[ ugetsu feels how yuki's legs give out, not so much through the faint and obscured touch of their hands but through the reverberation of the sound. it takes any if not all of the punch out of that witty one-liner. it would be easier if yuki laughed at him, if yuki yoshida did not actually care. but he does.
it would be easier if ugetsu did not actually care.
but he does.
on the tip of his tongue: if i was supposed to rest, why am i here? why am i listening to this?
at least it's blindness. if ugetsu regained consciousness to a soundless world, that would have been what the cliches call a fate worse than death.
another shuddered breath struggles through his body. like being dragged through the mud when you're already sick. like telling someone goodbye when you want nothing more than for them to stay.
it hurts.
yuki's forehead touches against wrapped knuckles and ugetsu swallows a sharp feeling of something like failure down into the blackhole of himself.
all of yuki yoshida's reactions tell him things without telling him things: that mafuyu is forbidden to yuki as a kind of cross to bear, that he's afraid of mafuyu seeing what's written in tabloids even by accident, that he misses him because you never stop missing the people you love. ugetsu, at least, understands that one. nicer if he didn't, but you can't win it all. no. anyone who says 'i didn't have time to think' doesn't really know; doesn't really care. if you care, if you really do, the anxiety and regret and impossible love all come up around the edges. water flooding your house to remind you it could have been a home.
but.
yuki is here.
ugetsu is alive.
for better or for worse.
they both are.
better. and
worse.
the little laugh is like static. ugetsu doesn't recognize himself, but he cards burned fingers through yuki's hair: there there. yet even this conventionally comforting motion...isn't. what it is: anchor in the sea. ]
Then I guess it's a good thing I can't see myself.
[ dry. like he's not talking about something as serious as it is. like none of this is happening. the moon in drought. deny. refuse. and then the truth imbibed will be its own questionable substance. ugetsu can't see a thing, and the only warmth he feels is from yuki. there's no reason, no practical reason for how his quiet traitorous self opens the wound of fear and shame and murmurs, ]
...but can you turn the light off.
[ it's still ugetsu, so of course it doesn't sound like a question so much as a command. if yuki still cannot stand though, it's not like anything bad will happen when the lights stay on. the faint buzzing ugetsu can hear so keenly amongst the machines keeping him monitored, hydrated, stable, drugged, ten thousand things but above all keeping him...somehow that buzzing is so loud. drowning him in fluorescent noise he'd take a knife to if he could.
he'd rather listen to yuki. his inhales. his exhales. his heartbeat.
his hope and his fear. his brilliance and his withdrawals. his love and his hate. ]
no subject
it would be easier if ugetsu did not actually care.
but he does.
on the tip of his tongue: if i was supposed to rest, why am i here? why am i listening to this?
at least it's blindness. if ugetsu regained consciousness to a soundless world, that would have been what the cliches call a fate worse than death.
another shuddered breath struggles through his body. like being dragged through the mud when you're already sick. like telling someone goodbye when you want nothing more than for them to stay.
it hurts.
yuki's forehead touches against wrapped knuckles and ugetsu swallows a sharp feeling of something like failure down into the blackhole of himself.
all of yuki yoshida's reactions tell him things without telling him things: that mafuyu is forbidden to yuki as a kind of cross to bear, that he's afraid of mafuyu seeing what's written in tabloids even by accident, that he misses him because you never stop missing the people you love. ugetsu, at least, understands that one. nicer if he didn't, but you can't win it all. no. anyone who says 'i didn't have time to think' doesn't really know; doesn't really care. if you care, if you really do, the anxiety and regret and impossible love all come up around the edges. water flooding your house to remind you it could have been a home.
but.
yuki is here.
ugetsu is alive.
for better or for worse.
they both are.
better. and
worse.
the little laugh is like static. ugetsu doesn't recognize himself, but he cards burned fingers through yuki's hair: there there. yet even this conventionally comforting motion...isn't. what it is: anchor in the sea. ]
Then I guess it's a good thing I can't see myself.
[ dry. like he's not talking about something as serious as it is. like none of this is happening. the moon in drought. deny. refuse. and then the truth imbibed will be its own questionable substance. ugetsu can't see a thing, and the only warmth he feels is from yuki. there's no reason, no practical reason for how his quiet traitorous self opens the wound of fear and shame and murmurs, ]
...but can you turn the light off.
[ it's still ugetsu, so of course it doesn't sound like a question so much as a command. if yuki still cannot stand though, it's not like anything bad will happen when the lights stay on. the faint buzzing ugetsu can hear so keenly amongst the machines keeping him monitored, hydrated, stable, drugged, ten thousand things but above all keeping him...somehow that buzzing is so loud. drowning him in fluorescent noise he'd take a knife to if he could.
he'd rather listen to yuki. his inhales. his exhales. his heartbeat.
his hope and his fear. his brilliance and his withdrawals. his love and his hate. ]