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“Doesn’t it just make you more nervous?” Tatsuya asks, playing with the hem of his shirt. “Working with living things like this?”
Jun runs gloved hands along the side of his trowel. The floral, pastel fabric becomes dirtied with mud. He flicks it from his fingers, and places his trowel into the ground, before slapping his gloves clean, and letting them drop into his lap. “Don’t you treat your motorbike like a living thing?”
“I guess... It’s different though.”
“Is it?” Jun stands up. He pulls off his gloves and shakes a little dust from his skirt, which falls in pleats to his knees. He straightens his sunhat, and plays with a loose strand of hair, tucking it away behind his ear. Tatsuya gulps. He rests shaking, sweaty palms, against his trousers, breathes softly, and lets his eyes dance in the sight of Jun, in the fact that Jun is here, and Tatsuya is so lucky to be able to be with him, love him, look at him. His hair curls around his chin, soft, and his lips curl into a catlike grin. Tatsuya is still nervous, that look makes him nervous, but it also makes him so happy, so glad he’s here, so glad they’re here, together. “I don’t know if I’d agree. Flowers only have meaning to most people once they’re dead.”
Tatsuya feels hot under Jun’s gaze, and his eyes burn with the urge to move. His whole body is filled with electricity that he needs to shift, but he somehow can’t make himself fidget, and can’t look away from Jun. “It’s still not the same. They’re alive now.”
Jun steps into the space between him and Tatsuya. It’s a fluid step, but it feels like an eternity. He drops his gloves; Tatsuya isn’t sure when, but he knows the hands Jun places against his chest are bare. They’re calming, and Tatsuya feels the currents inside of him still pleasantly. Jun’s hands seem so small, slender, but Tatsuya knows there’s a power and a potential in them, a power and potential that courses through Jun’s entire being. He watches Jun’s eyes flick from his to those hands, and hopes Jun can’t feel his heart rattle in its bony prison through the thin fabric of his shirt and skin.
“Under your hands,” Jun says softly, “metals roar to life. Oil and grease become blood, engines become organs, something cold and dead rears its weary head with a newfound passion for being, for existing. You breathe part of yourself into it, and it responds, and it lives.” He smiles sadly. “Flowers can grow and bloom, but it’s not until that life is taken away that they start to matter. It’s not that different.” Tatsuya doesn’t agree, but Jun runs his hands down his chest and takes his hands, and the sensation is so familiar, so comforting, so homely and safe, that Tatsuya gets wrapped up in it. He wants to be. Jun pulls him closer. “I think it’s best you try it for yourself, feel the soil pulse under your fingertips. It might help you understand why it’s so calming. It might let you calm down.”
Calm down. Of course. That’s what Tatsuya’s here to do, to finally relax, to finally let himself breathe. It happens so easily when he’s with Jun, so naturally, almost as if being with him fills his heart with so much peace that it leaves no room for anything to get lost and stuck there, for any fear to clog his arteries and make his blood throb with worry, for any nerves to drag down his lungs and weigh every breath with the undoubtable knowledge that everything will go wrong. The air when he’s with Jun is different, fresher, safer. There’s some new kind of fear that stalks the recesses of his mind when they’re together, but it’s one that he can’t put words to, one that he can’t understand or describe, and somehow this makes it easier to forget, or ignore. His hands melt into Jun’s grip, and drip through his fingers, and his body slackens just slightly, letting him lean and rock forwards until his head is resting just above Jun’s, and his lips would let themselves lie against Jun’s forehead, were it not for the brim of his sunhat. Tatsuya ends up hitting his mouth against that instead, and Jun smiles, exhaling a laugh.
The thrill that watching Jun smile instills inside Tatsuya is incomparable to anything else, except perhaps the elation of kissing him. Jun looks up at him, and drops a hand in order to free one of his own, which he then places behind Tatsuya’s head. It’s the slightest amount of pressure, but it causes Tatsuya to shudder and bend and move and manipulate his muscles into a position where he and Jun are level and all of time stops but happens at once, and Jun kisses him with a passion, a gentleness, a ferocity, a softness. Kissing Jun is like experiencing everything and nothing all at once, a rush of every sensation, every feeling, every thought, every temperature, humidity, weather, every taste, every scent, every possible interaction, colliding into one and balancing out as something unique and blissfully empty and blissfully Jun. It uncoils Tatsuya, unwinds him all the way to his core, and when he pulls away he’s laughing, and his breathing is coming more regularly, and freely, and he thinks he’s found himself back in that wonderful secure place, that feeling of safety that only Jun can bring him, and he pushes a hand back through his hair, catching the strand that frame his face, ruffling them, and he lets a final laugh tickle the air, and Jun moves to take his hand again, and the Earth jolts but moves softly. Tatsuya can feel it moving. Tatsuya feels like he’s moving with it.
“You’re wrong,” Tatsuya thinks he’s saying bluntly, and yet he can feel every syllable roll from his tongue with content, in joyful leaps and bounds, gymnasts between his teeth, “about the being alive thing. I’ll try it, but you’re wrong.”
Jun raises an eyebrow and the corner of his lips, that catlike grin again, but says nothing. Tatsuya is already regretting his statement, because the idea of being directly responsible for the maintenance of a living thing is playing on his mind again, and makes him feel slightly sick. His skin shifts, a tidal wave that breaks through his whole body in an internal shudder, passing as quickly as it came. His lips twitch, and he thinks he feels himself smile a little, too.
This is something that means a lot to Jun. Some part of him hopes it can mean a lot to him too, but another part of him knows that, even if it doesn’t, the fact this is important to Jun is important to him, in itself.
His knees click as he crouches down, but Jun doesn’t say anything. He does slide a kneeling pad towards him, though, and Tatsuya gratefully takes it from him, and jabs it under his legs. He isn’t really sure what to do, and feels the impulse to just shove his hands in the dirt bubble inside him. His gaze flicks over to Jun, who’s watching him cautiously but with some sense of expectation, or perhaps anticipation? Tatsuya isn’t sure, and that uncertainty doesn’t sit well with him. Usually, he feels he understands Jun better than anything, but sometimes, he thinks he forces his own perception of the world on him, and it makes it hard to tell what he’s thinking. Does Jun expect something from Tatsuya, or does Tatsuya expect something from himself, does Tatsuya feel like something should be expected of him?
Seeing his shoulders tense, Jun, who’s stood, a little crouched, above the kneeling Tatsuya, places a soft hand on his back, and says, “Right now, we’re transferring camellias. Planting depth is very important for camellias, because if the root ball is too deep, they won’t bloom.”
“That would suck,” Tatsuya nods sagely. Jun breathes a small laugh.
“It would,” he agrees, “which is why we’re digging the perfect hole for it.”
Digging. Tatsuya can do that easily. He’s less afraid, knowing he doesn’t actually have to handle anything living, and he lets his fingers rake over the slight indent in the dirt that Jun had been working on. He starts pulling soil aside. It feels soft and greasy against his fingers. It’s nice, he thinks, and cool to the touch, but it doesn’t prove Jun is right, since he’s not handling anything alive yet.
Jun makes a slight noise, and Tatsuya pulls himself up, lifting his hands from the dirt. Jun moves to kneel beside him, and holds a gardening trowel towards him.
“I’m fine using my hands,” Tatsuya assures him, but Jun swings the trowel back and forth, and swings his gaze from it to Tatsuya, and Tatsuya senses something in that gaze that it’s important for him to use it, to Jun. Whether it’s because Jun needs the act to be done in a certain way, or because Jun would like Tatsuya to use something he owns... Tatsuya supposes there could be a number of reasons for it, and he relaxes his shoulders and reaches for it, and wraps his fingers around the handle.
He can’t hold it comfortably. It’s thicker than a pencil, or chop sticks, and doesn’t fit between or inside his fingers comfortably. It’s thinner than his bike handles, and his hands feel raw as it rests in his palms. He almost chucks it into the soil. The sound of metal hitting dirt is satisfying, somewhere between a swish and a thwunk, and Tatsuya’s discomfort with the handle isn’t forgotten, but he’s somewhat distracted from it by the way his pulse skips with the sound.
Using the trowel is more difficult that using his hands, however. Soil clumps do not fall apart at his touch, and any stones have to be displaced rather than simply picked up and pulled out. Jun places a steadying hand on Tatsuya’s, and says, very softly, “The best trowel technique is like this,” and guides his hand in a motion Tatsuya hyperfocuses on. Every second of this moment is too valuable to lose, but Tatsuya is paying so much attention to Jun and the way it feels to have him move him like this that he’s not entirely sure how Jun moved him.
“Camellias are for love, right?” Tatsuya asks, nervously turning to Jun, who immediately seems to glow and bloom with the chance to talk about something he knows, something he loves, and he trips over his words, which stumble excitedly from his softly parted, shaking lips.
“Red ones, yes,” he nods, and his hands ball his skirt and fiddle with the fabric as his body channels his joy from his words to his fingertips, and lets him fidget. “These ones are- will be white, when they bloom. For waiting.”
Tatsuya bites the inside of his lip, and, as the flesh slides between his teeth, he looks Jun up and down. “Are you waiting for something?” he asks.
Jun swallows, and says softly, “I was, I think. I’m not anymore.”
“Oh,” is all Tatsuya can manage. Jun’s gaze flicks up to him, his eyes wide, a deer in the headlights. He’s quiet, but his lip trembles, and Tatsuya can feel something that he’s desperate to say bubble beneath the surface of his skin. “Me?” he asks. “I mean, was I what you-”
He looks back to the dirt. “Was that wrong of me to say?”
Tatsuya places a hand softly on Jun’s wrist. “No,” he almost whispers. “No. I’m glad you’re not waiting anymore.”
Jun looks towards him through the sides of his eyes. He smiles, but it feels sad. It makes Tatsuya sad.
“I’m glad too,” Jun’s voice is gentle, and Tatsuya feels every cell in his body pull towards it, as if Jun is a magnet and the iron in his blood and bones and brain is crying out to him, desperate to be beside him, with him. Tatsuya lets his fingers wrap slowly around Jun’s wrist, and he smiles, trying to calculate how to make it big, make it real, make it make Jun happy, and feels his face twitch awkwardly in response. He brushes away a stray strand of hair, and tucks it behind his ear, and Jun giggles.
“You just smeared mud everywhere,” he states, turning away. “All over your face.”
Tatsuya puts a hand to his cheek, and feels the mud. He can’t quite tell it apart from what’s already on his fingers. “If you think that’s funny, you wouldn’t want to work on my bike with me, then,” he sighs. “Get a lot worse than mud on your face then.”
“Oh, do you?”
“I do. There’s oil and... other stuff. Motorbike stuff. Grime.”
Jun purses his lips. “I think I could handle it.”
“Yeah,” Tatsuya laughs. “Yeah. Let’s do that, sometime. Might be nice.”
Jun changes the topic by sticking his hand in the dirt - Tatsuya’s impulses scream that he should have done that! He should have shoved his hand in there! - and saying, “I think our hole is deep enough!” and he sounds so proud that Tatsuya doesn’t mind the conversation derailing, instead feeling himself blush a little. He puts a muddy hand on Jun’s shoulder, and squeezes it affectionately, which earns him a look that’s somewhere between adoration and disgust as Jun brushes the dirt from his shirt.
Tatsuya stands up, and his knees creak again and he sighs and shakes the inactivity out of them.
“Aren’t you going to help me transfer the plant?” Jun asks, still sat on the ground.
Tatsuya stretches. “This plant is kind of like our kid,” he says.
“That’s... really odd of you to say, considering your earlier sentiments towards it.” There’s a hint of a frown, of confusion, in Jun’s words.
“No,” Tatsuya nods. “It makes sense. Being solely responsible for another living thing is terrifying.”
Jun pushes himself up, and faces Tatsuya, eyes wide and dewey and clearly nervous, and he asks, “Is being with me terrifying?” and Tatsuya doesn’t know what to say because some part of him is screaming, yes, it is terrifying, but in a good way, in a way that makes him excited, in a way that makes him scared only of losing the most wonderful person in his life, but another part of him knows that yes is wrong, that the feeling he immediately thinks of isn’t the same one Junis asking him he feels, and another part of him still is crying that if he takes too long to answer it’s bad, and he’s bad, and he’s going to make Jun feel bad, and his mouth opens, and he blurts;
“Being with you is everything.”
Jun blinks, for a moment, and there’s silence everywhere but Tatsuya’s head, which is screaming rights and wrongs and dos and do nots and regrets and better ways to phrase things and he’s wishing that he actually knew how to speak in a coherent manner that was nice to listen to, and then Tatsuya’s head goes quiet too, because Jun wraps his arms around him and buries his head in his chest. The action shocks Tatsuya, for a moment, but he falls into it, and his hands find Jun’s back, and he holds him, and he thinks he hears him say thank you, a few times, but he isn’t sure.
They stay like that for a long time, Tatsuya doesn’t know how long, and, when they plant the camellias, Tatsuya isn’t nervous at all.