as it is (anam/maki)
Anam/Maki (anamu&maki/アナム&マキ)
G. 992w.
Just a short thinky piece with no plot (lol my specialty!). Because I love their music and I love them and every time I watch the あるがまま (Aru Ga Mama) PV I get all wistful.
Summer in Japan feels a lot stickier than she remembers after a week in London. Her forearm sticks to the curve of her guitar's body, the callouses of her fingertips slipping across the strings as she sits on the back steps, plucking out a thoughtless melody. She can feel a trickle of sweat making a slow creeping journey down the side of her face, easing down the plane of her cheek. Her hair is too long for this kind of humidity; it frizzes and sticks uncomfortably to her neck, her shoulders, and her arms.
London was entirely removed from this kind of heat - a cool paradise, if paradise had grey streets and smoky bars and pubs with amber-yellow windows - little glowing chips of topaz in the haze of early evening. Maki likes those places, though. Places that are cool and dark and foggy, where she can almost disappear just by holding her breath in the street.
She likes the way she and Anam sound together when they play there - they play like the fog will take them the next morning. Or maybe that's just her - Anam plays with that same wild abandon she's always played with, as though she has never learned not to, like Maki has. She likes the way Anam makes eye contact and holds out a hand after playing a set at a bar, like, 'good work, partner,' and the silly way she smiles when they shake hands. It makes her smile, too.
She likes the atmosphere, and she likes the way their voices sound in bars, pubs, and cafés - when they get paid for playing - but she likes it best when they're back home in Osaka, jamming in their living room with the yellow walls. Or behind the house, Anam leaning against the old red door, her favourite guitar in her lap, the one with the pickguard almost like the burst of an expression across the body. She likes how alone they sound in the small backyard, enclosed by the grey, wooden slats of the fence running the perimeter. Like this space is their own private bubble.
It's a little too quiet - outside and inside the house - and as if she can read Maki's mind before the thought is fully formulated, Anam's voice suddenly pipes up from above Maki's head.
'If you think too much, you'll get wrinkles early.' Fingers wet with ice-cold water smooth across her brow, and Anam is smiling down at her from her position against the doorframe, hands slipping down to touch her fingertips to the bone of Maki's cheek before fluttering away, leaving cold spots against Maki's flushed skin, a cool swipe across her forehead.
Maki half-turns on the cement step and smiles back with gratefulness. 'It's hot as hell today, yeah?'
Anam collapses onto the step as well, leaning back on the palms of her hands, legs thrown before her. She makes a humming noise, and her arm, where it presses against Maki's, is soothingly cool all the way up to the elbow. Maki shifts closer, guitar still in her lap, and closes her hand loosely around the column of Anam's forearm, leaning over and resting her head against Anam's bare shoulder. Anam hums again, touching Maki's head with her own, and she can feel more than hear the small vibration of Anam's vocal chords. She doesn't like how hot it is lately, but when she's with Anam like this, the muddling heat feels almost like the soft, sated embrace of a friendly lover. The hum turns into a song, half-murmured into Maki's hair and weightless in the summer humidity.
The mindless tune reminds her of afternoons all those years ago - in high school, when the folk music club really just consisted of herself and Anam, and they'd head to the end of the field at school and sit and smoke cigarettes and play whatever they felt like playing as the track team ran laps around them, the sun bright and the sky full of smog. They'd sit so close their guitars would bump every once in a while, and more often when Anam was in one of her silly moods, howling and thrashing around like a dying fish while strumming her guitar with such ferocity Maki always thought she'd break a string - though mostly Maki just laughed and laughed until she couldn't focus on her own guitar, bent over it in stitches as she so often was.
Anam at sixteen was not too different from Anam now, at thirty. She still makes Maki laugh in ways that are probably too silly for them. When she turned thirty, she almost felt like they had to give up the jam sessions over breakfast, the afternoons flying kites in the park, the exploratory adventures in the wilderness (or rather, just the national park). Then Anam picked up her guitar, looked at her in that way - the look that preceded either inspired song-writing or silly mischief - and burst into a birthday song complete with a dance routine and several yodeling wails, and she knew things would never change, not after so long.
Maki's known her for fourteen years, lived with her for ten. That's a long time to know someone. Even longer to love them.
She's almost asleep, hand dropping to Anam's wrist in a loose circle, when Anam stops singing. She stirs at the trailing off of her voice, and Anam slides an arm around her, careful, gentle, brushing her hair away to press a lingering kiss on her forehead. When Maki opens her eyes, heavy-lidded with the heat, she sees Anam.
Just Anam, and the way Anam looks at her, like this is so normal and perfect, and she knows that she could live like this forever. Just her and Anam and their guitars and their music, and a love that makes the heat bearable. Just Anam and Maki.
Just... Anam.
1 Anam's guitar and handshake, their London trip, and their respective playing styles refer to this video in what looks like a dingy London bar/club.
G. 992w.
Just a short thinky piece with no plot (lol my specialty!). Because I love their music and I love them and every time I watch the あるがまま (Aru Ga Mama) PV I get all wistful.
Summer in Japan feels a lot stickier than she remembers after a week in London. Her forearm sticks to the curve of her guitar's body, the callouses of her fingertips slipping across the strings as she sits on the back steps, plucking out a thoughtless melody. She can feel a trickle of sweat making a slow creeping journey down the side of her face, easing down the plane of her cheek. Her hair is too long for this kind of humidity; it frizzes and sticks uncomfortably to her neck, her shoulders, and her arms.
London was entirely removed from this kind of heat - a cool paradise, if paradise had grey streets and smoky bars and pubs with amber-yellow windows - little glowing chips of topaz in the haze of early evening. Maki likes those places, though. Places that are cool and dark and foggy, where she can almost disappear just by holding her breath in the street.
She likes the way she and Anam sound together when they play there - they play like the fog will take them the next morning. Or maybe that's just her - Anam plays with that same wild abandon she's always played with, as though she has never learned not to, like Maki has. She likes the way Anam makes eye contact and holds out a hand after playing a set at a bar, like, 'good work, partner,' and the silly way she smiles when they shake hands. It makes her smile, too.
She likes the atmosphere, and she likes the way their voices sound in bars, pubs, and cafés - when they get paid for playing - but she likes it best when they're back home in Osaka, jamming in their living room with the yellow walls. Or behind the house, Anam leaning against the old red door, her favourite guitar in her lap, the one with the pickguard almost like the burst of an expression across the body. She likes how alone they sound in the small backyard, enclosed by the grey, wooden slats of the fence running the perimeter. Like this space is their own private bubble.
It's a little too quiet - outside and inside the house - and as if she can read Maki's mind before the thought is fully formulated, Anam's voice suddenly pipes up from above Maki's head.
'If you think too much, you'll get wrinkles early.' Fingers wet with ice-cold water smooth across her brow, and Anam is smiling down at her from her position against the doorframe, hands slipping down to touch her fingertips to the bone of Maki's cheek before fluttering away, leaving cold spots against Maki's flushed skin, a cool swipe across her forehead.
Maki half-turns on the cement step and smiles back with gratefulness. 'It's hot as hell today, yeah?'
Anam collapses onto the step as well, leaning back on the palms of her hands, legs thrown before her. She makes a humming noise, and her arm, where it presses against Maki's, is soothingly cool all the way up to the elbow. Maki shifts closer, guitar still in her lap, and closes her hand loosely around the column of Anam's forearm, leaning over and resting her head against Anam's bare shoulder. Anam hums again, touching Maki's head with her own, and she can feel more than hear the small vibration of Anam's vocal chords. She doesn't like how hot it is lately, but when she's with Anam like this, the muddling heat feels almost like the soft, sated embrace of a friendly lover. The hum turns into a song, half-murmured into Maki's hair and weightless in the summer humidity.
The mindless tune reminds her of afternoons all those years ago - in high school, when the folk music club really just consisted of herself and Anam, and they'd head to the end of the field at school and sit and smoke cigarettes and play whatever they felt like playing as the track team ran laps around them, the sun bright and the sky full of smog. They'd sit so close their guitars would bump every once in a while, and more often when Anam was in one of her silly moods, howling and thrashing around like a dying fish while strumming her guitar with such ferocity Maki always thought she'd break a string - though mostly Maki just laughed and laughed until she couldn't focus on her own guitar, bent over it in stitches as she so often was.
Anam at sixteen was not too different from Anam now, at thirty. She still makes Maki laugh in ways that are probably too silly for them. When she turned thirty, she almost felt like they had to give up the jam sessions over breakfast, the afternoons flying kites in the park, the exploratory adventures in the wilderness (or rather, just the national park). Then Anam picked up her guitar, looked at her in that way - the look that preceded either inspired song-writing or silly mischief - and burst into a birthday song complete with a dance routine and several yodeling wails, and she knew things would never change, not after so long.
Maki's known her for fourteen years, lived with her for ten. That's a long time to know someone. Even longer to love them.
She's almost asleep, hand dropping to Anam's wrist in a loose circle, when Anam stops singing. She stirs at the trailing off of her voice, and Anam slides an arm around her, careful, gentle, brushing her hair away to press a lingering kiss on her forehead. When Maki opens her eyes, heavy-lidded with the heat, she sees Anam.
Just Anam, and the way Anam looks at her, like this is so normal and perfect, and she knows that she could live like this forever. Just her and Anam and their guitars and their music, and a love that makes the heat bearable. Just Anam and Maki.
Just... Anam.
1 Anam's guitar and handshake, their London trip, and their respective playing styles refer to this video in what looks like a dingy London bar/club.