Work Text:
Hajime opened his eyes to a canopy of hanging terracotta pots and mottled glass panes. Leafy vines dangled, a curated jungle of flowerless green. It was warm, uncomfortably so even in the summery button-down and shorts that Izuru had mapped for him. Sweat pearled his forehead as he sat up on the greenhouse’s floor and groaned at the pounding in his head. “Fuck…”
“Hello, Hajime.” Izuru spoke from behind him, zir voice as soft as ever. “It’s been a while. Is this a bad time?”
“No. Never.” Hajime shook his head and mopped his brow. The residual head pounding faded to a dull throb. He craned his neck back and offered a gentle grin. “Hi, Iz. Can’t have been that long, has it?”
Izuru was in an outfit he had seen zir in before, a bright sundress with a ruffled trim, its fabric printed with swirling paisley patterns in a kaleidoscope of dotty color. Zie cradled a withered pothos leaf in one hand and a forager’s knife in the other, its blade small and elegantly curved like a silver tongue.
Their eyes met, and Izuru’s mouth quirked strangely. Hajime knew it was a smile.
“Forty-six days, sixteen hours, and twenty-six minutes, if you want a precise answer,” zie said, and turned back to zir pothos to cut away the leaf. “You seemed busy. I could feel your stress, if only residually.” There was no reproach in zir tone, only matter-of-fact acceptance. “I did not want to intrude until I was certain you had settled far enough from Naegi’s watch.”
Hajime felt his expression drop. “Really? More than a month?” He stood, wavering slightly. “I mean, god. Yeah, I guess it has. Everything’s been going way too fast. You know we’re on the mainland now, right?”
“I suspected as much.” Izuru flipped zir knife shut and rotated the bronze flowerpot around. A ribbon of silky hair fell over zir bare shoulder, and zie furled it back with a tiny huff. “Did you take the epipremnum pinnatum with you?”
“I mean, we tried to, but it got confiscated in customs.” Hajime walked over to the worktable and leaned against the edge. “Something about non-native plant species can’t cross the border, or some shit like that.” He shrugged.
Izuru’s eyes narrowed. “That is an absurd line of reasoning. One of the countries the species is native to is Japan. It would have been more at home there than it ever was in a tropical biome.” Zie slid the pot back into its place and reached for a small ivy plant, its starry leaved vines dragging along the table as zie moved its clay pot aside to inspect. “What a waste, and you had made so many marked improvements in maintaining it.”
“Me? No, that was all you and Nags.” Hajime grabbed for one of the ivy’s tendrils to hold between his thumb and forefinger, marveling at its waxy feel. “Mainly you saving it after I almost drowned it.”
“Your husband was never much better when it came to misunderstanding how soil keeps water.” A flip of the wrist, and Izuru’s knife glinted as zie cut through a bundle of crisping stems. “Between the humidity and your over-indulgence, it’s a marvel it survived for as long as it did.”
“Ow, tough crowd.” Hajime dropped the vine and wiped the greasy sweat pooling on his forehead. He watched as Izuru pruned zir way through the ivy one slice at a time. “Wouldn’t it be easier to use, I dunno, shears? Scissors?” he asked.
Izuru’s lips twitched. “That would be a more efficient way of going about it, yes.”
“Then what’s with the knife?”
Another cut. A small ring of dying vegetation orbited the pot as Izuru worked. Zie didn’t reply, zir expression something furrowed and masked.
Undeterred, Hajime scooted himself closer to Izuru and bumped his shoulder against zir, leaning down just low enough to stage whisper in zir ear. “Is it cause it’s more fun to use?”
Izuru huffed shortly, the closest zie ever got to a laugh. “Perhaps.”
“This one’s new, right? What’s its name?” Hajime poked at a leaf with a small blemish, a little pinprick of brown soiling the green. “Looks like you missed one.”
“I was getting to it,” Izuru said, before promptly cutting it away. “Its name is Rocannon. There is another hedara helix named Falk, and another still named Semley.” Zie looked up from zir work, zir bare shoulders bobbing in a shrug. “Komaeda and I were starting on Ursula Le Guin’s Hainish novels shortly before I sequestered myself.” Zie hooked the forager’s knife back into its notch and placed it on the table to brush away errant specks of dirt from zir palms. “The more plants one keeps, the more challenging it is to pick meaningful names. I may as well pick out scraps of paper from a felt hat.”
“It is looking a bit crowded now, huh?”
Izuru’s brow crinkled in thought, zir chin tipped down. “I suppose it is.”
Hajime had been to Izuru’s greenhouse many times now, with its slanted roof and neatly lined aisles of clay and enameled pots all patchily gathered about a curated green sea. It always seemed a little different each time, a few extra succulents here, a couple dozen ivy plants there. Out of all the pocket environments that Izuru had born and nourished in his head, it was the only place that zie seemed to have any active interest in modifying and growing.
He looked up at the ceiling with its illusionary sky of marbled clouds and everlasting sunshine and closed his eyes.
Soft clinking cut through the quiet, and Hajime smiled as Izuru tapped his wrist and slid a bone china saucer towards him. Steam twisted from a cupful of amber tea that sloshed to the rim.
“Rooibos?” asked Izuru. Zie had put down zir knife to cradle a teacup of zir own. “I added vanilla.”
“Thanks.” Hajime brought the cup to his lips and took a small sip to let the flavor seep over his tongue, a tasteful balm to whatever tension still flittered around him. “God, I can’t even remember the last time it’s been this… quiet.”
Izuru gave a toneless hum. “Are you settled, then?” zie asked. “In a new home?”
Slurping down the rest of his cup, Hajime chuffed. “Kind of? I mean, ‘home’ is a bit much. It’s low income apartment housing. Half of a home, I guess.”
“Home is where the heart is,” Izuru said, without a trace of humor. “As it’s often said.” Zie placed zir cup on the worktable with a dull clink and used zir free hands to smooth out the bunching wrinkles at the front of zir dress.
Hajime downed the rest of his cup. The granules of gritty tea debris that had settled at the bottom made him wince and clear his throat. “It came pre-furnished, at least. Nags went out and got a new pothos the other day to try and start livening up the feel of the place.” He set aside the cup and saucer next to Izuru’s. “You wanna see if he did an okay job potting it? Maybe do a little tour?”
“A tour.” Izuru quickly gathered up the bulk of zir hair, fingertips tangling up in shiny locks. Zie said nothing else, zir expression set in a flat line that Hajime had learned to read as thoughtfully anxious.
“You know you don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Hajime said, keeping his tone low. He reached out, hand hovering just above the space between Izuru’s shoulders. “Touch okay?”
Izuru nodded absently. Zie didn’t move as Hajime settled his hand between zir shoulder blades. Zie kept zir eyes downcast, zir jaw clenched in steady silence.
“We still have that throw blanket from the cottage if that helps, you know? To have something to stim with?” Hajime rubbed Izuru’s small back.
Only silence by way of reply, and that was okay. Time moved at the same pace as it did outside of Hajime’s brain, but there were no stakes here. No potential deadlines or incoming disasters other than Izuru potentially forgetting to water one of zir plants, and that never happened, because Izuru never forgot.
Zie looked up at Hajime with a crooked, half-toned grimace of a smile. “Maybe we can go one room at a time, if that is agreeable?” zie asked. Zir hands raked through zir hair slowly, methodically.
Hajime grinned. “You got it. Up for getting book club back up and running?”
“Only if Komaeda is amenable,” Izuru said. Zie looked away, zir eyes darting up to one of the hanging pothos. “I do find myself missing our talks.”
The greenhouse was melting.
Hajime blinked, shook his head, and tried to focus on Izuru’s child-frozen face. “Bring me back tomorrow, okay?” he asked. “Only if you’re okay with that, yeah?”
“Maybe.” Izuru smiled in that odd little twitching way zie did. “Tell Komaeda I said hello.”
The leaves coagulated to a murky sludge as Hajime reached over to grip Izuru’s hand.
“I will. Love you, Iz.”
Izuru squeezed his hand twice by way of reply, zir own form of reciprocation as slime-like green dripped to the ground and made way for the abyss.
Hajime felt his body get ferried back to bed with all the gentleness of a contented sigh. It was rarely a shock to shift from one place to the other when it came to leaving the pockets of his brain. Not anymore. Izuru piloted him well, and zie had only improved at manipulating the mesh between with time.
He felt his husband, sleep warm and dozing against his side. He felt the cool slipping fabric of their new sheets draped atop them, the way that the tubes of his socks were bunching up at his ankles and furrowing pink creases in his skin.
The clean snap of a flipping page made him crack open an eye to the dull light of Nagito’s reading light.
“Bud.” Hajime rolled to his side, eyes squinting shut as he flung his arm across Nagito’s chest and shimmied himself up to press his cheek to the crook of his husband’s narrow shoulder. He couldn’t help the whimpering noise that left him when he felt a dry-lipped kiss plant itself at the banding scar that wound about his head in a fading circlet. “Still up?” he mumbled.
“Mhm.” Petting his pillow-flattened hair, Nagito’s alloyed fingertips rubbed at the top of Hajime’s ear. His voice was a rusty whisper. “Are you alright? Bad dream?”
Hajime tilted his head just enough to peck his husband’s skin, lips smushed into his skinny shoulder as he mumbled against him, pausing to kiss in-between his words. “M’good. Saw Iz. Remind me to, y’know… talk about it.” He lazily propped his leg overtop Nagito’s thighs with a quiet grunt, his hand sliding down to cup around the little divot of his husband’s hip dip, thumb reaching to stroke a jutting pelvic bone. “You’re so soft…”
Nagito snorted, an incredulous little sound. “You’re funny.”
“S’true.” Hajime had to strain his neck to press his cheek to Nagito’s, smiling at the downy feel of peach fuzz brushing over his skin. “Soft.”
He heard a fond sigh before lips met his own, dry and warm and so very unmistakably Nagito with that familiar sleepy dryer sheet-like husband smell and cold metal fingers tracing over the dulled carvings on his chest.
“Go back to sleep, bug, hm?” Nagito whispered, the glacial fingertips of his right hand giving a teasing tug to a lock of his hair. “Tell me more tomorrow?”
Hajime didn’t have to be told twice.
Under the drone of a central A/C and atop a new mattress, with nary a peep of ocean waves, Hajime drifted off into an unconscious haze.