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The cherry blossoms don’t know that the world is falling apart when they open their flowers to the spring sky. The rain has subsided, leaving them with a few hours of unobstructed sunlight, a short time for those struggling rays of light to dry up the soggy mess of ground that houses such stubborn roots. A short time for a retired sailor to sit back against a gnarled trunk and contemplate life as it was, before it all went wrong.
It seems like such a small amount of time since his biggest problems were his own. Now there’s no time for self-revelations and reflection. Not with the earth crumbling beneath him in a race against an enemy he doesn’t even know. Zolf thinks of the simulacrum, thinks of his friends—and quickly stops that line of thought before it can carry on too far. It’s easier, sometimes, not to think at all.
Japan is pretty, even in this backwater rural area that he and Wilde have been calling home, and he takes a moment to appreciate it while he can, before the incessant downpour picks back up again. He thinks he can hear a bird chirping somewhere in the near distance, but it’s hard to say if it’s really a bird or just a sound that resembles one. It’s been a while since they’ve been out. Been a while since anyone has.
“This is quaint.” Wilde’s voice comes from behind him, around the other side of the tree. Zolf doesn’t turn to face him, but he knows he doesn’t have to. Predictably, Wilde’s footsteps squelch closer until he’s there, leaned against the side of the trunk and gazing down at Zolf with a quirked eyebrow. “Doing some sightseeing?”
Wilde isn’t quite himself these days, certainly a far-fetch from the man Zolf met in Paris, but on occasion glimpses of the old Oscar Wilde will poke through the exhaustion and paranoia and grief as a gentle reminder. Look, they almost seem to say, remember when things were easy?
Zolf leans his head back to clunk against the tree, eyes meeting Wilde’s as he raises a single finger to his lips. That one raised eyebrow creeps impossibly higher but he quiets, listens, and Zolf sees the moment that he hears it, watches the light switch on in his eyes, the soft shadow of a nearly-there smile tugging at his lips.
“Is that a bird?” He asks, delighted.
It’s funny, almost—the contrast drawn by tragedy, painting the smallest of happenstances into new bright colours. It creates a different sort of appreciation, Zolf thinks. A novel understanding of the world that was hidden before by virtue of its commonness. A bird is just a bird, and yet.
And yet.
Wilde’s eyes have gone glassy, but he doesn’t look upset. Far-away, is a better word for it, and one that Zolf understands well. It’s why he came out here in the first place, after all. The inn was busy and loud and he felt far, far from the place he was meant to be, trapped back in time, sequestered into another life where things were still busy and loud but he could deal with them better.
So Zolf understands when Wilde doesn’t say anything for a long minute, and he doesn’t push, doesn’t ask him to sit, doesn’t ask him if he’s okay. Part of him wants to, but he’s learned. Asking Wilde if he’s okay is just as good as asking for a lazily constructed excuse and a door in the face. It caused a lot of arguments when they first started working together, and gods he’d been frustrated getting that same condescending smile in response to every question that could be deemed even slightly personal. But this was before Zolf picked up on the quiet ways that Wilde shares, the ones that lack the pomp and pageantry of his usual actions, the ones that hit closer to the squishy center of him.
Like now, for instance. Wilde still hasn’t moved, but his shoulders have dropped into something more relaxed and his eyes are no longer the vacant stare of a man reliving his memories. They’re focused on him, instead. There are no theatrics to the way that Wilde looks at him in moments like this one. It’s real. Solid. The kind of look that Zolf feels all the way to the middle of himself. The slow-burning heat of being known.
At one point he would have wilted under the intensity, conjured water to splash in Wilde’s face just to get him to ”stop looking at me like that”. Not now. Not when being known feels like being real, and being real feels less and less certain with every infected person they have to lock up in their makeshift cell.
Zolf is staring back. Wilde doesn’t seem to mind.
(Zolf wouldn’t care if he did anyway. He started it.)
There’s a crack of thunder overhead, and the both of them startle. Wilde’s gaze flitters to the ground then back up at the sky, squinting against the sunlight just as the first drops land upon his upturned cheeks.
Looks like tears, Zolf’s mind supplies as his eyes trace the way the rain travels down his face, clinging to his jaw. But that’s not how Oscar cries. Zolf’s seen the messiness of him, and it’s not the pretty, stoic expression he wears now, no single tears tracking artful lines across his skin—it’s angry and raw and real, and Zolf will never be able to forget that even if he wants to.
(He doesn’t. There’s something powerful about the way that Oscar Wilde experiences anguish, something beautiful and rare, and his heart is littered in cracks but Zolf sees him, Zolf knows him, and he thinks that maybe that can be enough.)
“Better get inside,” he says gruffly, but he doesn’t move to stand even as the rain picks up volume, drips through his hair.
It’s always raining, but for the first time Zolf thinks maybe there’s something beautiful in that too. A sad and longing kind of beauty, the type that makes your heart ache and swell at once.
Being next to Wilde feels a lot like that, sometimes.
He’s not paying enough attention, wrapped up in his own thoughts, and he blinks when there’s suddenly a gentle pressure on his shoulder and the brush of skin against his arm. Wilde sat down after all. The old Wilde would have complained about the mud, but they’ve been through a lot worse than some wet dirt. Zolf huffs an incredulous laugh when he realizes that Wilde’s slumped himself down against the tree to get to a height where he can comfortably rest his head upon his shoulder. He doesn’t brush him off, though. It’s nice. Comforting. The rain pitter-patters a song above their heads in the canopy of leaves.
When they do finally return to the inn, they’re both soaked to the bone and grumbling about it, but Zolf’s complaints are lighthearted and he knows Wilde well enough by now to recognize that his are as well. They don’t talk about it. They never do. But there’s a tiny glowing ball of warmth spreading through Zolf’s chest that wasn’t there this morning, and that feels like enough.