Tonight's Mood
From: ren @minamiren
To: @bee-archivist https://www.tumblr.com/bee-archivist
The sky is grey, and there are no stars, and it is raining.
Shion had gone outside about an hour ago as the water had dripped sluggishly down the stairs, carrying mud and sludge down into the library entrance. The rain wasn’t heavy—nothing like that storm in which he’d met Nezumi—but the drizzle was cold and oppressive, wetting his bangs against his forehead and seeping into his clothes.
The dull rain left a haze over the horizon, covering the existence of any stars that might have otherwise shown. It had already been well past midnight, even then, and Nezumi hadn’t come home yet.
Nezumi often does not come home until late, and it has been made clear to him that Shion isn’t to concern himself with Nezumi’s comings and goings, but something about tonight feels different. Something in the air. Shion sits on the couch and watches the door, trying to ignore the exhaustion tugging at his eyelids and making his head swim. He is not good at getting less than the required amount of sleep.
Hamlet runs in circles, and Cravat curls into an uneasy ball on the table. The mice are acting off, too—maybe picking up on Shion’s mood. Maybe they’re the reason he realized something was wrong in the first place. He couldn’t be sure. Doesn’t remember anymore.
Shion’s ears catch the sound of something shifting outside—footsteps in the mud, out of sync enough to be heard even over the mind-numbing drizzle of the rain. He feels proud of noticing in the moment, although Nezumi would likely simply laugh at him, having heard the approaching figure ages before.
Still, the steps most likely belong to one person.
Shion rises off the couch, stumbling a bit as he makes his way over to the door. He opens it just as Nezumi approaches, hand tucked into his shirt for the key he keeps strung around his neck.
Nezumi frowns at him as he stuffs the key back into his shirt, displeased. “You didn’t know that was me,” he accuses, although his heart doesn’t seem into it. Something in his voice feels…empty. “Why do I go through so much effort to keep you alive when you offer yourself up on a silver platter to anyone who wants you otherwise?”
“The chances were good enough that it was you over anyone else that the risk was worth it,” Shion says simply, frowning as Nezumi shoves past him and into the library, trailing muddy footsteps. He’s not usually so rough, nor so careless with how he tracks into their living space. For a rat, he likes to keep things from becoming unduly filthy.
Shion wanders after him, rounding the corner into the library to see Nezumi shucking off his boots, leaving them where they fall and rising from the couch, only to collapse face-first into his bed.
“Nezumi?” Shion asks hesitantly, after several moments of nothing but labored breathing from where Nezumi’s face was smothered in the dirty pillow.
There isn’t an immediate response. Then, “Not tonight, Shion.” His voice sounds tired to a degree that worries Shion, but it also makes him want to listen.
Shion stands there quietly for a bit, over Nezumi, wondering how Nezumi could simply ignore him when his energy is usually so frantic, so alert, to the point that he’d never leave his body open to the whims of someone standing above him. Three days ago, he tripped Shion and nearly dislocated his arm for startling him. His reflexes had been amazing, Shion had asked him four separate times to repeat the move for him later. This Nezumi…it is almost like he isn’t even here.
Finally, Shion gets ready for bed.
The morning dawns still grey and drizzling and wet, and Nezumi wakes Shion up by shoving a mop and bucket at him and telling him to get cleaning before his shift with Inukashi. Shion laughs as he accepts the bucket willingly, not minding the work—especially not when Nezumi seems to have come to life again.
———
Shion had thought it was a one-time event, but it wasn’t.
Sometimes Nezumi comes home sad.
It’s not anything drastically different than his usual moods, except it still feels like it is. There’s something subtle about it, a dark cloud a shade too black over all of his movements.
On these nights he doesn’t cook, doesn’t clean, doesn’t read. Doesn’t do anything. He stalks through the library past everything and gets in bed, just like that, no matter how filthy his clothes are, and then he doesn’t leave.
The first time it had happened, Shion thought it was a simple bad mood. The second time, Shion thought he was sick. After that, he realized that there was something different going on.
———
“Yeah, he gets like that sometimes,” Inukashi tells him when Shion asks, feeling a bit guilty to be talking about Nezumi to anyone behind his back, but Inukashi is one of Shion’s few connections that aren’t Nezumi himself. “Just goes off the rails for a night or a few days, disappears, misses practice sometimes. Gets away with it by being the best we’ve got here.”
“So he’s not ill?”
Inukashi waves Shion off. “Just a mood. He always snaps out of it. Now keep working, I’m not paying you to waste soap.”
Shion nods and goes back to the German Shepherd that he’d been washing.
———
The weather is nice tonight. On nights like this, with clear skies and a beautiful view of the walls of No. 6, Nezumi likes to sit outside and watch. Shion believes that he likes to imagine what he’ll do to the city when it finally falls, the way he believes.
When Nezumi comes in before twilight is more than a few minutes past, Shion looks up from his book curiously. When Nezumi falls onto the couch and doesn’t move, Shion realizes what is happening.
For the first time, he has the thought to do something about it.
Shion approaches slowly, cautiously. Nezumi is always unresponsive and uncaring in these moods, but he knows better than to antagonize the man unnecessarily. It won’t end well for him.
When Nezumi fails to respond to his approach, Shion settles onto the couch next to his shoulder, frowning down at him. Nezumi faces the back of the couch, his legs pulled up under him in what strikes Shion as a shockingly vulnerable position. Shion feels his hip brush the back of Nezumi’s shoulder, but Nezumi doesn’t move. “I’ve heard of things like this, in class,” Shion ventures. “Safu was better at neurological issues and chemical imbalances, but—“
“Saying my head is fucked up, Shion?” Nezumi laughs hoarsely, tilting his head just enough to look up at Shion out of the corner of his eye. “I thought we were well past establishing that.”
Shion shakes his head. “No, I’m saying that at home, my mom was like this, back when I was a top student. Before—“
Before Nezumi.
Shion shakes his head, recovers. “She was tired all the time, and sad, and she was happy for me but never had the energy for anything other than being sad. My failing out of the program helped her, in a way. She always said people brought her life.”
“I perform in front of hundreds at a time,” Nezumi says acerbically. “I doubt more people are going to do anything other than making me want to start bashing heads in more than I wanted to before.”
“No, but…maybe one person?”
Nezumi rolls his eyes, returns to his previous position staring at the back of the couch cushions, but he doesn’t say no. Doesn’t push Shion off the couch or yell. Maybe he doesn’t have the energy to. Maybe he simply is waiting to see what Shion has planned.
Shion is waiting to see what he has planned too, just a bit.
He leans over to Nezumi’s feet, loosens the laces of his boots. Nezumi’s shoulders tense when he starts, but slowly loosen back up. When he finishes, he tugs the mud-crusted boots off of Nezumi’s feet and tosses them to the floor. He shucks off his own shoes, then fits himself onto the couch behind Nezumi.
He’s forced to tuck close in order to fit on the couch, his knees bending into the curve of Nezumi’s. His arm goes around Nezumi’s waist from behind, and Shion tucks his nose against the back of Nezumi’s neck, not bothered by the low ponytail tickling him.
The whole time he positions himself, Nezumi stays stiff as a board. But when Shion finally falls still, Nezumi lays his hand over Shion’s arm, long fingers gripping around his wrist.
“You expect a hug to fix things?” Nezumi asks, and it seems like he’s trying to sound acidic, but his voice shakes just a bit too much to hit the mark.
Shion shakes his head against the back of Nezumi’s neck, glad his smile is hidden from Nezumi’s view. “No, just trying to prove you’re not alone,” he says instead. “I don’t think things are going to be fixed. But this isn’t terrible, is it?”
A long silence. Shion finds himself focusing on Nezumi’s warmth, on how it feels to hold a warm body against his chest. It’s nicer than he might have expected, and it comes to his own attention that this is his first time doing anything like this with someone. He likes it, thinks he would like to do it more often—especially if Nezumi is the one he’s able to do it with.
Nezmui’s fingers tighten around his wrist, then let go. He turns all the way over, shoving his body in such a way that nearly shoves Shion off the couch entirely. Nezumi grabs him at the waist, pulls him close just so that he doesn’t topple off the edge.
Nezumi settles down a moment later, letting go of Shion’s hip, leaving a brand of heat where he’d grabbed. Shion wraps his arm back around Nezumi’s waist; the move feels far more intimate when they’re facing each other than it had when Nezumi had been resolutely pretending that he hadn’t been there.
“No,” Nezumi finally says, shocking Shion out of his momentary stupor.
“No?” Shion repeats, a bit stupidly. Nezumi’s eyes are not often so close to his—they’re a gorgeous grey, Shion thinks.
“No, this is not so terrible,” Nezumi reiterates. “Going to soothe me physically, until I forget my worries, city boy?”
The words are teasing, an entendre that even Shion can catch, but he finds himself reacting to them anyway. He leans in, catches Nezumi’s hips in a clumsy kiss. His lips are softer than expected, although maybe he should’ve known—Eve always takes care of her appearance. Shion pulls back a moment later, smiling wryly.
“Not what you expected?” he asks.
Nezumi looks a little bit shocked, but his recovery is quick enough. He raises his hand to cradle Shion’s jaw, push back into his white hair. Uses the leverage to pull Shion into another kiss.
This one is sweeter.
Nezumi pulls back and grins. “No, but I wouldn’t complain if you knocked me out of my moods like this more often,” he teases.
Shion is tugged to his feet by Nezumi, dragged to the bed, and bundled in. In a reverse of their position from earlier, Nezumi shoves Shion down first before manhandling him into a spooning position, Shion tucked up against Nezumi’s chest.
“You have my permission to do this when I need it,” Nezumi mutters finally, right as Shion is finally falling asleep. Shion nods sleepily.
————
Nezumi doesn’t have the moods often, but when he does—when he tracks mud through the library and collapses onto the nearest surface that he can pass out on—he isn’t alone anymore. Now Shion is there, to get into bed with him, to hold him, sometimes to kiss him when Nezumi permits it.
The moments are quiet and stolen and peaceful and theirs.