Work Text:
i.
Their three-hundred-and-seventh is a second distorted by the passing of trains and bodies, but time’s wide stretched mouth holds them carefully between its teeth, all transcendent rush and February cold and divine intervention as Yaku’s hand hangs limp in the folds of his scarf. The platform’s bustle stirs like one waking beast, pressing and bumping against him, jostling the messenger bag slung over his shoulder and the homework inside, and while he’s used to the pain of early-morning commuting he’s not exactly over it. His train’s doors hiss open with a collective pneumatic breath and he fits himself through the crowd like sand through a sieve, anonymous and dull-eyed, one of millions removed from a greater purpose.
He rubs the sleep out of his eyes as he boards, forgoing an unfilled spot because the adjoining seat’s filled well by a hulking mass of a kid and he’s attached to the money in his wallet. Scratching idly at the inside of his elbow, Yaku leans his weight into a ragged hanging strap and studies the weary river of people outside the wide windows. The yellow flat of the underground sinks into his skin, coating itself in another layer around his city-born bones, and he wishes (stubbornly and idealistically and tiredly) the monotony would break.
And it does.
A head rises tall and silver, a stone obstructing an unending, winding current, and Yaku blinks. The doors glide closed to the droning soundtrack of a worn recording and he’s focused entirely on a pair of eyes green as summer in the mountains. There’s something hollowing out the space just below his lungs and he’s more awake than he’s been in years. He catches an airless breath from the stale, person-heavy space around him and steps forward, eyebrows furrowing low over his eyes, but the train slides into slick motion and Yaku stumbles before regaining his balance.
When he looks up, the tunnel’s brick walls have blurred into the dark and time’s jaws shut softly again, the hush of the returned, tedious black aching lonely and nostalgic.
∞
They’re categorized like this:
Short as a monosyllable word. A clicked tongue.
Long as a yawn, pulled and lingering and calm.
(only under time’s impersonality. only when they meet. only when they belong to the same world. possibility unravels a universal braid and the strands run for eternities, endless reincarnations and infinite alternatives all spread neatly beneath a sightless eye.)
ii.
Three-hundred-seventeen is stained with ink and laid out like graphing paper; they fit inside a shell of CAD programs and infrastructure and home’s a series of high-roofed apartments and each other.
…
The hardhat is a size too large, so it dips forward every time Yaku glances down at the blueprint. He maneuvers through the dusty I-beamed skeleton of the company’s latest project and chews at his lip, leading an allotted brood of interns from wall-less room to wall-less room. His deep-well of patience is lapped steadily away over the course of an intensive hour in which one of his charges trips and falls, he finds a flaw in an elevator’s catch, and a stripe of rust smears on the sleeve of his good jacket.
By the time he’s traveled the long gravel drive connecting construction and highway, the cool morning’s been leeched away by a sun that boils the sky into a blue so saturated it burns afterimages into his corneas. His jacket hangs over his arm and the hardhat is thankfully back where it belongs (the back of a utility shed, untouched by the light of day) and he’s thinking eagerly of lunch and iced drinks when he finds his car. He pulls out his keys, poised to unlock the door, but stops short with a groan when he realizes he’s blocked in.
“Of course,” he mutters, pocketing his keys again. Yaku levels the dented and aged exterior of the offending truck with a glare and tries very, very hard not to mind as he tosses his papers and jacket into the backseat of the sedan and begins the trek back to the build-site.
…
The manager, mourning a lunch pushed momentarily aside, doesn’t blink when Yaku hauls himself up the mobile office’s steps and through the doorway. His unsurprised face pushes Yaku’s annoyance further and he swipes impatiently at the sweat running into his eyes. “That’s probably Lev’s truck.” He thumbs a button on his walkie-talkie. “Someone get Haiba. Yeah. South lot.”
…
As first impressions go, it’s not a bad one—or good, really—and the whole thing’s underlined with a feeling kind of like a fishing-line dragging something heavy and limp through deep water. Smooth and inevitable and part of an endless flow.
“Sorry,” is the first thing Yaku hears Lev say. The juxtaposed uncaring tone of the apology complements the lanky unfolding of his long limbs from a driver’s seat wreathed and speckled with trash and crumbs, but where distaste-tinged exasperation would normally sour is—cautious curiosity.
“It’s fine.” Yaku opens the door and leans into it, resting an arm casually over the roof as he assesses the hanging front-bumper on Lev’s truck. It’s an emaciated slop of thin metal and thinner blue paint and the small sleek of Yaku’s car parked beside it does no favors. Yaku knows he’s a good judge of character and knows, also, how cars and homes are reflections of their owners, so the image for the tall and young Haiba Lev forming in his mind isn’t steeped in favorability. He considers the worn-tread of the truck’s wheels and, because he’s a little bitter and more than a little vengeful, continues: “Your boss didn’t seem surprised.”
“It happens a lot.” Yaku stares, unimpressed. “I have classes right before, so the rest of the spots are taken when I get here.”
“Oh.” Yaku glances at a perfectly empty space just a row over and he’s still trying very, very hard not to mind. His stomach’s growling and there’s dust in his mouth, but the nagging interest at the forefront of his mind buzzes relentlessly. The sky overhead, lined with feathered clouds, slides and skews and there’s something timeless churning in the gravel and dust lot. Silent and unseen, the line cuts its way through water. “What are you studying?”
Lev blinks and Yaku definitely and absolutely does not notice the length of his eyelashes pale against his skin. His smile is broad, fueled by a fervently brilliant flame, and the earth beneath Yaku’s feet stands very still as the sky loses its grip on the horizon. “Architecture.”
And it’s inescapable—this life is kind and bright and they leave relics as they go: names etched deep in bronze placards, stone walls, and the scratched-wood counter in a mountain lodge’s kitchen. Heavy print and stylistic print and Lev’s awful handwriting framed by a thin-line heart, Haiba Lev and Yaku Morisuke, one beside the other over and over again, fitting naturally at opposite ends of a fate-threaded string.
iii.
In another three-hundredth:
Yaku is twenty and finishing a zoology degree.
Haiba Lev is four-year-old snow leopard.
…
“It’s snowing,” Yaku says, leant up against the outer edge of a grass and rock enclosure. He stuffs his dry and cracked hands in the pockets of his coat, curling his fingers into his palms as he and his coworker watch Lev watch them. The soft round of his ears swivel in time with their start-and-stop conversation. “Must feel more like home.”
“Not like he’d know,” Shouhei murmurs, his short eyebrows drawn over the dark of his eyes. Yaku makes a noncommittal noise at the back of his throat and looks up. The sky’s a patchy slip between grey and white and the snowflakes melt instantly against his skin and steaming sigh.
“No,” Yaku agrees, and worries at his bottom lip. “The Altai are far away.” They stand and listen to the zoo around them: the birds worrying at their food, the sleepy shuffle of the deer down the path, the rest of the staff finishing the day’s chores. Yamamoto’s laughing from behind the Black Bear’s habitat and soon Inouka joins in, too. It’s probably all at the expensive of Shibayama, who’s up against his first feeding. Yaku considers intervening, but the mess they’d made (and cleaned, after a lecture) in the kitchen that afternoon still stands in bright and irritated contrast.
“It makes me a little sad.”
“Yeah?” Lev’s ears twitch at a distant sound, then back. The snow’s starting to collect on the handrail and the top of Yaku’s knit hat, but the cat seems content enough curled on his manmade ledge.
Shouhei shrugs and rests his cheek on a propped palm. His voice is velveteen quiet, which isn’t unusual, but the soft edge of it drops Yaku’s stomach. “He may never see where he comes from.”
“It is pretty sad,” he says, and withdraws a hand from a warm pocket to brush the snow from his clothes. Lev stares with his big, big green eyes, fading behind the falling snowflakes, out of place and untouchable. “This is all he knows.”
iv.
(An extension of a familiar life.)
…
“You’re nineteen years old,” Yaku grits out, grabbing fistfuls of Lev’s shirt and pulling. “You can get out of bed on your own.”
“’s cold.”
“I’m going to be late to class and you’re going to be late to practice.” Yaku leans all of his weight back into his heels and reaches blindly for something to throw. Lev, sensing the pain to come, curls farther into the blankets. Yaku closes a hand over the unworked spine of Lev’s English textbook and hefts it high.
Dawn’s blue and pink through the slats of the blinds and the threat of a lukewarm cup of coffee adds to a growing temper and—he’s dating an idiot, probably. “I’ll leave you here,” he warns, adopting the vestiges of a team-mom voice he’d never really abandoned. The blankets shift and Yaku lets go, sliding the textbook back into its home; it’ll wait for an identical morning on a day just like this one. Yaku turns away as Lev all but falls out of bed and hides an affectionate smile by searching a pile of unfolded laundry for a clean shirt.
“You’re still really mean to me,” Lev complains, loud and whining as he finally stands and straightens. He yawns and stretches, long arms scraping against the ceiling of their bedroom. When Yaku turns to look, the sunlight slants diagonal and catches Lev’s hair white and blinding. If it weren’t for the red pillow lines on his face, Yaku would half-believe he’s more snow than human.
“I’ve never been mean to you,” Yaku lies, and his smile grows. “Hurry up.”
…
“We have a practice game next week.”
Yaku looks away from the movie and down at Lev, who’s splayed himself across the couch and Yaku’s lap. An onscreen explosion lights the room and the orange flickering illuminates the nervous scrunch of Lev’s nose. Yaku pokes the place where the wrinkles come together then tugs at Lev’s bangs.
“And?”
“Coach said—“ Lev pauses, purses his lips together like he does when he’s trying to keep a straight face and failing, and Yaku flattens his hand across Lev’s eyes. Yaku knows the smile and laugh are coming before they happen they start, but his heart’s still pulled into a low swoop; he’s so unbelievably fond it’s positively horrifying. Lev yanks at Yaku’s hand, bright eyes gleaming even in the dark room, and Yaku understands that this is the beginning of a payoff long worked toward. “He said I’m starting.”
“It’s only because I’m here to wake you up for practice,” he says, and Lev laughs and shrugs. The edges of his grin turn sharp and smug and expectant, a proud cat with a bird sitting dead at its human’s feet, and Yaku can only sigh and oblige.
“Good job,” he breathes, pressing the words between them, and the movie loses its audience.