Work Text:
Yachi stares at the wall before her, the mural faded and chipped and worn from time and weather. It’s still beautiful, though, a meadow of wildflowers fading into mountains fading into the night sky. She can feel the love and the care radiating from the painted bricks and she wonders if the artist, years and years ago, knew what they were protecting when they painted it.
“My grandfather painted this,” Kiyoko says, breaking the silence and Yachi turns.
Under the light of the stars and the half-moon above, Kiyoko looks different, softer, like someone’s taken all the harsh lines of her jaw and her mouth and her clothes and gone over them in watercolors. Her eyes are bright, sparkling, and fiercely proud as she gazes at the artwork in front of her and Yachi feels like she’s seeing something not many people get to.
Her fingers twitch with the urge to paint.
She turns back to the wall. Purples and blues swirl through a night sky all lit up by a full moon on one end; on the other, the golden sun is reflected in the water. It's a complete rotation laid out before her, light and dark, sunshine and moonlight, day and night.
"I've never done any restoration work," she says, before she can become too attached to the piece. She can't let the idea of doing this project worm its way into her head, she's not precise enough, not skilled enough. Not yet.
Kiyoko turns, smiles soft, and Yachi knows it's already too late. She's falling fast--for the mural, for Kiyoko, for the lightness in her chest and the blissful quiet of her mind.
"If I wanted a simple restoration," she murmurs, "I wouldn't have waited for you."
Oh.
“You...sorry? You-” Yachi’s next set of excuses as to why she can’t take on the restoration promptly fall out of her head. “For me?” she squeaks.
Kiyoko laughs and the sound overtakes the jazz music spilling, muffled, from the interior of the building. It overtakes the sound of her own thudding heart. “I’m sorry, that must have sounded strange,” she says. Her cheeks are pink.
“No, no, not at all I just…” Yachi grapples for the words, ones that won’t sound pathetic or insincere or ungrateful. “Just...why me?”
“I’ve seen your work,” she says simply. She motions towards Yachi’s back, the large sunflower emblazoned on her skin, bold and bright where it peeks out from the low back of her dress. Her signature. Kiyoko’s hand hovers in the air for a moment, just a few centimeters from Yachi’s back, before she drops it by her side. Yachi shivers.
“Oh, I-”
“It’s magic,” Kiyoko interrupts, before Yachi can figure out exactly what it is she’s planning on saying. “I mean, obviously. But it’s different than any other sort of artistic magic I’ve ever seen before. It’s warm and careful. I feel your heart in it.” Her cheeks are really pink now, and she’s peeking at Yachi through a curtain of blue-black hair.
Oh.
Yachi chews the inside of her cheek. She thinks about her friends inside, dancing and arguing, drinking and laughing, warm in a place they can be themselves, where they don’t have to hide their magic for fear of losing everything. She thinks about the loosening of the knots in her chest as soon as she stepped foot through the doors and the weakening barrier that keeps prying eyes turned away. She thinks about the four owners--the imposing bartender with the soft smile, the host with the silver hair and wicked glint in his eye, the manager with the deep voice and even deeper laugh, and Kiyoko.
Kiyoko who sits in the back office of the club with her plans and her spreadsheets and her calculations, always trying to make it better, safer, more accessible to those who need it. Kiyoko, who recognizes her work around town, paint mixed with magic on the sides of restaurants and hair salons and bookstores to offer protection and prosperity. Kiyoko, who trusts her, has faith in her, to restore and rejuvenate and renew the magic embedded in this mural--the mural her grandfather painted, protecting the business she loves.
Kiyoko, who sees her heart.
“May I?” she gestures towards the wall.
“Of course,” Kiyoko says, and Yachi can hear the smile in her voice, like she knows Yachi is already planning on accepting. “It’s your canvas.”
Yachi steps forward and presses her palms to the bricks. The magic, faint and faded as it is, thrums under her skin. It surges to the surface, greets her like an old friend, presses back against her as if to say, I am here, I am yours. Her eyes sweep over the mural, her mind already buzzing the way it does when she starts a new project. Mixing colors, adding bits and pieces here and there--a sunflower in the meadow, four crows just over that tree, a train winding its way up that mountain.
Change. Momentum. Courage. It’s all right there, what she’s been looking for, what she needs, and Kiyoko offers it freely. The opportunity she never even realized she was waiting for.
She turns back to Kiyoko, smiles, and is caught once again in blue-gray eyes filled with thinly-veiled anticipation.
Change. Momentum. Courage.
Yachi holds out a hand and when Kiyoko takes it, the magic that hums under the surface of their skin is warm, familiar, electric.
“Tell me what you had in mind.”