//369 commission for my wonderful friend @kazeshinigami <3
A Change in Direction
Upon the third line of a haiku, in tradition, one must indicate a change in direction. Izuru always visualized it as the wind picking up, tossing leaves and grass and the strands of your hair all around until it settles on the North, the West, or wherever it wants to go, wherever it wants to carry you. Without the third line, a haiku is a thought that cannot be finished.
The breeze flips the pages of his notebook, and he presses his thin fingers down to keep them still. He is stuck on that third line, perhaps because it is so difficult for him to imagine a change, to imagine that two lines of sorrow can lead to one line of hope, and not the other way around.
He looks out across the neatly trimmed grass. Renji is pinning a long piece of cloth to the clothesline. It is a faded burgundy, though everything, when set in contrast to his burning-bright hair, looks dull. Nothing in the world can glow so fiercely. Izuru has told Renji this, much to his blushing. It moves him to know that he has that sort of power-- making this mountain of a man just a little bit giddy, just a little bit boyish. It is the only power Izuru has that isn’t grim, isn’t fearsome. It is, he thinks, one of the only good things he brings to the world.
Renji waves at him from across the little courtyard and Izuru grins like a reflex. They are a perfect two lines to open a haiku. Expertly crafted, not a single word that does not belong. But without the third line, they can’t even hope to feel complete.
Their third line will return to them soon. They know this, and yet still they always worry that they will be proven wrong. Their other lover who wants so much and so often to die. Just like Izuru used to. Before he did.
Stiff, he stretches out his decayed arm, hearing the hollowness of his chest in the ongoing breeze. He has yet to be repaired all the way.
Shuuhei slides open the door that leads to the engawa. Suddenly Izuru knows how to finish his haiku.
He writes down that elusive third line, smiling in his crooked way, the way that still hurts, the way that makes his skin feel strained and cracked. But then, two soft kisses on his golden, feathery head, and it no longer hurts.
They all make their silent agreement to head indoors. They communicate by touch.
-
Renji has his hair tied in a loose knot. There are only two people, these days, who get to see him looking that mild and soft. For everyone else he bears his thick and flowing mane as if terrified of being anything less than intimidating. But Izuru and Shuuhei have ran their fingers through that hair too many times for them to be fooled. They know his indoor voice, his snoring. They know every mood and its warning signs, every smile and its cause.
It is hard to be known. It is hard to be weak. Living as he had for so long, he could not afford to be anything but a beast. But in the safety of this shared room, between the warm glow of these two men, it all becomes so much easier. It is easy to kiss and to hold, and to be gentle as his strong and callused hands will let him.
Shuuhei has returned from another needlessly long day, and he and Izuru have fought him into something resembling a rest. Still he sits upright, back straight, hands politely in his lap, at the table where their tea is cooling. It is too late for all that caffeine, they know, but it is nigh impossible to feel as though it’s nighttime when the sun stays out so late, and later every day as they approach this new season. His lovers, Renji knows, would not sleep peacefully even without the evening tea. He knows now their nightmares. He is not without his fair share of them, some nights. Some nights none of them will rest. Some nights it turns into conversations that stretch into the dawn, some nights it turns into love so sweet they feel as though they will never have a bad dream again.
Tonight, they all lay reading by candlelight. Shuuhei, with his many articles, determining which lucky souls will be published in the next issue of the Bulletin. Izuru, with some sad little human-world novel. And Renji, with some long-dead noble’s pillowbook of thoughts and stories. It is all silence save for the turning of pages.
And tonight, as it is ever-changing, it is Izuru who decides when the lights go out. He gently takes the stack of papers from Shuuhei’s grasp, knowing that most of the time the only way to get him to stop working is by force. And Renji, seeing the sight unfold, shuts his book without bothering to mark the page.
They keep the nightmares at bay. He feels joy unparalleled in both his heart and body.
-
In the sweat-soaked morning, body still reeling from the love he has slowly convinced himself he deserves, he watches the sun struggle through the wooden blinds. It comes in thick, ethereal sheets, casting its lattice-like pattern over his two still-sleeping loves. Izuru is pale like light, his hair the same yellow as the sun. Renji, he looks more like the blazing, fleeting few moments of the late sunset, just before the sky is bathed in stars.
Does that make Shuuhei something like the afternoon? Or does it make him the pitch-black of night? He leans toward that. There was a time when he would have blamed it on the pit of despair, the claw-like way with which he drags others down into his darkness. And still, there are moments when he falters away from the light, brought back only by two pairs of loving hands.
It is too much responsibility to place on just two men, to keep him afloat. They don’t mind, but still he carries the guilt. To work, to bed. They assure him that he is not the one to blame for that sinking feeling. Izuru, perhaps halfheartedly. There are men to blame for their sorrow, in part, but it doesn’t stop them from accepting the fault for themselves. Foolish, they were, and still are. It makes Renji livid in a way that ought to comfort, and lately, it does what it ought to do.
Things get better. They have, for the time being, stopped falling apart.
Yes, he’s like the dead of night. The day’s heat lingers just enough to warm you, but the pleasant chill sets in. The dark sky glistens. It is either quiet save for crickets, or it is bathed in the loud chaos of debauchery. The night doesn’t make any sense, and Shuuhei struggles to make sense of himself.
But the night is always between the sunset and the sunrise, so for that fact alone, at least, he belongs with Renji and Izuru.
He lets them sleep. He is always the first one up, his work ethic so ingrained it has taken on the role of his alarm clock. He sets up the kettle, turns on the stove. They will awake to the smell of tea and the sizzle of breakfast. And they will come to him, wrap him in their arms. Renji’s, so sturdy and strong. Izuru’s, one obsidian black and the other a ghostly pale, both thin--
There is a small piece of paper tacked to the cabinet in which they keep their tea, no doubt put there in the fog of the evening prior. Three short lines in Izuru’s handwriting. Oh, how it’s become so brittle-looking since he died and came back, as if his weak hands can hardly hold the pen…
Outstretched, the tree limbs,
They grasp like fingers for death--
Wait, and live ‘til Spring.
The room is filled with a warm breeze. Shuuhei sees the filtered light shake, and looks to the source. The tree limbs, shivering in the wind, the first buds of springtime struggling through the wood. Soon it will all be in bloom.