#souharu

[ He has his elbow propped on his knee, wrist suspended, loosely, off the edge. He looks like he ought to be in a period movie – instead of Inari, then, like a fourteen-year-old Japanese James Dean: burning bright, burning out. ]

***
i am ready to owe you anything
Author:pennyofthewild
Prompt: @souharuweek2015 day 1: firsts/childhood
Word count: 820 
Ratings/Warnings: T+, smoking, brief strong language
Summary/Notes: middle school souharu ft. delinquent!haru for @buttleronduty because this is literally all her fault (please accept this humble offering).

[listen]
***

The school’s rooftop garden began as an accident, really – born of an enthusiastic seventh grade science experiment and nurtured by Iwatobi’s yearlong mild weather. Years later, it is an overgrown, untidy jungle of experiment plants grown dense and thick: muggy like a rainforest in summer, eerie and lifeless in the winter.  

On a hot afternoon in late spring, Sousuke finds Nanase perched on the balustrade, sitting on the concrete wall with one knee drawn to his chest, the other stretched out in front of him, surrounded by garden plants run wild. Like some sort of reincarnation of Inari – the hopeless nerd in Sousuke thinks – what with the gently waving leaves hovering over him, and the sunlight filtering through the canopy to dapple, pale gold and gray, over his face and hair and summer uniform, arms gleaming with afternoon sun.

The image is ruined, however, by the large, mottled bruise on his chin, varying shades of yellow and purple, and the cigarette in his mouth, smoke curling out the end like a slow obscenity. Sousuke’s matching bruise stings. Nanase hears him and looks up. His eyes flicker over Sousuke, narrow to blue slits.

“I’m not going to apologize,” Sousuke says, before Nanase can deliver one of his rare, but infamous, tongue-lashings.

Nanase’s eyebrows hitch upward, as if to say, good, because I’m not going to accept it.

“I stand by what I said,” Sousuke tilts his chin, crosses his arms over his chest. Nanase remains staunchly un-intimidated. “But we’ve got another English period and Nakamura-sensei said he would have the principal call your parents if you don’t come to class.”

“Fuck you, Yamazaki,” Nanase spits, cigarette resting in the fork of his index and middle fingers. He has his elbow propped on his knee, wrist suspended, loosely, off the edge. He looks like he ought to be in a period movie – instead of Inari, then, like a fourteen-year-old Japanese James Dean: burning bright, burning out. He looks like Rin.

The thought smarts: like Nanase’s punch, earlier – but duller, deeper, heavy in Sousuke’s chest. He shrugs. “Maybe some day, when we’re older and you know what you’re doing, I might let you.”

He can see when what he’s said sinks in: Nanase’s eyes widen, the tight line of his mouth loosening – and then he laughs – short, sharp, mirthless – like a thunderclap. Sousuke wonders, briefly, what he would sound like really laughing.  The thought closes his throat.

“Maybe,” Nanase says, “if the offer is still standing.” The promise hangs low in Sousuke’s belly – a vague, pleasant heat. Nanase moves to stub his cigarette, swings his legs off the wall.

“Wait,” Sousuke gestures at the cigarette, runs his tongue over his lips. “Don’t put it out just yet.”

Nanase pauses in his half-crouch, one foot on the ground, and looks up at Sousuke from underneath raised eyebrows, an amused smirk dancing around his mouth. “Oh? What brought this on? You’re usually just as much of a scaredy-cat as Rin.”

As usual, the sound of Rin’s name spoken aloud causes a pang in Sousuke’s chest, like peeling the scab off a day-old wound. Nanase is watching him carefully, though, so Sousuke shrugs. “I’m not against trying something new.”

A flicker crosses Nanase’s face – something between a grimace and a strange wistfulness – but then his expression clears, and he scoffs, “yeah right,” derisively, but he holds out the cigarette anyway.

Sousuke takes it, cautiously, holds it as far away from the lit end as he can. He looks down at it – it is so innocuous – a rolled-up paper stick – but strangely heavy in his hand. He can feel the weight of Nanase’s gaze on his face, and perhaps it is the idea that Nanase is waiting for him to back down – but Sousuke swallows his hesitation and lifts the cigarette to his mouth. He sucks in a quick, shallow breath, feels heat coil in the back of his throat.

It burns.

Letting the smoke escape his mouth, Sousuke decides it isn’t an altogether unpleasant feeling, but probably not something he’d do regularly. The paper is damp where Nanase’s mouth had been, and belatedly, Sousuke’s ears heat up.

“First smoke, first indirect kiss,” Nanase’s voice is its usual expressionless drawl, but Sousuke detects amusement underneath the surface, “my, my. Big day for you, isn’t it, Yamazaki-kun?”

Sousuke watches him stub the cigarette out with his heel. He swallows, looks down at his feet, attempts a light, teasing tone. “Well – you know. Have to start somewhere.”

When Sousuke looks up, Nanase is smiling at him. It isn’t a smirk. It is a smile: a soft, fond smile that brightens his eyes and lights up his face. Sousuke didn’t know Nanase could smile like that – at least, not at him. 

Sousuke’s heart sputters.

“Well then,” Nanase says, still smiling that heart-stopping smile, dimples deepening. If he hadn’t been head-over-heels for him before, Sousuke thinks, then he definitely is now, “where would you like to start?”

monday morning routines

***
[AO3]I[Listen]

***
so long, see you tomorrow
Character(s):Yamazaki Sousuke, Nanase Haruka
Word Count:1400
Ratings/Warnings: G (bad writing!!! gross fluff!!!)
Dedication:hexa-chrome
Notes:followsthe saltwater room :) (please don’t click if you’re expecting quality)
***

The morning after a rainshower: slow sunlight trickles through cracks in windowshutters, seeps warm through paperthin eyelids, melts dark to a hazy goldred, sets dustmotes afire.

The air is a still, heavy blanket of calm – an ephemeral tranquility – like the world is caught between shuddering breaths in the aftermath of a long-overdue articulation of grief.

Eyes still closed, Sousuke soaks up the feeling of comfortable warmth, interrupted periodically when a gust of air caresses his face. He revels in the lazywhir of the ancient ceiling fan, groaning as it sways, like a greatwooden ship reeling from side to side.

Abruptly, the moment is broken: the alarm goes off, screaming shrilly almost directly into Sousuke’s ears, sounding far happier than it has a right to. Sousuke is jerked rudely into (full) consciousness, eyes snapping open, brought down to Earth by a tether pulled suddenly taut. Disgruntled – he has never been a morning person – Sousuke turns the alarm off, and throws an arm over his face, hoping to reclaim his earlier sleepslow state of mind.

No time for that, the mirror over the dresser notes, snidely, you’re going to be late.

Sousuke makes an impolite gesture in its direction as he sits up.

Out in the hall, the smell of cooked rice wafts up the staircase. This early in the morning, the house is so quiet Sousuke can hear the clatter of a lid being put down, the gurgle of water in the kitchen sink, the chink of china. He stands on the landing for a moment, savoring the feeling – the promise of a homecooked breakfast, the proof of not being alone, of there being another person in the house with him, of being loved. Sousuke smiles.

When Sousuke gets downstairs – still in his pajama bottoms, but with face washed and teeth brushed –he finds the kitchen empty. The table has been set, the teapot is on the stovetop, whistling merrily, and the light on the rice cooker labeled keep warm blinks slowly on and off. Sousuke swipes a bit of grilled mackerel from the platter on the table and goes back up to the first floor.

The door to the guest bedroom is slightly ajar, and it swings back silently when Sousuke pushes it further in. Sousuke’s overnight bag is sitting open, on the bed, and the iron has been set up. Haruka is standing at the ironing board, his back to the door, face buried in Sousuke’s uniform shirt.

Sousuke props his hip against the doorframe, clears his throat. He sees Haruka’s shoulders stiffen, briefly, – and then Haruka lays the shirt down, briskly, and unplugs the iron, saying,

“Oh, you’re up, finally,” very no-nonsense, “I was starting to think I would have to come drag you out of bed,” and he starts down the hall, gaze directed pointedly away from Sousuke.

Sousuke stifles his laughter, and, on a whim, reaches out to grasp Haruka’s wrist, fingers catching on sharp-edged scales, and then his hand, bringing their palms flush together, interlacing their fingers.

Haruka says, “wear your trousers properly, you’ll wear the hems out dragging your feet like that,” but otherwise makes no protest.

“Iwatobi SC’s reopening,” Sousuke reads out loud, when he sees the headline. He flattens the newspaper, skims through the rest of the article, “and hey – they’re looking for instructors.”

Haruka lifts his soup bowl to his mouth, his knuckles standing out in sharp relief, oceanside cliffs balanced over the sea of his hands. A six-sided scale, blue-green, catches light. The bowl meets the tabletop with a quiet thud. “So?” Haruka says, deftly stacking his used tableware. He stands, in a single, fluid movement, and carries the crockery over to the sink, done in half the time Sousuke is.

Sousuke shrugs. “So nothing.” He stirs sugar into his tea, and then adds, carefully, “don’t you think it would be nice to get out of the house every once in a while?”

Haruka pauses in the midst of tying on his apron. “I do leave the house,” he says, giving Sousuke a blank look. He opens the overhead cupboard, retrieving a lacquered bento box, “We went to the grocery store just yesterday,” and he begins spooning rice from the cooker into the lunch box.

Sending Sousuke off without food violates one of Haruka’s principles – one Sousuke is particularly grateful for. There is a comfort – an affection, a security – in homecooked food no takeout, no matter how good, can properly recreate. It is a shame the bento won’t last him all week.  

Over the top of his newspaper, Sousuke sees Haruka place the lid on the box, hears it click into place. The slap of Haruka’s soles on the kitchen’s linoleum floor echoes, slightly. He places an uncapped thermos on the countertop, and lifts the teapot off the stove, one hand holding the thermos steady, the other gripping the teapot, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, lip caught between his teeth. As Sousuke watches, he runs a long-toed foot down the back of his knobbly knee, the swell of his calf, tapering to a protuberant ankle, very brown against the white of his slippers.

“You’re staring,” Haruka’s voice, laced with amusement, breaks Sousuke’s reverie. He is half-smiling, mostly with his eyes.

Before he’s really thought about it, Sousuke says, “I don’t want to blink and miss you,” surprising himself with the honesty of the statement.

Haruka stills, eyes perceptibly widening. Sousuke lifts his shoulders in an I don’t know either sort of gesture. Haruka caps the thermos. Then he comes round to where Sousuke is sitting and leans into him, wrapping an arm around Sousuke’s neck and shoulders, his fingers splayed along the side of Sousuke’s head, cheek pressed to Sousuke’s crown. Sousuke can feel the staccato beat of Haruka’s heart against his face. Sousuke breathes in the smell of him: hibiscus flowers, seasalt, clean sweat, the sweet-sharp scent of grilled fish.

“Come with me,” Sousuke says, in reprise of an oft-repeated discussion. His mind runs through his arguments: it’ll make for a good change of pace, Makoto can keep an eye on the house, you can come back whenever you want –

“You transfer here,” Haruka tells him, before stepping back and beginning to clear the table.

Sousuke says, “you know I would if there were an opening,” as he is getting up to help.

Haruka huffs, rolls his eyes at Sousuke over his shoulder, impatiently waves off Sousuke’s attempts at assistance. “Twenty minutes till your bus leaves,” he says.

Sousuke is adjusting his collar in front of the mirror in the entrance hall – it is not as bad-tempered (read: vocally opinionated) as the one in the bedroom – when Haruka emerges from the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel.

“Your tie is off-center,” he observes, dryly, and before Sousuke has a chance to disagree, reaches up to fix it with quick, practiced fingers. He tightens the knot, adjusts Sousuke’s collar, pats Sousuke’s chest, tips his head back to look Sousuke in the eye. “There, you’re perfect.”

He is smiling a little, crookedly, and it doesn’t take much for Sousuke to lower his head and kiss him, hands settling on the jut of his hips to hold him in place. Haruka angles his head, smooths his hands up Sousuke’s arms and along his shoulders till his fingers are loosely cupping Sousuke’s neck, thumbs pressing indents into the angles of Sousuke’s jaw. He tastes like home and homecooked breakfast, and Sousuke wishes very hard that he did not have to leave.

“Love you,” Sousuke says, almost absently, when he has picked up his bag and is stepping out of the house, onto the doorstep. He feels a pull at his wrist and glances back to see Haruka looking at him almost anxiously, as if he has just remembered something he had forgotten. A summer breeze ruffles his hair, rustles the leaves of the trees growing by the house.

“Love you too,” Haruka says, biting his lip, and Sousuke hears the desperate you know I he’s left unspoken.

Sousuke smiles. “I know,” he says, and, “see you next weekend,” before starting down the steps from the door.

And in the meantime: Haruka stands on the doorstep till he has disappeared around the corner. Then he steps back into the house, slowly pulling the door to a close behind him. It clicks shut with an air of finality, and in its wake, the street descends into silence.

-fin.

6 PM at the barre.

***
baby these are uncharted waters
Character(s): Yamazaki Sousuke, Nanase Haruka
Word Count: 250
Ratings/Warnings:G/T, i think? (warnings for bad writing)
Dedication:buttleronduty (i am so, so sorry, Tasha)
Notes: 1. this would be longer if i knew anything at all about ballet
2. please read at your own risk
***

“Here, let me.”

The words are almost a whisper, exhaled into the shell of his ear, and Sousuke can’t quite repress the shiver that runs down his spine as Haruka’s breath fans against the side of his face and throat. He lifts Sousuke’s good arm at the shoulder, straightens his elbow, draws it back till the muscles pull taut, but not uncomfortably so.

The wooden floor of the studio is cool through the soles of Sousuke’s shoes. He can see their reflections in the mirror: standing by the barre, Haruka curved into him, so that, from this angle, he cannot see where he ends and Haruka begins. Behind them is the late afternoon sky: rapidly darkening blue, melting into gold.

“Tell me if it hurts,” Haruka instructs, moving to his other side.

Sousuke stares down at the whorl at the top his head, grimacing a little as his arm is maneuvered into place. “It’s a good kind of hurt,” he murmurs, half to himself, but Haruka looks up, brilliant blue eyes narrowing in concern.

“Do you need me to stop?”

Sousuke smiles, slides his fingers along the line of Haruka’s jaw, finds purchase in the short, glossy hair at the nape of his neck.

“I said it was a good kind of hurt,” and he takes a breath, plunges in, “like us.”

Haruka’s gaze turns searching – eyebrows lifted slightly, wrinkles smoothening out. “Really,” he says, and Sousuke wishes he were as expressive – as able to communicate through simple, elegant gestures, whether in conversation or on the stage –

He really is the embodiment of a dancer.

“Really,” Sousuke repeats, insistent, “like us.”

Haruka breathes in, sets his forehead against Sousuke’s bicep. “Okay,” he says, “okay,” and Sousuke feels him exhale, and the brush of damp lashes against his skin. Sousuke presses a kiss to the thick of his hair, waits till he is composed.

“I think I’m ready to try again,” he says, gently removing his arm from Haruka’s grip. He cups his hands around Haruka’s shoulders, brings him to arm’s length. “Are you?”

Haruka’s lashes are spiky with moisture when he raises his chin, the beginnings of a smile curling his lips. “Don’t you dare drop me,” he says, bold despite the quiver in his voice and the quick-up-and-down movement of his chest.

Sousuke grins. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

pennyofthewild:

[In hindsight, Sousuke thinks, they should have planned things better.]

***
on hindsight and mint plants
Character(s): Yamazaki Sousuke, Nanase Haruka, Matsuoka Rin
Word Count:1900
Rating: T+ (swearing!!)
Dedication:amoosebouche (happy birthday!!! i’m sorry this is strange and crappy)
Notes: written off the prompt “me and my buddies vandalized your backyard trampling your mini garden in the process. now i feel really shitty cause you’re really upset about this. look i’ll help fix it okay just stop with the sad faces,” because i am braindead and can’t come up with story ideas right now

also - please don’t click on the read more if you’re expecting quality (my sincerest apologies, mobile users)

***

In hindsight, Sousuke thinks, they should have planned things better – for example, actually considered possible escape routes –  before carrying out The Secret Plan.

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