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Two humans sit at the edge of a boat on a soft pink morning. The sea rises and falls in cool waves over their feet.
One breaks the lull and says, “You’re finally…done.”
The other, still staring out into the waves, gives only a gentle hum in response.
“Aren’t you? Your eyes are so still,” he adds with a laugh. “Just a little more dead, all of a sudden. It’s always such a bittersweet thing to see.”
The other one nods slowly. “Your observation is correct. I managed to solve it just as we were leaving the harbor.”
Though they will not see it for once, he makes the kind of smile that could mean anything.
“…How does it feel?” he asks.
At first, they do not seem to acknowledge the question at all. But in truth, taking enough time to consider it properly is how they honor it. Feelings are—no, no longer new to them. But even now they usually arrive as hazy figures, invisible until acknowledged, and then distinguishable only by their vague shape.
The other always understands, and he has learned to relish the comfortable stillness that comes from giving them all the time that is needed.
“It feels,” they start to say, “as if I shifted my weight too recklessly just because I could not sit still. As if I am still floating on the quicksand, but I have allowed my walking stick to sink beneath.”
“…Of course. Even after all this time, you’ve never been able to sit still for long…it’s been inevitable for a while, right? The price of making such a puzzle a part of our routine is knowing it’ll someday be solved...”
“It would have been inevitable no matter what we might have done.”
The two fall quiet for a while as they stare forward together. Seagulls pass overhead.
Then one clarifies, “Upper ocean and mixed layer dynamics in a natural environment have never been perfectly modeled. Ekman suction and pumping provide a strong account in ideal conditions: the Coriolis effect, Trade Winds, interior stress…still, the much more individual nuances of pressure and density have always complicated the calculations. They made it…exciting. But now I have discovered the tells, and I can no longer help but detect them…”
The other looks up as if to say something, but discards it.
“Even in your presence,” they answer anyway. “Now that I see exactly how the water would behave without your luck, I can see the way your luck plays on the water. The negative space. Here, the distortion feels the same as it feels at home or in the middle of the city. The patterns themselves are monotonous. There is nothing new to be found on the waves.”
“…Ah, impressive. More ground covered, then. A project completed.”
It is a dull glitter in his eyes. Both of them know that a project completed has always meant a project killed.
“Hey, and it was sort of a special one,” he begins again as if to fill the void, “because it was one of the first things I ever managed to learn about you, right? You told me you weren’t sure you’d ever be able to fully predict the ocean. You wanted to see it someday, if only just to lie down on the deck of a boat and let your incredible talent run wild tracing patterns that would never repeat…oh, what a talent, more incredible than I could’ve dreamed. Your own weapon, your own fatal flaw…”
Admiringly, almost admiringly, he tucks a windswept lock of hair behind their ear and back into their braid, then leans his head on their shoulder. They are still staring into the waves, eyes unmoving. His own gaze has gone upward, into the sky, something uneasy and unseen on his face.
Luck is not the only talent that can lose things forever. Once more, it is quiet.
“…Are you bored so soon?”
“I’m thinking.”
He smiles. “Aren’t you always.”
They hum.
“Mhm, impossible to stop…how completely predictable of you.”
“Ha.”
“…Hey, does it feel like you’ve dismantled something now?”
They say nothing.
“Does it feel like you’ve killed something?”
Nothing.
His tone softens ever-so-slightly: “…Are you going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“Would you rather…turn the boat around now?” He lifts his head from their shoulder. “We could go home a little early. The cats would be happy to see us.”
A mention of cats seems to win some sort of reaction. Slowly they inhale, exhale in a sigh.
“…It’s simple,” they say then, more flatly than even usual. “This world is still utterly simple.”
He chuckles mirthlessly.
“Simple,” he agrees. “Such a shame. It was never made for the kind of person you are…it’s cruelly inappropriate, absolutely dull…”
“Absolutely dull.”
He lifts his legs out of the water, pauses to stretch in the sun, then steadies himself against the railing to stand up.
They do not move after him. Their hand only grips the side of the boat a little tighter. “It’s…loud.”
“Huh?” He looks around. “Is there something…”
“No. Not here.”
“Ah.”
“On the shore,” they mutter. “The electronics. The mailman. The very same predictable sea. I am not prepared to go back, yet, if you’re not. I find this place serves as a recalibration point. Here with you, predictable or not, my thoughts are always…” Again they hesitate, fall still.
“Well, not just…quiet,” he knows. Carefully, he sits himself back down. His toes dip into the water. His hand finds theirs.
“Not quiet.” They make a little hum as he begins to trace his thumb tenderly across their knuckles. “Only…”
They trail off, searchingly. Again he parts his lips in thought, but at that moment they slowly nod their head away from the ocean and their dead eyes come back to life upon him.
Now again they see each other:
One is a brittle, empty thing repaired with light. His hair is strawberry-hued in the sun, framing a face round and warm. A medley of scars and a cautious helping of lotion run down his arms and up his shins. Talent has defined him, dismantled him, remade him, tried to consume him in all the ways it has tried to consume the ocean. Despite that, or because of that, right here and now he is beautiful.
The other is a numb, rigid thing overgrown with life. Cat hair clings to their colorful suit. Their braid is longer than it has ever been, lopsided, graying early, adorned from top to bottom with shells and spring flowers. It is one of the loose styles they wear when they have no need to hide the faded incisions around their crown. Talent has defined them, too. It seeks to do so even now. But here, now, they too are beautiful.
Two humans sit at the edge of a boat on a soft pink morning.
And one draws in a breath and estimates the time before the rain begins, then says, “We still have the rest of the morning to spend on the water. Would you like that?”
And the other puts his head back on their shoulder as their arm comes around his waist. “Before I have the rest of the afternoon to spend in meetings…”
“Mhm…destroying the world is duller than you made it sound. Though, you still do a very good job…”
A smile. “And yet we’ve just established that everything’s dull no matter what we do.”
“Perhaps.”
“…And in the end, we’re just pathetic, your talent as much as mine…”
Their fingers tease at his hair as they bury their face closer. “Every bit as pathetic. So much we will forever fail to prevent…”
Their words have slowed. He lets out a peaceful yawn as they sway to the rhythm of the rocking boat.
Then he says, “I think I’d still miss getting up with you for this, if we stopped for good.”
“Then we do not need to stop.”
He briefly glances up to the rosy sky, then feels the need to add, “Even if this storm hits us a little sooner than you guessed and my books get all ruined, these days it’s hard to feel afraid of anything at all, you know? Never out here, never with you…”
“Nagito.”
They sigh, gentle but sober. Because they know there is comfort even if he gives them no empty reminder of his luck, and because they know he is still afraid, even here. (Of much more than ruined books or a new boat gathering dust.)
He only hums back into their shoulder in noncommittal deference, relents for now.
Now his breaths come in and out to the pattern of the sea, and some of the tension in his muscles has begun to dissolve. Their hand still tangled in his hair, they smooth back a few soft waves to press a kiss to his forehead.
“This still makes you happy, does it not? That is already reason enough to keep coming out here together for the rest of our lives.”
They lower their head against his, and their own eyes fall closed soon after that. ❂