okay so I loved this so much I wrote a little drabble…
“There’s something,” slurs Sora before she suddenly stops talking, crowds him in the corner, small as she is. Looking up at him hard, has to bend her neck nearly all the way back to do it, too. “On your face,” she finishes. A whole two minutes later. It’d been an awkward silence.
Yamato considers moving to the side, politely giving her space, would have, too, if he didn’t notice the wobbly step she took and stayed, hovering close, just in case she needed support on her feet. Mini skirt riding up. Thigh high leggings that went on for miles. Could keep following them down but knows not to, so doesn’t. Kind of wishes the other drunk bar goers would know not to, too. It’d been hard, subtly trying to place himself between her and the more aggressive advances. Twice he’d had to swipe a drink someone bought her right out of her hands before she could take a sip. He hates Halloween.
“You need a seat?” he offers, clears his throat, keeps his distance. Gallant. Doesn’t buy into stereotypes, even if he likes leather jackets and skinny jeans and black nail polish and garage records and low riders. Cool and unbothered, most of the time. Except now. Definitely bothered. Definitely uncool. Feels like his ears are going to burn off, with the way she’s still staring at him. Her eyes are really pretty. Stop. Look away, look away. No, not down!
The plastic red horns she wears tip as she shakes her head. Mimi says she’s a devil, Taichi says she’s a demon. Hikari says her little red wings, matching the shade of her horn headband, makes her a fallen angel. Koushiro had just said she looked nice, which Yamato finds to be the understatement of the century. Jou warns him she’s a bad drunk, as in bad at being drunk. Bolder. No filter. Out of her element. As the designated responsible one for the night, he’d been charged with making sure everyone’s okay, not that he wouldn’t have been anyway. But he’d been keeping an eye on her. Er, looking out for her, that is, tonight especially. Kind of hard not to notice her, even if she doesn’t think that about herself, shrinks herself down so others can shine instead. But he notices. First, and usually only. Any room she’s in. Her eyes are really, really pretty. Right now, they’re wide open, fireborn. She could burn him and he’d say thank you. Maybe even a please and more and a yes ma'am, but he shuts that part of his brain down fast. Sora’s his friend. That, he can’t lose.
The bar is noisy and she comes closer and he curses in his head, alarms going off. “I said,” she’s shouting now, usual internal social etiquette regulator completely abandoned. Wow, she really is drunk, Jou hadn’t been joking, “you’ve got something on your face.”
He doesn’t. He’d refused to dress up, hasn’t for years. The bar required costumes, though, so Takeru had wrestled the stupid wolf ear headband on him as he’d walked out the door. Told him he’d cry if he took it off. Really doesn’t put it past his younger brother to wheel out the waterworks. Everyone thinks Takeru’s a well-meaning sweetheart, but Yamato knows better.
He points to the ears. “I’m a wolf.” Immediately hears how lame it sounds and wants to sink into the floor. Disappear forever. Never show his face around her again. Wolf ears? Seriously? He’s going to kill Takeru.
Yamato knows how to argue with very drunk people, especially friends. There’s a fine art to it, to avoid bad decisions and keep everyone in check long enough to survive intact until morning. He’d accepted that this is to be his fate tonight. He’d already had to argue Taichi out of getting a piercing (Taichi’d refused to say where, just dropped suggestive hints), and Mimi from trying to pay everyone’s bar tab with her dad’s emergency credit card. Koushiro’d been bribed with a small mountain of salty snacks to not try to fix the bartender’s register (which wasn’t broken); Jou, he’d finally convinced to share the karaoke mic with promises to rent a booth just for their friend group next weekend. (Under no circumstances was Yamato going to repeat this promise once Jou’d sobered up, or admit it was ever made.) Submitting without putting up a fight in an argument with Sora dressed in dominatrix black was something he’d always thought about — no.
Why is he so lame. He swears he knows more words than ‘Okay’. Can’t think of any when she’s standing in front of him in a skin tight bodycon dress that spells out more curves than he’d ever dared dream, but he’s positive he knows at least ten more words. Maybe even twenty. Hopes no one asks him to prove it. His head is so empty, and he hasn’t had a single sip of anything. Just her, looking at him like this.
“You’re Yamato, and you never need to pretend.”
She’s so close now he can smell her perfume. She’d traded her usual jasmine white tea scent for a spicy rosewood. Maybe Givenchy’s Ange ou Démon. It’d certainly fit her look — stop. He absolutely should not know these details. Maybe he’s the creep he should be shielding her from.
She’s peering up at him, swaying a little. “What’s that like?”
He focuses on her. “Being…myself?”
Sora nods, voice so soft. Vulnerable. More alarms are going off in his head, a different kind. “Yeah.”
Yamato doesn’t think he is, not all the time. Even he has expectations he puts on himself. All he wants is to know who he is, so he can be the person his friends need, and deserve. It’s work. A lot of it. But it matters, so work at it, he does.
Her eyes take on a shine that makes his stomach drop. No, please don’t cry. Please don’t let me have made you cry. Not you.
He wants to smack himself. Does he really not know any real, adult human words?
“I like you that you know yourself.” She breaks into a smile. Disarms him completely. Knows she’s not going to remember any of this tomorrow. “I’d like to know myself like that.”
Say it. Use your words. Use all the words.
And the world hasn’t stopped, the axis still spins on. The earth hasn’t swallowed him whole, the sky still hangs above him. He hasn’t woken up. It’s a not dream.
But still, she just stares, unblinking. Her words repeat with utter disinterest. “There’s something on your face.”
Maybe he’d said it in his head instead? Not aloud?
Sora slips one hand into his, touches his arm with the other.
All right, something’s waking up.
She smiles, shy and devilish, all at once. Sees right through him with those really, really, really pretty eyes. Pokes a finger into his cheek. Dimples his blushing red face. “There it is.”
I absolutely headcanon that the core of their interest in one another is how each believes the other to be so true to themselves in ways they personally envy, not realizing really that they’re already there. these two are such poetic complements. I love their emotional arcs!
thanks again for the art and the inspiration :D
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