(no subject)
Fandom: Persona 4
Rating: R
Characters: Dojima Ryotaro, Adachi Tohru
Warnings: 1sentence challenge, set gamma this time. Spoilers.
one. ring
Dojima never takes it off, but nonetheless, he knows it’s not cheating (she’s gone) because it’s not love (it’s not not-love), and the only betrayal it is isn’t his own.
two. hero
“Featherman R,” Adachi repeats professionally, holding up the glossy plastic-wrapped action figure like it’s a trophy, and God, Dojima thinks, running a hand over his face, It’s going to be one hell of a year.
three. memory
I was right, Dojima realizes wryly, once twelve months draw to a close.
four. box
Adachi found Dojima's heart once, tucked under his bed in a shoebox full of years-old newspaper clippings and shreds of frazzled paper, so it can't be here, pounding in the cage of his ribs, even if there is a drumbeat pressed against the rise of his chest, even if the man smiles quite like that.
five. run
"Gotcha," Dojima crows victoriously, pulling a flailing Adachi back by the collar towards the pile of stacked, empty plates, "You've got another thing coming if you think I'll let you off without paying for your share again."
six. hurricane
For a running of just one measly year, the damage Adachi leaves in his wake is incredible.
seven. wings
Nanako looks oddly angel-like on the white hospital bed, pale and fragile, and when Dojima grips his wrist so tight that the circulation begins to cut off to his fingers, Adachi just withdraws (fingers slipping out), withdraws (I had nothing to do with this), withdraws (the door swings closed).
eight. cold
Either from poor circulation or the October weather, Adachi’s fingers are chilly when he slips them under his superior’s shirt, but the reason Dojima shivers is from something else entirely.
nine. red
“Bug bite,” Dojima gruffly explains, cheeks tinting as he pulls his collar higher up his neck.
ten. drink
Adachi knows he has it, knows he’s won, when Dojima stops using beer bottles as an excuse to draw closer.
eleven. midnight
Adachi wakes with Dojima's breathing fanning onto his back, the moon casting silhouettes of TV antennae onto his face, and rather than moving to the window or turning into the circle of the other's arms, he closes his eyes - there is still time yet to play this delicate line.
twelve. temptation
One late night in the precinct, Adachi suddenly looks up, eyes urgent, and says, “You know, Dojima-san, I’m-“ then the phone rings, and though Dojima waves a hand for him to continue, Adachi just smiles apologetically, shaking his head with a shrug as he picks up (sorry, wrong number).
thirteen. view
"The way I see it," Adachi tells him, drumming fingers on the counter like he's still playing the last movement of this elaborate concerto, "We were both using each other, really."
fourteen. music
“This is terrible,” Dojima grumbles with distaste, frowning at the radio as it blares its ‘Roma roma’s and its ‘Rah-rah’s, only to realize, to his great horror, that Adachi’s singing is a thousand-fold worse.
fifteen. silk
On the contrary, everything about it is rough (the pushing, the pulling, the kisses, the sex), so of course Dojima doesn't recognize it at first.
sixteen. cover
"Don't look," she tells him, skeleton fingers creeping up his chest, pulling a veil of mist over his eyes so that he can't see what this ordinary, middle-aged man from his middle-of-nowhere is doing to him, because he can't destroy the world for her if he still loves something in it.
seventeen. promise
“You lied,” Adachi thinks, broken bones in addition to broken dreams now, as Ameno-Sagiri lifts the shroud of Her influence from his merely mortal body because he wasn’t enough.
eighteen. dream
I didn’t, he thinks She answers, lying in the hospital while the voices of doctors all blur together and filter in and out of the background, I could have fixed everything, but he could have fixed you, She deflects, because She hadn’t been enough either.
nineteen. candle
It's not worth comparing - Adachi is so entirely different and separate from Chisato that it doesn't even occur to him that the two cases are even remotely related.
twenty. talent
"You're not meant for this kind of work if you can't even take in a scene like that" Dojima grumbles, handing a green-faced Adachi the sixth of seven napkins, "You're way too soft, haven't got the heart for it."
twenty-one. silence
One minute into the ten minute ride, Adachi falls asleep, and it’s the first moment of quiet Dojima’s had all day.
twenty-two. journey
For that reason alone (and not because they’ve been walking all day, not because it’s strange to see Adachi so still, not because the kid looks so goddamn tired), Dojima waits five minutes after stopping in front of his partner’s apartment before shaking him awake.
twenty-three. fire
Dojima leans in to the lighter, cigarette hanging from his lips, and it’s all the excuse Adachi needs to pull both light and smoke away, pressing something else to his mouth instead.
twenty-four. strength
The one time he loses it, Dojima feels Adachi crumple under the unexpected force of his fist, and he is not cruel by nature, but he hopes the blow hurts at least as much as it hurt to throw it.
twenty-five. mask
Separated by a piece of thick, impermeable glass, their expressions are equally unreadable, but Adachi has always been the better actor, and whereas he can break the line of his mouth into a smile, snapping it into careful little pieces and reassembling it into an upwards curve, it takes almost everything Dojima has just not to fall apart.
twenty-six. ice
"D'you think it'll hold?" Adachi asks, lowering his foot onto the frozen Samegawa bank, and before Dojima can even bark out a, "Adachi, don't you da-," there is a crack (both of them end up being late that day).
twenty-seven. fall
Sometimes Dojima gives him looks that are almost tender (they are), touches that are almost gentle (they are), until almost, almost, almost, Adachi starts to think that maybe - no, of course not (he does, he does, he does).
twenty-eight. forgotten
But sometimes it's impossible that Adachi doesn't mean it, not when he laughs like that, muffling the sound against Dojima's cheek, turning his face into the dip between jaw and neck, fingers pressing five-count marks into the skin of his back that disappear with the coming day, long gone before Dojima really needs to remember them.
twenty-nine. dance
The dip is surprisingly fluid, and admittedly, Adachi had expected both the resistance and the indignation from the old man's mouth, just not the small creak from his back.
thirty. body
Adachi sleeps with a sheer disregard for other people’s presence, considering Dojima wakes up with an arm in his face and a leg thrown over his stomach.
thirty-one. sacred
"No, no," Adachi laughs nervously, when Nanako turns wide, searching eyes up at him and asks him if he's part of their family now, because there are still lines even he won't knowingly cross.
thirty-two. farewells
Adachi is always gone before Dojima wakes up, surprisingly punctual for a person who is chronically late to work, and all he leaves behind is a dent in the mattress and a strange, lingering warmth on what has been The Cold Side of the Bed for the past few years.
thirty-three. world
Adachi is gone before the new year even rolls around, slipping out of his world surprisingly easily for a person who had made it nearly routine to insert himself into it over the past year, and all he leaves behind is a vacant desk and the strange, lingering sense of loneliness that comes with being abandoned twice in life.
thirty-four. formal
“Dojima-san,” Dojima corrects sternly, before the greenhorn can even finish the rest of his ill-informed, ‘Ryotaro-san,’ because this is a working partnership here, and some ground rules must be laid down, some barriers erected before Adachi can tear them down.
thirty-five. fever
When Dojima comes down with the flu being passed around town, the only person who is even more of a mess than him is Adachi, who cannot cook to save his life, who, by mid-afternoon, had somehow exhausted himself to the point of falling asleep over Dojima’s knees, and all Dojima can think is, Thank goodness for Nanako.
thirty-six. laugh
Resting his head on Dojima’s chest, the older man’s chuckling sounds deeper this way, reverberating in his chest and mixing with the echo of his heartbeat, a nice sound, no matter how you look at it, a beautiful, heartbreaking sound.
thirty-seven. lies
"Slept in, sir," Dojima excuses himself, awkward in the way that apologies usually are from men who aren't used to apologizing, wondering if Adachi knows he can fully well see that smirk behind the chief's shoulder.
thirty-eight. forever
“Five minutes,” Adachi promises with a smile, pulling Dojima into the copy room.
thirty-nine. overwhelmed
Adachi laughs the first time, sitting back on his ankles while wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist as Dojima slides wide-eyed and boneless to the ground.
forty. whisper
“Stop that,” Dojima hisses, swerving the car wildly to the left as he slaps his partner’s hand away from where it was wandering, sure that one day, Adachi is going to get him killed this way (close enough, but no cigar).
forty-one. wait
Dojima visits, and visits, and visits, but Adachi never says a thing.
forty-two. talk
In June, Adachi finally opens his mouth and asks, “What are you looking for?”
forty-three. search
Dojima has had enough time to know the answer to this, at least - “I just,” he admits, hands folding between his knees, head lowering when all those memories come flooding back, “I just wanted to understand.”
forty-four. hope
Adachi smiles, folds his hands on the counter, leans in towards the glass while the cuffs around his wrists clink together, and he asks, “Aww, c’mon now, Dojima-san, no need to look like that - we were partners once, weren’t we?”
forty-five. eclipse
Dojima frowns at the ambiguity in that statement - he can’t remember (doesn’t know) if what they did was sincerity or betrayal anymore - and answers, “Were we?”
forty-six. gravity
The worst thing is the inevitability, the fact that no matter how many times Dojima runs over the events of the past year over in his head, the outcome remains the same - a road littered with broken pieces of a mended heart.
forty-seven. highway
Pulling into the outskirts of Inaba, Adachi can just barely make out the trail of moving lights in the distance marking the road to the city, and sometimes, like tonight, it's hard to say whether what he's looking for is at the end of that road, or if it's two miles after the turn into Exit 47a - Inaba, leaning against Dojima's car with a borrowed cigarette hanging from his lap, fingers brushing every time he raises his hand to take a drag.
forty-eight. unknown
Dojima hadn't thought those cuffs to the head would sting, didn't think the names he called and the demands he made would pierce, but then again, his judgment with these things is poor - he hadn't known that the trap Adachi had so meticulously laid would hurt this much either.
forty-nine. lock
Dojima raises a brow as the little stub slides down into the groove on the car door and turns to find Adachi already climbing into the passenger seat side, grin glinting white in the dark as he pleads (demands), "Just a little bit, sir - it'll be quick, I promise."
fifty. breathe
“You should stop coming,” Adachi says, on the nth of N visits that is only unique in that it is the last, raising his head with an expression so hollow that maybe if you squinted, you could finally see through to the other side, and as he glances at the door, he adds, “Gotta move on, Dojima-san - there's nothing for you here.”
Rating: R
Characters: Dojima Ryotaro, Adachi Tohru
Warnings: 1sentence challenge, set gamma this time. Spoilers.
one. ring
Dojima never takes it off, but nonetheless, he knows it’s not cheating (she’s gone) because it’s not love (it’s not not-love), and the only betrayal it is isn’t his own.
two. hero
“Featherman R,” Adachi repeats professionally, holding up the glossy plastic-wrapped action figure like it’s a trophy, and God, Dojima thinks, running a hand over his face, It’s going to be one hell of a year.
three. memory
I was right, Dojima realizes wryly, once twelve months draw to a close.
four. box
Adachi found Dojima's heart once, tucked under his bed in a shoebox full of years-old newspaper clippings and shreds of frazzled paper, so it can't be here, pounding in the cage of his ribs, even if there is a drumbeat pressed against the rise of his chest, even if the man smiles quite like that.
five. run
"Gotcha," Dojima crows victoriously, pulling a flailing Adachi back by the collar towards the pile of stacked, empty plates, "You've got another thing coming if you think I'll let you off without paying for your share again."
six. hurricane
For a running of just one measly year, the damage Adachi leaves in his wake is incredible.
seven. wings
Nanako looks oddly angel-like on the white hospital bed, pale and fragile, and when Dojima grips his wrist so tight that the circulation begins to cut off to his fingers, Adachi just withdraws (fingers slipping out), withdraws (I had nothing to do with this), withdraws (the door swings closed).
eight. cold
Either from poor circulation or the October weather, Adachi’s fingers are chilly when he slips them under his superior’s shirt, but the reason Dojima shivers is from something else entirely.
nine. red
“Bug bite,” Dojima gruffly explains, cheeks tinting as he pulls his collar higher up his neck.
ten. drink
Adachi knows he has it, knows he’s won, when Dojima stops using beer bottles as an excuse to draw closer.
eleven. midnight
Adachi wakes with Dojima's breathing fanning onto his back, the moon casting silhouettes of TV antennae onto his face, and rather than moving to the window or turning into the circle of the other's arms, he closes his eyes - there is still time yet to play this delicate line.
twelve. temptation
One late night in the precinct, Adachi suddenly looks up, eyes urgent, and says, “You know, Dojima-san, I’m-“ then the phone rings, and though Dojima waves a hand for him to continue, Adachi just smiles apologetically, shaking his head with a shrug as he picks up (sorry, wrong number).
thirteen. view
"The way I see it," Adachi tells him, drumming fingers on the counter like he's still playing the last movement of this elaborate concerto, "We were both using each other, really."
fourteen. music
“This is terrible,” Dojima grumbles with distaste, frowning at the radio as it blares its ‘Roma roma’s and its ‘Rah-rah’s, only to realize, to his great horror, that Adachi’s singing is a thousand-fold worse.
fifteen. silk
On the contrary, everything about it is rough (the pushing, the pulling, the kisses, the sex), so of course Dojima doesn't recognize it at first.
sixteen. cover
"Don't look," she tells him, skeleton fingers creeping up his chest, pulling a veil of mist over his eyes so that he can't see what this ordinary, middle-aged man from his middle-of-nowhere is doing to him, because he can't destroy the world for her if he still loves something in it.
seventeen. promise
“You lied,” Adachi thinks, broken bones in addition to broken dreams now, as Ameno-Sagiri lifts the shroud of Her influence from his merely mortal body because he wasn’t enough.
eighteen. dream
I didn’t, he thinks She answers, lying in the hospital while the voices of doctors all blur together and filter in and out of the background, I could have fixed everything, but he could have fixed you, She deflects, because She hadn’t been enough either.
nineteen. candle
It's not worth comparing - Adachi is so entirely different and separate from Chisato that it doesn't even occur to him that the two cases are even remotely related.
twenty. talent
"You're not meant for this kind of work if you can't even take in a scene like that" Dojima grumbles, handing a green-faced Adachi the sixth of seven napkins, "You're way too soft, haven't got the heart for it."
twenty-one. silence
One minute into the ten minute ride, Adachi falls asleep, and it’s the first moment of quiet Dojima’s had all day.
twenty-two. journey
For that reason alone (and not because they’ve been walking all day, not because it’s strange to see Adachi so still, not because the kid looks so goddamn tired), Dojima waits five minutes after stopping in front of his partner’s apartment before shaking him awake.
twenty-three. fire
Dojima leans in to the lighter, cigarette hanging from his lips, and it’s all the excuse Adachi needs to pull both light and smoke away, pressing something else to his mouth instead.
twenty-four. strength
The one time he loses it, Dojima feels Adachi crumple under the unexpected force of his fist, and he is not cruel by nature, but he hopes the blow hurts at least as much as it hurt to throw it.
twenty-five. mask
Separated by a piece of thick, impermeable glass, their expressions are equally unreadable, but Adachi has always been the better actor, and whereas he can break the line of his mouth into a smile, snapping it into careful little pieces and reassembling it into an upwards curve, it takes almost everything Dojima has just not to fall apart.
twenty-six. ice
"D'you think it'll hold?" Adachi asks, lowering his foot onto the frozen Samegawa bank, and before Dojima can even bark out a, "Adachi, don't you da-," there is a crack (both of them end up being late that day).
twenty-seven. fall
Sometimes Dojima gives him looks that are almost tender (they are), touches that are almost gentle (they are), until almost, almost, almost, Adachi starts to think that maybe - no, of course not (he does, he does, he does).
twenty-eight. forgotten
But sometimes it's impossible that Adachi doesn't mean it, not when he laughs like that, muffling the sound against Dojima's cheek, turning his face into the dip between jaw and neck, fingers pressing five-count marks into the skin of his back that disappear with the coming day, long gone before Dojima really needs to remember them.
twenty-nine. dance
The dip is surprisingly fluid, and admittedly, Adachi had expected both the resistance and the indignation from the old man's mouth, just not the small creak from his back.
thirty. body
Adachi sleeps with a sheer disregard for other people’s presence, considering Dojima wakes up with an arm in his face and a leg thrown over his stomach.
thirty-one. sacred
"No, no," Adachi laughs nervously, when Nanako turns wide, searching eyes up at him and asks him if he's part of their family now, because there are still lines even he won't knowingly cross.
thirty-two. farewells
Adachi is always gone before Dojima wakes up, surprisingly punctual for a person who is chronically late to work, and all he leaves behind is a dent in the mattress and a strange, lingering warmth on what has been The Cold Side of the Bed for the past few years.
thirty-three. world
Adachi is gone before the new year even rolls around, slipping out of his world surprisingly easily for a person who had made it nearly routine to insert himself into it over the past year, and all he leaves behind is a vacant desk and the strange, lingering sense of loneliness that comes with being abandoned twice in life.
thirty-four. formal
“Dojima-san,” Dojima corrects sternly, before the greenhorn can even finish the rest of his ill-informed, ‘Ryotaro-san,’ because this is a working partnership here, and some ground rules must be laid down, some barriers erected before Adachi can tear them down.
thirty-five. fever
When Dojima comes down with the flu being passed around town, the only person who is even more of a mess than him is Adachi, who cannot cook to save his life, who, by mid-afternoon, had somehow exhausted himself to the point of falling asleep over Dojima’s knees, and all Dojima can think is, Thank goodness for Nanako.
thirty-six. laugh
Resting his head on Dojima’s chest, the older man’s chuckling sounds deeper this way, reverberating in his chest and mixing with the echo of his heartbeat, a nice sound, no matter how you look at it, a beautiful, heartbreaking sound.
thirty-seven. lies
"Slept in, sir," Dojima excuses himself, awkward in the way that apologies usually are from men who aren't used to apologizing, wondering if Adachi knows he can fully well see that smirk behind the chief's shoulder.
thirty-eight. forever
“Five minutes,” Adachi promises with a smile, pulling Dojima into the copy room.
thirty-nine. overwhelmed
Adachi laughs the first time, sitting back on his ankles while wiping his mouth with the back of his wrist as Dojima slides wide-eyed and boneless to the ground.
forty. whisper
“Stop that,” Dojima hisses, swerving the car wildly to the left as he slaps his partner’s hand away from where it was wandering, sure that one day, Adachi is going to get him killed this way (close enough, but no cigar).
forty-one. wait
Dojima visits, and visits, and visits, but Adachi never says a thing.
forty-two. talk
In June, Adachi finally opens his mouth and asks, “What are you looking for?”
forty-three. search
Dojima has had enough time to know the answer to this, at least - “I just,” he admits, hands folding between his knees, head lowering when all those memories come flooding back, “I just wanted to understand.”
forty-four. hope
Adachi smiles, folds his hands on the counter, leans in towards the glass while the cuffs around his wrists clink together, and he asks, “Aww, c’mon now, Dojima-san, no need to look like that - we were partners once, weren’t we?”
forty-five. eclipse
Dojima frowns at the ambiguity in that statement - he can’t remember (doesn’t know) if what they did was sincerity or betrayal anymore - and answers, “Were we?”
forty-six. gravity
The worst thing is the inevitability, the fact that no matter how many times Dojima runs over the events of the past year over in his head, the outcome remains the same - a road littered with broken pieces of a mended heart.
forty-seven. highway
Pulling into the outskirts of Inaba, Adachi can just barely make out the trail of moving lights in the distance marking the road to the city, and sometimes, like tonight, it's hard to say whether what he's looking for is at the end of that road, or if it's two miles after the turn into Exit 47a - Inaba, leaning against Dojima's car with a borrowed cigarette hanging from his lap, fingers brushing every time he raises his hand to take a drag.
forty-eight. unknown
Dojima hadn't thought those cuffs to the head would sting, didn't think the names he called and the demands he made would pierce, but then again, his judgment with these things is poor - he hadn't known that the trap Adachi had so meticulously laid would hurt this much either.
forty-nine. lock
Dojima raises a brow as the little stub slides down into the groove on the car door and turns to find Adachi already climbing into the passenger seat side, grin glinting white in the dark as he pleads (demands), "Just a little bit, sir - it'll be quick, I promise."
fifty. breathe
“You should stop coming,” Adachi says, on the nth of N visits that is only unique in that it is the last, raising his head with an expression so hollow that maybe if you squinted, you could finally see through to the other side, and as he glances at the door, he adds, “Gotta move on, Dojima-san - there's nothing for you here.”