[fic] untitled. sanayuki-ish.
35-min drabble. man i'm slow.
dude. i dunno. just need to unload. this isn't the last sanada shortfic that i promised, so i'm sort of cheating by posting this, but okay. my journal. so...
***
Something about the weather gets you in the mood to mull over old sacrifices. Rain gives you memories of a garden viewed from a barely lit room, where the smell of damp earth was soothingly familiar.
You remember a younger man kneeling where the light from outside was brightest, safely away from the water and the biting wind, pale with illness and worry. The young man only turned to look at you when you sat down beside him, at a respectful distance.
He smiled. You knew the sadness in that smile, it said he didn't want to talk about unpleasant things just yet.
"I made new sketches last night. Would you like to look at them?" He glanced down at the sketchbook on his lap, his slim hand caressed the cover. "I still get the urge to draw sometimes," he said, shyly as if talking about a guilty pleasure.
You moved closer to him and when you had settled he flipped through the pages, pausing sometimes to ask if you'd seen some of the drawings before.
That sketchbook had become a part of him. He'd been carrying it around since you two were freshmen in the middle school you attended. He used it to capture people, usually, but sometimes he also used it to describe dreams.
His favorite subject was your team, the one you two had formed with your own hands. But there were some team members he liked drawing more than others.
You've always believed you were the one with the fewest sketches. You were deserving of a place in the book simply because you served a purpose in the whole, was as indispensable as the rest... but you looked at yourself on the paper and saw a clumsy, hulking thing, rushed, captured out of duty and not of awe.
His later sketches had been of repetitive subjects. It was either Renji, poetry at rest, or Akaya, poetry in motion. You knew this was how he saw them, because of how well you knew him.
"Ah," he exclaimed, "Akaya's missing an ear." He chuckled quietly and picked up the pencil he had deposited on the floor, between the two of you. His fingers clamped around the tube, but...
"What's wrong?" you asked when you saw distress on his face. He answered with a small embarrassed laugh.
You realized it then. It was enough of an effort to keep his fingers on the pencil. You didn't even think about it. You took his slender hand, still holding on to the pencil, and lifted it back onto the paper.
He didn't even look at you. His brows knitted in concentration. If you let go, his hand was going to fall to his side, and stay there until the numbness went away.
"I'll keep your hand steady."
He started to say something in reply, but in the end just flashed an apologetic smile.
"All right..." he murmured.
You were prepared to stay there for as long as it took, dark hand wrapped around white, keeping a slender pencil trapped in long white fingers. Maybe you were even waiting for him to say something. No words came to you, though you knew you had come there to talk, and under normal circumstances you would be filling the quiet room with your low, gruff voice reporting and repeating. You wouldn't be sitting this close together.
And it was like no time had passed at all when his fingers were able to move again. Feeling returned to his limbs slowly, you sensed his relief even before you heard it in his sigh.
He gave Akaya an ear on the paper, and then blessed you with a small celebratory laugh. Still, you felt that if you let go, the pencil would fall from his hand.
He seemed to know that.
"Help me turn the page. I want to draw something else."
Rain reminds you of that time you knelt next to him, your palm against the back of his hand, gentle as you had never been, alert to his slightest movement. While you held him like this, his pencil started to move, carefully and painfully putting down the outline of a body that wasn't yours.
And every time it rains, you say to yourself, It was worth it for the smile on his face.
dude. i dunno. just need to unload. this isn't the last sanada shortfic that i promised, so i'm sort of cheating by posting this, but okay. my journal. so...
***
Something about the weather gets you in the mood to mull over old sacrifices. Rain gives you memories of a garden viewed from a barely lit room, where the smell of damp earth was soothingly familiar.
You remember a younger man kneeling where the light from outside was brightest, safely away from the water and the biting wind, pale with illness and worry. The young man only turned to look at you when you sat down beside him, at a respectful distance.
He smiled. You knew the sadness in that smile, it said he didn't want to talk about unpleasant things just yet.
"I made new sketches last night. Would you like to look at them?" He glanced down at the sketchbook on his lap, his slim hand caressed the cover. "I still get the urge to draw sometimes," he said, shyly as if talking about a guilty pleasure.
You moved closer to him and when you had settled he flipped through the pages, pausing sometimes to ask if you'd seen some of the drawings before.
That sketchbook had become a part of him. He'd been carrying it around since you two were freshmen in the middle school you attended. He used it to capture people, usually, but sometimes he also used it to describe dreams.
His favorite subject was your team, the one you two had formed with your own hands. But there were some team members he liked drawing more than others.
You've always believed you were the one with the fewest sketches. You were deserving of a place in the book simply because you served a purpose in the whole, was as indispensable as the rest... but you looked at yourself on the paper and saw a clumsy, hulking thing, rushed, captured out of duty and not of awe.
His later sketches had been of repetitive subjects. It was either Renji, poetry at rest, or Akaya, poetry in motion. You knew this was how he saw them, because of how well you knew him.
"Ah," he exclaimed, "Akaya's missing an ear." He chuckled quietly and picked up the pencil he had deposited on the floor, between the two of you. His fingers clamped around the tube, but...
"What's wrong?" you asked when you saw distress on his face. He answered with a small embarrassed laugh.
You realized it then. It was enough of an effort to keep his fingers on the pencil. You didn't even think about it. You took his slender hand, still holding on to the pencil, and lifted it back onto the paper.
He didn't even look at you. His brows knitted in concentration. If you let go, his hand was going to fall to his side, and stay there until the numbness went away.
"I'll keep your hand steady."
He started to say something in reply, but in the end just flashed an apologetic smile.
"All right..." he murmured.
You were prepared to stay there for as long as it took, dark hand wrapped around white, keeping a slender pencil trapped in long white fingers. Maybe you were even waiting for him to say something. No words came to you, though you knew you had come there to talk, and under normal circumstances you would be filling the quiet room with your low, gruff voice reporting and repeating. You wouldn't be sitting this close together.
And it was like no time had passed at all when his fingers were able to move again. Feeling returned to his limbs slowly, you sensed his relief even before you heard it in his sigh.
He gave Akaya an ear on the paper, and then blessed you with a small celebratory laugh. Still, you felt that if you let go, the pencil would fall from his hand.
He seemed to know that.
"Help me turn the page. I want to draw something else."
Rain reminds you of that time you knelt next to him, your palm against the back of his hand, gentle as you had never been, alert to his slightest movement. While you held him like this, his pencil started to move, carefully and painfully putting down the outline of a body that wasn't yours.
And every time it rains, you say to yourself, It was worth it for the smile on his face.