Work Text:
lxviii. a smduged kitchen window
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Seijuro, Chihiro realizes, is a lot like smoke. He notices this a total of three times (not that Chihiro is counting, not that there is anything about Akashi Seijuro that Chihiro can place behind numbers and labels), and each time it does not leave him surprised. What Chihiro cannot fathom with emotion he puts into words. Seijuro defies words and all else.
The first time Chihiro notices is the first time he meets Seijuro. (This is because, Chihiro will realize later, without ever really thinking about it, because the story of the next two times was already wrought into that moment.)
(Later, Chihiro will think, this is Seijuro— living and dying in memory.)
One—Seijuro sweeps up the stairs, onto the rooftop, and behind Chihiro in a single breath. Chihiro closes his book, doesn’t bat an eyelash. Seijuro’s words and the reply he knows Chihiro will give him are already stuck in Chihiro’s throat. Play with me. Play for me. (His throat constricts and betrays him all the same. Chihiro says yes.)
Two—Seijuro kisses him, once and only once (this is the only one he remembers counting, and Chihiro closes his eyes because looking at the sun will turn his eyes to ash and his skin to clay) in the locker room the night after the match against Shuutoku. His lips are hot against Chihiro’s own, sear their own story into the dryness Chihiro licks after Seijuro pulls away.
“I gave you my first kiss,” Seijuro says, nothing more, and dimly Chihiro wonders when he asked. (He didn’t.)
(Even more than that, he wonders why Seijuro says gave when they are both smart enough to know that Seijuro is only taking.)
Three—Seijuro stands behind him on the rooftop at the end of basketball season and the end of whatever Chihiro and Seijuro are. (Was. Chihiro does not bother counting how long they were.) The wind blows his tie out of its usual place. Chihiro wonders how many minutes it will take to sweep away the boy wearing it. Seijuro looks different, somehow, Chihiro notes—like there is a part of him still left behind on the gym floor. Chihiro opens his mouth and closes it.
“Thank you for a good season,” Seijuro tells him. It sounds like a playback of the messages he gives all the other members of the team, and it is. Chihiro counts the dips in his voice and the spaces in between his words all the same. “You were a good phantom player.”
Seijuro looks him right in the eye, twists his hands, and for a single moment Chihiro wants to hold them only to prove that they won’t fade away.
(Phantom. Chihiro runs the word through his mind, tastes smoke. They are not stupid enough to believe that it is Chihiro who is the ghost.)
I felt bad for you, he wants to say—not because they’re the words he needs to speak, but because they’re the words Seijuro needs to hear. Like telling a ghost he can see it.
“Whatever,” Chihiro says instead, but it means the same thing in the end: nothing.
(Chihiro goes home and touches his lips, touches the only time he has ever taken anything from Akashi Seijuro. It burned and still burns, somehow, but it doesn’t change that Seijuro is more smoke than he will ever be fire.)