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It’s the start of the next spring that Sanemi shows up outside of the water mansion. He’s carrying two bags, which Giyuu can only assume must contain everything he owns.
Since Sanemi had left the previous year to find himself (as Uzui had put it anyway), Giyuu hadn’t heard from him. Not once.
Now, he’s standing there like nothing’s changed. Only, everything’s changed, really.
Sanemi is tanned, just a little bit. He looks thinner than he had when Giyuu had last seen him, but only slightly— only if you really look. His clothes are different, and his hair is longer, just brushing the back of his neck. And, the biggest change: he looks calmer. Maybe even peaceful.
He looks nice, and Giyuu wonders what to say.
He settles on, “you’re back?”
Sanemi doesn’t grace the question with an answer, but the rise in one of his eyebrows tells Giyuu he’s not impressed. He supposes if Sanemi were feeling snarky he’d probably say something like, what do you think, dumbass? It’s not Uzui standing outside your door, is it?
“I’m moving in.” Is what Sanemi says instead.
Giyuu blinks. “Oh— what?”
Sanemi’s tongue peeks out to wet his lips, and then he swallows, and Giyuu watches the way his throat bobs with it.
“I just think…” Sanemi frowns. “I mean, we’re basically screwed right? We’re dying in three years, according to everyone, and I guess I don’t want to spend that time alone.”
The birds sing loudly in the trees nearby, providing Giyuu with a pause— letting him soak in the meaning of Sanemi’s words without the awkwardness of extended silence.
“Oh.” Is all he can think to say. “Okay.”
So they fall into a rhythm— not a routine; their lives don’t have the same sort of structure they’d once had. Or maybe they’re more structured now, knowing when each meal is coming, rather than running around after monsters, not knowing which fight will be the last.
Still, Giyuu finds that the way they’ve adapted to each other is something too fluid and full of feeling to be considered routine. There’s nothing routine in the way that Sanemi greets him in the mornings, a second portion of whatever he’s making ready for Giyuu, but only if he’s in a good mood. Nothing routine in the way they still decide to spar on a whim sometimes, though at lesser intensities than they’d ever used to.
They fight sometimes too— real fights. Sanemi threatens to leave almost weekly. Giyuu wouldn’t call that routine either. Though maybe the fact that Sanemi always stays is.
And then one day, Sanemi kisses him. Right on the mouth. Slow enough that either of them could have pulled away, if they’d wanted.
The complete absurdity of it makes Giyuu wonder if maybe before, they had been living a routine after all.
He isn’t expecting it when it happens, but he doesn’t mind, really. It’s nice, being close to somebody. So he leans in, accepts the affection, and that’s obviously not routine— he can tell by the way that Sanemi stiffens, motions stuttering a little like he hadn’t expected to get this far.
But then he finds his confidence again, and Giyuu finds that Sanemi kisses like he lives, which is to say, passionately, a little wildly, and without much thought. Though, maybe that isn’t right to say. Sanemi does without the torturous overthinking that Giyuu often finds himself succumbing to, but he isn’t thoughtless. He can be careful, or soft, gentle, meticulous, when he needs to be.
And he is, right now. Like he’d planned the way he might do this. Giyuu can do nothing but follow his lead and wonder what possibly could have brought this on, because he hadn’t realized that Sanemi had been feeling this way. He tries to think back on the past few months they’ve spent together, considering all the ways that Sanemi seems to have changed over the last year and a half. He doesn’t fully notice himself slipping into thought, but Sanemi says, “don’t disappear,” and Giyuu blinks his eyes open.
“If you’re going to kiss me,” Sanemi mutters, “stay here.”
“I’m here.” Giyuu tells him.
Giyuu can’t tell him he’ll stay, because it feels like a bigger promise than it is. They don’t have the luxury of time— no chance to make good on vows to each other. Truthfully, Giyuu doesn’t expect that they’ll make any.
“Three years.” Sanemi says, asking one of him anyway. “Just that.”
Giyuu sighs into his mouth. Three years. It’s nothing. Three years pass like breathing.
Yet it’s everything.
Sanemi is asking him for everything he has left, and no more. And what can Giyuu say to that?
“Yeah.” He agrees.
He isn’t going anywhere.
Somehow, it’s incredibly easy, giving Sanemi the last of his youth.