants, the most deeply trusted person for either of them.
Palm
They walk out, and Fai is still strangely quieter than he was before all this, even though he’s talking a mile a minute in hushed tones about everything that comes into his mind, even if he can’t stop touching Kurogane as if to be certain he’s really still there. His hands are gesturing wildly one second and then poking Kurogane’s cheek the next as Fai says ‘haa, but you’d know about that, wouldn’t you? Of course you would, sly Kuro-sama!’ and launches off into yet another story about nothing of particular importance.
Sakura was watching them as they left, and said something to the magician that made him falter and think for a second or two. Observant and kind, that’s what the girl is. Kurogane’s glad to see her again, glad to see the kid again; glad to hear sense coming out of the magician’s mouth again. The nightly ritual hasn’t changed, because the previous evening saw him pressing his ear to the wall while Fai talked endlessly into the one next to his in low mutters, his voice rising and falling with emotion almost painfully. He laid his hands on that smooth, cool surface and grunted now and again-too softly to be made out as words, but “it’s all right”-just as he had for the last six months. That this is the same makes him feel a little less shaken by the world, and the change in the world. He thinks this might be true for the magician as well, for they are both striving to maintain the act that everything is completely unchanged from before.
He wants to scowl at the kid for not getting in six months worth of practice while he was gone, but can’t really blame Syaoran for not being forced to kick his legs and wait around and hope he wasn’t going to be stuck somewhere foreign for the rest of his life. He might blame the manjuu bun, except that would feel kind of silly and he’s pretty sure it would be sad if he did.
When they get where they’re going, it’s literally the closest possible bar to their home. Within walking distance, because they felt like walking and besides, the magician doesn’t like the way Kurogane drives. At their meandering pace, they reach their destination after the completion of three of Fai’s vivid stories. The magician is still talking and gesturing and making the air seem thicker where his fingertips trail somehow when Kurogane signals with two fingers for two drinks, and specifies that he wants the hardest liquor available.
“And then they made me their chief. By the way, your hair is on fire,” the magician says coyly, which fails to elicit a rise out of him but does earn a raised eyebrow and stern look as they’re served a shot each of something that looks potently amber.
Knocking back his drink before deigning to respond, Kurogane says in a wry undertone, “You’d make a really lousy chief, are you sure they weren’t drunk?”
Which, naturally, does exactly what it’s supposed to: Fai starts laughing. Kurogane has learned that a certain combination of veiled threat, seeming irritation and stoic silence has that effect of the other man-perhaps because it is clearly all show, or perhaps because at some time in the past it wasn’t and it’s a preconditioned response in the other man. They might not understand each other perfectly, but Kurogane can tolerate the guy with his magic-seeming hands, the palms with their bold lifelines (very long) and his oddly clear, swirling fingerpads. Sometimes his skin seems sallow and empty around his hands, as though he’s used them too much before and the result is a lingering sort of death in the skin and muscle there; others, it seems to hold all the light around the room, making Fai’s hands the clearest thing Kurogane can see.
“For your information, they were only drinking carrot juice. I mean, what would a rabbit-person get drunk on, anyway? That was why they taught me the dance. I think maybe they didn’t even know what a chief was, they just liked the word when I asked who their chief was so they told me I could be.” Here the magician smiled and winked and in general made it seem like he was sharing a great, vastly important secret. “I like the idea of being in charge, you know, I could order people to dance and sing and be happy and peaceful all of the time that way and life would just be an enormous wonderful party.”
Somehow Kurogane gets the odd feeling that people would follow this guy’s lead, if he were a leader; he shakes it off, and signals for a second round only to be cut off by the magician’s warm left hand. The skin is dry against even his own, as though there is some activity that has been drying them out and making them rough and almost cracked which Kurogane doesn’t know about. Perhaps working as a mechanic is not as easy for the magician as he makes it seem; or perhaps he hasn’t noticed.
“Let’s get something different,” Fai says brightly, and points at random to a vaguely wine-glass seeming drink that someone else is having up the bar. “Two of those, please!” he requests, handing over some of their credits without hesitation. Kurogane eyes the result when it arrives with mistrust-it’s almost neon green, he hardly has any reason to trust it-and tries it with trepidation.
He’s pleasantly surprised, as is the magician, who whoops when he’s set his drink down (after drinking half of it, and he shouldn’t pretend Kurogane doesn’t notice, but since he is Kurogane plans to leave it up to him to keep pretending until they’re home again, where he will either confront the other man about it or let the matter drop without further hesitation) and reaches up to wipe the salt that has crusted on his upper lip away from it.
Kurogane just licks his lips and watches, as the magician examines the salt on his skin and, hissing suddenly as if registering pain, sucks it away.
“Mm?”
“Skin’s cracked,” Fai explains around his knuckle, letting the hand go and pouting at it, shaking it out. “A little chapped too, probably. Doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure.”
“Any particular reason why they’re chapped?”
The magician shrugs, and grows more silent, and Kurogane drops it because he’s actually gotten fairly tired of the silence between them-the non-understanding, as well as the lack of words. Six months was just too long a time to be isolated as they were and not grow a little tired of such things, even if at the beginning of it all he’d thought it might be nice to have a little bit of quiet.
“The drink is good,” he comments, to get the magician talking again, and he’s judged right: it sets Fai off on a long and seemingly thoughtful evaluation of the drink-Margarita, it’s called-and its parts. One thing Kurogane has learned in the last several months is how to judge the other man’s mood based on his expression; talkative is how Kurogane would peg it, just now. Talkative works for Kurogane, because while the other man has had no one to talk to, Kurogane has been the subject of endless questioning and curiosity by those who knew he could answer for too many months now, and he is happy to just listen and be expected only to contribute by a grunt here or there at the appropriate moments.
He notices the magician rubbing his thumb along the now clean lip of his glass in a lull, and watches the way that almost translucent skin catches on the glass, rough and torn as it is.
“You know,” Fai says softly, because the bar is very busy now and they are leaning close to hear each other, so no one else can bother them. “I would have thought it would be more difficult to avoid using my magic than it has been so far.”
Kurogane doesn’t answer, but continues watching as Fai traces out a rune on the outside of his glass.
“I thought I would worry too much all of the time, and want to help everyone and feel powerless without magic. But here I am, and most of the time everyone is able to help themselves just fine, and even without my magic, I’m doing all right. I don’t have to use it to help; there’s no reason. Everybody does fine on their own.” He’s smiling fondly, as though this truth is a secret treasure, a surprise that he had not expected but is extremely glad to have received. “I don’t need it.”
Kurogane tries a gesture that he’s seen others do so often throughout the worlds that he imagines it can’t possibly be misconstrued. He puts his hand on the other man’s shoulder, and when Fai looks at him, he nods.
He wants to say a lot; mostly ‘you’re doing good’ and ‘yeah, we like you all right’. But he tries to just say it with the hand on the magician’s shoulder and the inclination of his head, and hopes that actions speak louder than words because, cowardly though it is, he’s not sure he could actually just say that out loud.
There’s a quirk at the corner of the other man’s lips, and Fai lays his right hand over Kurogane’s hand on his shoulder.
That means, as best as Kurogane can tell, Thanks.
Fingertips
She is watching where they’ve gone as He watches her through his eyes. And He is not he but they both covet her for different reasons, as she wraps her hands together and says brave things and offers to make tea. Mokona accepts, as does he, and He can’t smell or taste, only see, but he sees the cup that she pours for him, the reddish-brown tea (it has a funny name that Sakura can’t pronounce) and the smile that comes with it and He can only imagine how good it must taste, because she made it for them with her own two hands.
They are all waiting, both for the men to come back and for the night to come, because at night they will be doing shopping. They play games. She draws outside, a series of chalk squares that she was taught to draw by the girls back in Shara country before they altered the course of time itself; then she hops along the squares, and he watches slack-jawed, and He thinks: how beautiful she is.
While he does nothing, she encourages him to join her and he blushes, embarrassed, telling her he doesn’t know the rules and she must explain them first while Mokona dances from square to square, ignoring them and their young love. She reaches out, and seems to want to touch him, though he shies away and blushes before her hand ever makes contact with his skin.
While they do this, He speaks across time and space and through innumerable barriers, trying to pull him in with just His will alone. See what she is, this girl that you covet? She is beautiful and kind. She is something you covet, you alone.
It is difficult to speak to him, but He is stubborn. Let that be yours. That drive. That love. That heart. Grow. Change. Is she not beautiful? Is she not kind? Any man worth his while would love a girl like that. See how determined she is not only to help you, but to help herself? Do you not love her? Do you love her? Do you?
He will continue speaking to him until they cannot hear each other anymore.
And he answers, only vaguely, half-conscious even of his own existence, Yes. …of course I love her.
That doesn’t come from Him.
He knows it doesn’t.