i commissioned this absolutely stunning art from @the-phantom-peach for my shuake roleswap au!! it illustrates a lil moment i wrote about, which is under the readmore (beware sad feelings):
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"What am I supposed to do with this?"
"Grow it."
"Amamiya—"
Ren had looked tired that evening. Shadows dark as bruises under his eyes, less performative bounce in his movements. But he'd still texted Goro asking to meet, and he'd still smiled at him as he spoke, potted sunflower plant held out in offering. "If I got you cut flowers, they'd just die. This way you're stuck with them."
"I could just put the whole thing in the trash."
Goro would go back and swallow the words if he could. But back then, he'd just wanted to get under Ren's skin, to see if it was possible more than anything. It didn't happen that night; Ren's eyes crinkled with amusement, like they always did when Goro was curt.
"But I spent so long picking it out. I checked whether it's safe for cats and everything."
When in retrospect, it's clear that he'd known Morgana wasn't a cat at all. The little shit.
Goro stares at the dwarf sunflower plant growing contentedly on his windowsill. What was Ren's message with it, he thinks distantly, beyond the obvious flirtation. He's wondered that for months, turning over the question in his mind when he should've been sleeping, studying hanakotoba, but he never came to any conclusions and it never occurred to him to ask, so now he'll be thinking about it forever. Endlessly, stretching on into the distant future, while he gets older and goes to university and becomes an adult, and the world forgets Ren Amamiya ever existed. Why did he even bother saving such a country? Let it fucking rot.
I'll never forget him. I'll die carrying his memory.
Goro means the vow with all his determination, every atom of his will and all the choked grief still gathering in his chest like blood in a wound that's been stitched too soon. But it doesn't matter whether he means it or not. It's not enough. Too little too late; the pitiful offering of the one who let Ren die. Ren took his glittering gaze and his pointed wit and his labyrinthine mysteries and his constant, inexplicable affection, and he shattered them all on the Velvet Room floor. No amount of remembrance will undo that.
