Work Text:
On the seventh, Yuta takes Sicheng to Sendai.
On a bus first, where in their boredom Yuta painted his fingernails dark brown and Sicheng held a book in his lap, read in a slow, languid manner, and fell asleep in the middle of it. His nose had dipped almost into his lap, and Yuta spent the whole ride holding his head back.
“The White Book,” Yuta intoned, staring at the well-worn book jacket curiously. “Han Kang.”
“It was a gift,” Sicheng murmured, his voice soft and muffled from behind the paper of his mask, then fell back to sleep, drifting right back into his soft, easy slumber, but his hands had remained curled tight around the book.
Then on a train, where Sicheng stared out of the window into a sort of muted awe. He lifted his hand and pressed his finger to the window, his face close to it, but Yuta had stopped him.
“It's dirty,” Yuta had chided. “You don't know where other people's hands have been. You can't touch the rain from inside a train.”
“It would be beautiful to,” Sicheng told him, and Yuta had gone quiet then. His face had gone soft. He pulled Sicheng's hand away from the window and held it in his lap. Sicheng loves when it rains, and the cold, dry wind that comes with it, and now Yuta feels like he does, too. He'd softened because of it.
They hadn't brought anything but their wallets and their own warm bodies, but huddling close together in the train could keep them warm.
And then they get there, their feet on the cool ground of Sendai, and it's like coming home. It is just around evening when they arrive and the festivities have just begun. For Sicheng, Yuta buys a yakisoba and a yukata set in a perfect blue. He ties the ribbon tight around Sicheng's waist, his hands trembling, feeling a shiver crawl all the way up Sicheng's spine.
For himself, Yuta buys a small silver tray of okonomiyaki for them to share, and then a yukata set in a pale yellow, sand-like color.
“This is beautiful,” Sicheng says simply, fiddling with the ribbon around his waist. His yukata is as blue as the sky, as blue as water. Yuta almost drowns just staring into the fabric.
“It's not as good as Osaka,” Yuta says with a laugh. He doesn't mean to be smug, or self-aggrandizing. It's where he was born, and Osaka is an experience inasmuch as it is a place, and he wishes to share it with Sicheng again. Just once more. “But it's a beautiful place.” It's good enough to share. To give him.
“No, not Sendai,” Sicheng says, looking into Yuta's eyes, staring straight into them. “Not just that. This whole thing.” He smoothens down his yukata. “The food, the festival.”
A small child slips past him with a Hello Kitty balloon in one hand and a juice bottle with Pororo on it. “Yes,” Yuta says, weaving out of the way, “and the weather, too. The rain.”
The rain pours, crisp and cold over their heads and against their necks, like water in a glass. Sicheng covers his head with his hand. Yuta shields Sicheng with the sleeve of his yukata.
They stand there in the rain. Yuta cleaves a slice of okonomiyaki and takes it in his mouth with a black skewer. Sicheng slurps yakisoba, eating it noodle by noodle, quiet as a mouse. They stand there, quiet for a moment, waiting for the rain to stop, or just for it to stay still.
Yuta leaves the last slice of okonomiyaki for Sicheng. Sicheng takes it, obedient, then dumps the tray and the skewer into the trash.
“Let's make a wish,” Yuta says. From the basket he takes a yellow wish card— to wish for friendship. Sicheng takes one in white. For duty. For responsibility. Silently Yuta presses his hands together in prayer, and Sicheng watches for a moment before following him.
Sicheng holds the strip of paper in his hand, closes his eyes, and thinks of his wish. He wishes to be free from responsibility. And then he opens his eyes and looks down at his tanzaku. A small hole has been punched through it, and with a shaky hand he threads a thin, long red ribbon through the hole.
Yuta holds a similar one in his hand, but in a deep blue-black. For the water. It's darker than Sicheng's yukata, which is an almost transparent blue, so much darker than it. He wishes for their friendship to last longer, for it to never be washed away by the rain or the water. For it to still be here come morning.
Sicheng thinks this place is better than the other cities he'd been before. It's quieter, for one reason. It's less busy than Tokyo, and the people here are more easy-going than those in Osaka. And the weather is cooler here, too.
Sicheng is quiet. He pulls the ribbon between his fingers and tugs at it until it's pulled taut, tight, and threats it through the tanzaku.
They'd finished praying. Sicheng stands there beside Yuta, quiet, a soft smile forming on his face. Yuta's heart beats in his chest, drum-like. He hangs his tanzaku fast on the bamboo tree to hide the way the beat of his heart is quickening in the midst of Sicheng's presence, and his movements are swift but elegant still.
Sicheng mimics him then. He stands on tiptoe, his heels turned up and all of his weight on the balls of his feet, and hangs the strip of paper on a short, spindly branch of the bamboo tree. Yuta's gaze falls on his long, elegant hand, on his slender fingers, and then on the bracelet circling his small wrist.
Kunhang had given him the bracelet, and Yuta almost feels a twinge of jealousy because of it.
“What did you wish for?” Sicheng asks to break the silence. Yuta had wished for him, in some way, but he couldn't tell Sicheng that.
Yuta smiles and shakes his head. “I can't tell you,” he says, “or it won't come true.”
Sicheng frowns at him and Yuta almost lifts his hand and reaches out to smoothen it away from his mouth, but the cold air blows into their faces, and Sicheng's hair fans across his pale neck like butterfly wings. With a twitch of his hand, Yuta reaches up then, and brushes Sicheng's hair and tucks it behind his ear.
Sicheng's pretty, elfin ear. Yuta shivers at the contact. “You need to get your hair cut soon.” Yuta runs his fingers through the dark of it and pulls it back. “I know. I can cut it for you.”
“You know how to?” Sicheng asks, sceptical.
“I've been learning. We haven't seen each other in a while. I've learned a lot since the last time we saw each other,” Yuta tells him. And it didn't take any longer than a week for me to start missing you, he thinks. “I just don't know how to dye hair yet. Not really.”
Sicheng looks up at Yuta then. Sadly, but fondly too. More fond now than ever. Yuta stands there, quiet in his own thoughts.
“Everything is temporary,” Yuta tells Sicheng without looking at him. Sicheng looks at him, confused. “The weaver was married off to a cowherd, and she fell in love with him, and then they were separated, and then he was exiled to a riverbank. Nothing lasts forever.”
You could be gone tomorrow, too, Yuta thinks.
Sicheng looks away. He thinks of the tale Yuta had told him one, two, three— so many times before. He feels a slight twinge of melancholy. He slips his fingers into Yuta's hand, silent, his heart beating in his chest like a very loud drum, but like a muted war chant at the same time. Yuta has to trust him if he wants to hear it. He sits in his thoughts for a moment.
“But separation is temporary, too,” Sicheng protests. They were willing to make it work.”
Yuta looks at Sicheng, his face softening, his eyes glazing over with missing him. Sicheng leans in toward Yuta then, cautious, his hands never brushing or touching him completely.
Like a fever dream, Sendai unfolds in front of their eyes. It unfolds right in front of them.
Yuta thinks again of the bracelet on Sicheng's wrist, and the book he'd carried on the way here. “Everything you have right now was a gift to you. I want to give you something too.”
“This day is enough,” Sicheng tells him. “It's enough for me to be able to spend time.” His voice goes quiet. It's a whisper. “With you.”
“Yeah?” Yuta says, his voice barely above the whisper of Sicheng's voice. He holds Sicheng's hand in his, tightens his grip around it, before letting go. His voice is a thousand miles away.
“You're my friend. You're like a gift to me already,” Sicheng says. “Your time is a gift.”
Yuta feels like he's returning to the waters. He holds Sicheng's hand in his and swings their hands together. Yuta has never felt like this before. He didn't know he could thaw Sicheng like that. Didn't know he could like Sicheng even more than ever now that he was warmer.
They were friends. Yuta wants more than that, maybe, but it was more than enough for now. He'd thawed Sicheng. He'd had his feet in the water, and now he's wading back to the shore.
The cold of Sicheng's heart thaws. It wrinkles. Somewhere in his chest, it aches. It flutters like a butterfly wing, and aches like one, too.