Work Text:
The lights of the city blur into streaks as the train rushes out to the suburbs. Fuyumi tilts her head down as she stares out of the window, looking above the rim of her glasses so that everything is fuzzy, and pulls her vision in and out of focus. The hazy lines of light separate, melt into each other, separate again. The train sways. It’s not crowded anymore, the majority of the black-suited businessmen having already left, and Fuyumi can let her bag slide onto the empty seat next to her.
Her feet ache. She forgot that these were the heels she’s been meaning to throw out for as long as she’s been meaning to do anything on her mental to-do list, and when the train spits her out for the five minute walk back to her house, she slips out of them and walks home in her sheer tights, the sun-baked sidewalk still warm against the soles of her feet even though the sky is dark.
The streetlights buzz above her; the occasional car passes, and she wonders what the drivers think of the shoes in her hand. They knock against each with each step she takes like they’re part of a Newton’s cradle, drawn together again and again and again. The front door, when she reaches it, is unlocked.
Fuyumi sets her shoes down next to her father’s. She can throw them out another day, whenever she has time to stop by the store and get a matching pair to slide into their place. For now, all she can think of is the quiet tile of her bathroom, the soft hum of the fan as she switches it on before starting the shower.
She doesn’t know when slipping out of her clothes stopped feeling like slipping the entire day off of her shoulders. There was a time, she thinks, when it did, but now, even as she neatly folds her clothes and sets them on top of the overflowing pile in her hamper, the day still weighs heavy on her.
It wasn’t a bad one, really, just another in a long series of the same. She’d woken up three minutes before her alarm, spent the morning pressed up against strangers that she swears change everything day, tried not to think about the ache in her feet as she avoided questions from her students about her father, her brother, the disquiet of the world around them, and stayed an extra hour at her desk, making plans to do it all again the next day. As it is, the water cascading down around her shoulders as she steps into the shower is something of a respite.
For a while, Fuyumi just stands under the gentle spray. She watches the water trace down her skin – tomorrow she’ll have to shave again, she notes – and pretends that she’s not listening beyond the bathroom door for any sign of her father’s mood. He’s home but silent, which could mean anything at all.
Eventually, she remembers that there’s a point to being in the shower, and she scrubs herself down with the same brand of coconut body wash that her mother used to use. The water goes cold before she’s done, but she doesn’t let herself shiver.
The part of her towel that was bunched around the hook is still damp when Fuyumi pulls it down and wraps it around herself, stepping out of the shower with one hand on the wall for balance, just in case. Her pajamas are waiting, folded, on the sink, and she puts them on before her skin is entirely dry.
She wraps her wet hair in another towel, twisting it up on top in a way she’s never been able to perfect, and meets her own eyes in the mirror. She doesn’t know why she feels so empty. Things are better for her than they’ve been in years. She figures, though, in a back of her mind way, the implications of that realization give her some room to be a little off. A little – not there, a little to the side, a little in awe of the fact that she manages to get up every morning.
Enji is in his study. The door isn’t all the way closed, but Fuyumi pretends not to see the gap or the warm light spilling out from it as she walks down the hall. She makes herself a cold dinner and eats it standing at the kitchen counter, staring at the whiskey bottle left out by the stove and trying to judge how much more it’s been depleted since last night. It doesn’t look like much this time, but the amount stopped meaning much of anything a long time ago.
Fuyumi finishes eating and washes the dishes by hand, biting back yawns as she scrubs at a stubborn piece of rice dried to a plate that must have been waiting in the sink for a few hours. Finally, everything is as clean as it gets – nevermind the dust that’s settled over the half the kitchen, nevermind the years-old scorch marks on the floor, nevermind the dead bug in the corner that is just a bit too big for Fuyumi to pick up on her own – and all that’s left is for Fuyumi to shake her hair out of the towel, return it to its hook, and then decide whether she’s going to collapse onto her bed and forgo thought until her alarm rings or go into the living room, pretend to watch TV, and listen for footsteps coming down the hall.
She finds herself on the couch before she realizes that she’s made the decision to sit there. She curls up in the corner, picking up the remote from the very spot she left it in the night before and turning the TV on. The news comes on automatically. Fuyumi looks at a blurry picture of her father for just a moment, trying to sort out the shape of his body underneath the flames that dominate the frame, before changing the channel. She doesn’t like to watch the news these days, and the dull familiarity of some soap opera or another, the kind that always seems to be playing in the lobby of the hospital when she goes to visit her mother, seems like as good of a place as any to settle.
It takes thirteen minutes for Enji’s footsteps to come down the hall. They’re slow, tonight, but steady as ever, and Fuyumi sees his reflection in the TV before he clears his throat.
“Fuyumi,” he says, and she turns to face him. He’s wearing a dark sweater and the small frown she’s never really seen him without; the sight of him brings the day to one narrow point, like fabric bunching up as a thread is pulled taut.
She doesn’t say anything back. This, she’s found, is always the worst part, this no man’s land between the things they talk about and the things they don’t. There’s always a breathlessness to it, a waiting, an unspoken question of whether last night will have been, as they both promised themselves, the last night.
The answer tonight is no. Enji moves forward, and Fuyumi turns back around, facing the TV so that she doesn’t see the way her father sits down next to her on the couch. She doesn’t look away from the screen as his arm makes its way to the back of the couch behind her, and she doesn’t look away from the screen as she moves back, leaning closer and closer to his heat.
Fuyumi doesn’t like to be the one that makes contact first. She saves that for the late nights, when she doesn’t have work in the morning and can wake up with a headache and stale sake on her breath. On nights like these, it’s up to Enji.
It takes one love confession and one commercial break – for a new home security system, if it matters – for him to move his hand down to Fuyumi’s shoulder and pull her body against his. She hopes it doesn’t sound too much like relief when she sighs into it, her eyes closing as her cheek comes to rest against her father’s broad chest.
Enji squeezes her shoulder, once, then slides his hand up to tangle into her hair, gently rubbing at her scalp where it’s still damp. The heaviness weighing her shoulders down begins, finally, to slough away. Fuyumi keeps her eyes closed and reaches one hand out to lay flat on Enji’s thigh, her thumb tracing small circles over the scratchy fabric of his pants.
The sigh that comes from his chest is low and so quiet that Fuyumi would have missed it if she couldn’t feel the rise and fall of it. She keeps her eyes closed. The TV cuts back to the soap opera.
“How was your day?” Enji asks. His voice is quiet, as soft as she’s ever known it to get, but the sound still makes her flinch just enough for his hand to still in her hair.
“Fine,” she says. “Yours?”
“Fine,” Enji says. Fuyumi knows it’s not really true, because not watching the news doesn’t mean that she doesn’t check in on what’s going on every time she has a moment to pull her phone out at work, but he’s not at the hospital tonight, at least. These days, that makes it feel like less of a lie.
She hums quietly in acknowledgment, and Enji’s breath falters for a moment. She gives him a moment to decide whether to speak, and when he stays silent, she takes the opportunity to melt further into him, pushing just closer enough for him to know that she means to do it.
Enji inhales, exhales, and moves his hand from the top of Fuyumi’s head to replace it with a kiss, slow and careful. Fuyumi swallows hard when he lifts his head and pulls her impossibly closer against himself, and tries to refocus her thoughts to ideas of how to thank him for not acknowledging the tear that slips out from under her closed eyelid and falls down her cheek.