junk drawer bits (4)
Ai and Seijuurou - 417 (gifts)
this is longer. almost 2400 words
The warm sunshine lighting up the room is making his skin itch. Or maybe it’s the spice scented breeze gently wafting in through the window. Or the cool water trickling through the fountain in the wall. Or the fact that he knows even before he hears Seijuurou’s familiar whistling tune drifting into his apartment that Seijuurou is leaving again.
Yeah it’s probably that last one.
Seijuurou waltzes into Ai’s apartment with a cursory knock on his open door and a grin on his face. After seven years of being friends things like knocking and personal space have kind of fallen by the wayside.
“I come bearing gifts,” Seijuurou announces. His voice seems to boom and echo and search out all the quiet places in Ai’s apartment.
(and all the quiet places in his mind and soul but that makes his skin itch too and he buries that thought in the dirt of the plant he’s repotting)
“How long will you be gone this time?” Seijuurou tilts his head at the flatness that Ai can’t quite keep away from his voice. He wipes his muddy hands on his pants and stands, peering up at Seijuurou through his sweaty bangs. He knows he has dirt smeared across his forehead and is a dirty mess in general today. He can’t really bring himself to care right now.
“Well there’s a creature disturbing the peace of a little village about a week’s ride from here,” Seijuurou explains. “Not sure what it is yet. Or how long it will take to get it under control.”
Ai takes the box that Seijuurou holds out to him and unwraps it, careful not to get smudgy fingerprints on the polished box under the paper. Inside is an ornate silver amulet nestled in dark blue velvet.
“It’s beautiful,” Ai says softly. “Thank you.”
Seijuurou smiles at him, brighter and warmer than the sunbeam Ai is standing in, and claps him on the shoulder. They talk about nothing, fill the afternoon with meaningless chatter, and Ai hates how much he would sacrifice for a lifetime of just this so long as Seijuurou would be at his side.
His chin wobbles when Seijuurou tugs him into a hug before he leaves.
—
A stormy afternoon that has Ai eying the vining plants crawling through his windows warily. Seijuurou sits at his table with a mug of tea while Ai works on sachets for the laundress.
Seijuurou eventually places a bag of books - research notes he lifted from the last castle he ransacked mostly - on the table with a grin and a wink as he stands to leave.
He always leaves.
—
It’s been eight months. Eight months since Ai saw Seijuurou’s grin. Since he heard Seijuurou’s booming voice filling the space in his home and the cracks in his soul. Since he smelled the sweat/leather/spice scent of Seijuurou lingering in his kitchen. Since he felt Seijuurou’s warm hand on his shoulder or ruffling his hair.
Eight months without even a note so he knows his friend is still alive.
He’s a day away from swallowing his pride and going over to the center of the city to ask Haru and the guards if they’ve heard anything when Momo stumbles into his apartment dusty and road weary and drags him to the medics. Momo refuses to explain anything. He just keeps looking at Ai with wide eyes and refusing to let go of his hand as he pulls him through the city.
Seijuurou will be fine. He’s too stubborn not to be. But Momo holds onto Ai’s hand like it’s a lifeline and Seijuurou’s skin is pale under the bandages and it breaks Ai’s heart to hear that familiar laugh so soft and tired.
(he wouldn’t have even known about Seijuurou being injured this badly if Momo hadn’t come to him and it breaks his heart even more the realize this and hold Momo’s hand as Seijuurou drifts to sleep and he buries it buries it buries it again)
It’s another month before Seijuurou leans against the doorway into Ai’s apartment with that familiar grin on his face.
Magical seedlings that he’d never find anywhere near here sit in row of pots along Ai’s counter.
—
If Ai were an artist he could draw a photo realistic depiction of Seijuurou’s back disappearing into the distance.
A dragon’s hoard of trinkets and treasures fill his apartment.
—
Ai’s mood falls as the sun does, slowly with brilliant splashes of feeling and then all at once a soft darkness swelling over him. Seijuurou is sitting on his couch, chatting idly about something that honestly Ai stopped listening to a half hour ago. They’ve been friends for nearly ten years now and Ai can’t do it anymore. He can’t hold onto these feelings. He can’t he can’t he can’t he ca-
“It’s just really nice, you know,” Seijuurou says as he stretches out one of his impossibly long legs and nudges Ai with his toes, “that you’re the last familiar face I see before I leave.”
(he can he can hold these feelings forever but he shouldn’t he really shouldn’t keep lighting the caverns of his heart with this flickering torch waiting for a breath of fresh air)
Seijuurou tries to hand him a small round container and for the first time since Seijuurou started this whole thing - bringing him gifts before he walks out of Ai’s life for an undetermined amount of time - Ai refuses the gift. Seijuurou blinks at him a few times, tilting his head like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle, and then holds it out again with a confused grin. Like Ai’s playing a joke on him.
Ai shakes his head. There’s fear bubbling under his skin. Fear that this is the wrong move. That Seijuurou will walk out his door this time and just never come back. But there’s a thrill bubbling too. A wild thing that makes his hands tremble as he runs his fingers through his hair.
“I don’t want it,” he says, quiet but firm.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want it,” he repeats. “I don’t want all these… these things from you.”
Seijuurou frowns. “But it’s for you. It’s what we do. Before I leave I bring you a gift from the last place I was.”
“I don’t want it. I don’t want any of these things.” He can feel his heart pounding. Sweat is trickling down his spine. “I’ve never wanted them. Never asked for them.” His voice is rising with the moon. Steadily, surely, and ever higher. Illuminating, beautiful, and cold. “I don’t want all these material belongings!”
“What do you want?” Seijuurou’s voice. Calm, collected, filling the cracks in his soul. Overflowing those cracks until he’s not sure they were ever there and that just makes him even angrier. Even sadder. Even more exhausted.
“I don’t want anything from you!” Ai jumps to his feet and starts to walk away, only to spin back around. “No. I do want something.” He meets Seijuurou’s gaze. He knows he has tears in his eyes. He doesn’t care (except he does he does and it hurts to see the confusion in Seijuurou’s eyes) “I want my heart back!”
Seijuurou stares up at him like he’s never seen him before, eyes darting this way and that.
For the first time that he can remember Ai turns his back on Seijuurou and walks away from him.
—
He’s sobbing when Seijuurou finds him later. He’s sprawled on the ground under the flowering trees behind the guard post at the edge of town, face red and wet, throat raw and voice hoarse. Haru is sitting next to him patting his shoulder awkwardly and he knows the moment Seijuurou parts the low, heavy branches by the way Haru’s fingers press against his shoulder and the sudden thrum of energy that shoots from Haru.
“Go away.” Haru doesn’t quite hiss the words but Ai can feel the anger radiating from him. Haru doesn’t anger easily and would just as soon say ‘I told you so’ as actually defend you so the fact that he’s so angry on Ai’s behalf says a lot.
Ai hears Seijuurou inhale, can picture the consoling grin on his face and the way he raises his hands just so when he apologizes, and the rest of his control snaps. He jerks himself to his feet and spins to face Seijuurou, tears and snot running down his face as he hiccups through his words.
“Just go, Seijuurou. Go if you’re going to. But if you do.” He nearly chokes on his own voice and Haru presses his hand against Ai’s leg in support. “Don’t bother coming back to my apartment. I can’t do it anymore.”
Seijuurou looks down at Haru and Ai wants to scream. To tear his hair out. To destroy something, anything. He closes his burning eyes and presses his fists against them hard enough to see stars. Haru stands and nudges Ai’s shoulder.
“I’ll be inside if you need me,” Haru mutters. Then he’s gone and Ai is alone.
Well. Not really. But he might as well be. The silence is deafening, the sounds of the night unable to penetrate the low branches, and eventually he has to open his eyes just to see if Seijuurou is still there. Or if he actually left.
Seijuurou is sitting on the ground, knees drawn up to his chest, watching Ai.
“I… I don’t know what to do,” Seijuurou admits when he meets Ai’s gaze. “I don’t… what… what do you want?”
“You,” Ai answers without thought, without hesitation. “Not the shit you bring me back. Not the stories of places I’ve never been and will never go to. Not the sight of your back as you walk away from me again and again and again.”
“Oh,” Seijuurou breathes out. He looks shocked and Ai snorts. Of course Seijuurou never had the slightest clue. Ai was barely a footnote in the existence of Seijuurou. Just a last stop on the way back out of the city.
“All I’ve ever wanted is you. I don’t want to be some random person you kind of remember and I don’t want you to be just some vague, hazy figure at the outskirts of my life. I want to be with you.” He drags his hands down his cheeks and lets out a watery sigh, eyes drifting up and focusing on the flowering branches above them. “Do you know how many gifts you’ve given me? How many times you’ve turned away and walked out of my life? Because I never know if you’re coming back to me or not,” he adds when Seijuurou doesn’t answer. “Do you know?”
“No.”
“Four hundred and seventeen. Not counting today. Four hundred and seventeen times I have taken what you offer me and watched you disappear into the sunset like some cliche storybook fairytale hero.”
“I never thought…” (thought of you like that, thought about us, thought about the future, thought about you, you, you at all, Ai’s heart is in his throat choking him with possibilities) “I guess I never thought of it that way. Of how it looked to you.”
Ai’s brain stutters to a stop. He can only blink down at Seijuurou for a minute while he tries to process that. “What the hell does that mean?”
Seijuurou looks at the ground for a moment like he’s bracing himself before he meets Ai’s gaze again. There’s something fragile in his eyes and Ai is afraid if he blinks it’ll disappear and this soft, vulnerable Seijuurou will be gone.
“It means,” Seijuurou starts softly, “that to you I walked away four hundred and seventeen times. But for me it was four hundred and seventeen times that I had something, someone, to come back to. Come back for. You’re the last person I see before I leave and I linger until the sun sets and the stars rise to guide me because I hate to go. I can never stay long but Aiichirou you’re the reason I come back at all. I never realized you didn’t know that. And for that I’m sorry.”
“The gifts…”
“You’re on my mind a lot and I always find something, somewhere along the way that reminds me of you. And I always hoped that if I saw you before I left, if I gave you something before I was gone again, that maybe you’d look at it and think of me too.” Seijuurou rubs the back of his neck sheepishly and shrugs. “Kind of sounds stupid now that I actually said it out loud.”
“It sounds like I can’t believe I never noticed.” Ai thinks back, thinks about all the time Seijuurou spends at his apartment before he leaves, thinks about the quiet moments and the way Seijuurou lingers in his doorway and how Seijuurou laughs and hugs him and touches his shoulder and ruffles his hair like he just can’t help but touch Ai. Thinks about the looks that he tells himself he’s imagining because Seijuurou doesn’t think about him like that. “It sounds like we’re both kind of stupid.”
—
Rain patters gently against the windows as Ai stares into the dark night beyond the glass. He can see Seijuurou moving around behind him, reflection distorted by the rain, and he turns to watch Seijuurou pack up his things. He’s methodical and slow, clearly in no hurry despite the fact that it’s well past time for him to have left if he wants to make it to the rendezvous with Momo before sunrise.
When he’s finally finished he looks up and smiles when he sees Ai watching him.
He ruffles Ai’s hair and pulls him into a hug, slowly pulling away and inching towards the door.
He hesitates in the doorway and bites his lip as he stares at Ai, eyes twitching here and there like he’s trying to remember everything about this moment, and asks, “Think of me?”
“Only every other minute or two until you come back,” Ai replies. “Think of me?”
“Until I draw my last breath.”
Ai’s cheeks heat up and he throws Seijuurou’s sweater at his face with a laugh. “Oh just get out of here you sap.”
“I will. But I’ll come back as soon as I can,” Seijuurou promises.
“I know.”