Prince of Tennis: Tezuka/Fuji, five elements: air.
Title: _liminal space (1/5)
Author: evaporate.
Theme: Elements: Air - 1.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis - Tezuka/Fuji.
Rating: overall PG-13, 275 words.
A/N: [military AU] Character death, both major and minor. This also functions as a sort of prologue, hence the utter lack of dialogue. Checked for suckage by mari_yagami, though any residual suckage is my fault.
The air is thick with the stench of death and last breaths and the dust of thousands of feet trodding on thousands of square meters of unrelenting sand, but only in Fuji's dreams.
So Fuji slips under Tezuka's covers every night and never tells him why.
He's always gone before dawn, leaving no trace of his ever being there except a Fuji-shaped dent in Tezuka's mattress and an unsettled, heavy feeling in Tezuka's chest.
*
Maybe it's the camaraderie that is borne of sharing long, sleepless, tortured nights of waiting, waiting, waiting for enemy fire, waiting to go home, waiting to get out, waiting for some unheard-of miracle to pull them out, waiting for apocalypse, waiting for companionship, torn between dreamless stupor and raging nightmares.
Maybe it's that he's been here so long, that the nerves in his taste buds have fled and he can pretend for a minute that the sweaty sheen on Fuji's skin doesn't taste so much like death and hollow spaces as it does like -- cocoa, he thinks, or maybe strawberries, never mind that he hasn't had cocoa in months or strawberries for years.
Maybe because this offers some slight reprieve from anything and everything, from the dulled look in Oishi's eyes to the way his soldiers kick wearily at the sandy, muddy stone-and-dirt floors.
But Fuji always pulls him back: If you're going to leave, he's saying, you had better take me with you.
It was always Fuji, the dreamer, Fuji, the anarchist; now it's Tezuka, the wanderer, Tezuka, the anarchist's captain.
*
From then on, Fuji leaves a dent, a cold-something in Tezuka’s heart, and if Tezuka dreams hard enough, the lingering fragments of strawberries in the sheets.
Author: evaporate.
Theme: Elements: Air - 1.
Fandom: Prince of Tennis - Tezuka/Fuji.
Rating: overall PG-13, 275 words.
A/N: [military AU] Character death, both major and minor. This also functions as a sort of prologue, hence the utter lack of dialogue. Checked for suckage by mari_yagami, though any residual suckage is my fault.
The air is thick with the stench of death and last breaths and the dust of thousands of feet trodding on thousands of square meters of unrelenting sand, but only in Fuji's dreams.
So Fuji slips under Tezuka's covers every night and never tells him why.
He's always gone before dawn, leaving no trace of his ever being there except a Fuji-shaped dent in Tezuka's mattress and an unsettled, heavy feeling in Tezuka's chest.
*
Maybe it's the camaraderie that is borne of sharing long, sleepless, tortured nights of waiting, waiting, waiting for enemy fire, waiting to go home, waiting to get out, waiting for some unheard-of miracle to pull them out, waiting for apocalypse, waiting for companionship, torn between dreamless stupor and raging nightmares.
Maybe it's that he's been here so long, that the nerves in his taste buds have fled and he can pretend for a minute that the sweaty sheen on Fuji's skin doesn't taste so much like death and hollow spaces as it does like -- cocoa, he thinks, or maybe strawberries, never mind that he hasn't had cocoa in months or strawberries for years.
Maybe because this offers some slight reprieve from anything and everything, from the dulled look in Oishi's eyes to the way his soldiers kick wearily at the sandy, muddy stone-and-dirt floors.
But Fuji always pulls him back: If you're going to leave, he's saying, you had better take me with you.
It was always Fuji, the dreamer, Fuji, the anarchist; now it's Tezuka, the wanderer, Tezuka, the anarchist's captain.
*
From then on, Fuji leaves a dent, a cold-something in Tezuka’s heart, and if Tezuka dreams hard enough, the lingering fragments of strawberries in the sheets.