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It’s warm. About as warm as an early summer afternoon could be.
Nanami Kento sits by himself, spine curved forward to balance on the backless bench, one leg tucked above the other. He holds a plastic wrapped sandwich, peeling back the wrap after each bite.
It’s lunch hour, something Nanami had kept in the back of his mind all morning—and every morning.
He pays little attention to the cars behind him, and his eyes only catch onto every third or so person that wanders by.
He sighs to himself, checking his watch.
11:46 A.M.
He’ll have to wrap this up soon if he wants to stay timely, consistent. He isn’t sure if today’s lunch was worth that stagnant, long line.
“Nanami?” It’s a familiar, gentle tone that yanks Nanami out of his own head, his eyes peering up to his right, just past the top of his thin sunglasses.
Tall, with wide shoulders and dark silken hair pulled back into a half-do. Nicely ironed clothes that are practically spotless.
No more plum crescents sag under thin eyes, (Nanami facetiously assumes all of that went to him,) and loose robes don’t hide the way his arms and shoulders had thickened. Nanami’s mouth is so dry nothing comes, thoroughly rattled.
For much more than a moment, he can’t understand that Suguru Geto of all people would come back into his life.
Reborn into one of the most put together men he’s ever seen.
“Geto-san,” Nanami manages, shifting his body, his shoulders move to face him. Geto can’t help but smile, and Nanami only realizes how polite he sounds after it’s already out. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m with my family,” Geto turns himself, his sleeves laxly clinging to his arms as he gestures what Nanami gauges to be about six meters away to a dessert stall that he noticed from his walk here. At the stall are two young girls adorned in high-school uniforms. Nanami wonders just how young they are (fifteen, he’d guess), the blonde, styling herself up much more compared to the plain uniform the brunette wears. (Sisters, he assumes—that's all he can do.)
With the girls, is a tall man with his own blond hair smoothed back, fit with a tight shirt that’s halfway undone in the front. (If he wears it like that, Nanami wonders why he has it on at all.)
Family, Geto claims.
It’s different from the father that Geto sighed about never connecting with as well as they should, Nanami’s own sympathy with his mother—shared feelings over a quiet spring lunch on the high-school steps.
It’s different from the sweet but overbearing mother Geto spoke of when they sat in the locker room slipping on their running shoes, Nanami suggesting that ‘you cared enough to call her,’ and Geto could only smile.
It’s different from parents Geto culled along with every other relationship that refused to trail at his side.
Apprehensive, Nanami wonders what makes these people all that different.
“I see you’re enjoying your lunch.” Geto mingles himself into his head once again, smooth, happier than Nanami thinks he had ever heard him before.
It feels good, for both of them.
“My lunch—” Nanami stares down at his sandwich, and Geto cannot control his laugh of surprise when Nanami can’t keep his face from contorting with discontent, his lunch could have been better, it says.
“I asked for too much lettuce.” He says, too much crunch for his liking.
“If only I found you sooner, I could’ve bought a replacement for you.” Geto was more vocal about those things. Nanami was content enough to not mind.
He doesn’t imagine that Geto greeted him just to speak to him about his lunch, though.
“...I don’t mean to cut this short, Geto-san,” maybe part of him cringes, nailing himself down to his job for support. “My lunch break is almost over.” Nanami informs, fingers flipping up and down the edge of his sandwich wrapper as he watches Geto carefully.
“You work in an office, Nanami?” It’s to be presumed, and Nanami begins to count how many times Geto can say his name in one conversation.
“I’m a stockbroker.”
“I didn’t think you’d stick to something like salary work for this long, Nanami, you’re nothing if not consistent.” He smiles, Nanami can’t read it as only a compliment.
“Mhm,” The right words elude him, silence creeping into the air. It dissatisfies the both of them.
Nanami decides to fold the sandwich wrapper down into itself, tucking away the other half of his lunch and setting it onto his lap.
“...It’s been a long time. Geto-san.” Is all he can settle on.
It brings him to when he was resentful, despondent, small.
He is none of those things now, not like when it first became irreparable.
When it was cold, quiet with the buzz of old lights and the smell of sterility to cover up the rot.
When Geto watched Nanami’s fingers grasping at the skin of his eyes, pulling themselves wide, burning his pupils in the overhead bulbs.
When Geto stepped over to him after what Nanami could only assume was rummaging around, running the sink—
“Nanami-kun,” When Geto’s voice pierced through his stupor, “For your head.”
When Geto pulled Nanami’s hands forward, clasping his fingers closed around what Nanami realized to be a wet rag, all he could do was nod, yank his lips through his teeth, and smother his tearing eyes with Geto’s thoughtfulness.
When all Nanami could do is choke on his inability to do anything.
His inability to save Haibara.
His inability to see Geto’s fragility.
Maybe if he had spoken to him.
Just. Once—
"Nanami-Kun." Geto’s voice slides under Nanami’s skin and eases his head back up. It teaches his nerves to simmer, his eyes to sit still behind his glasses. He struggles to not hear such an endearment as order.
Geto says it like he doesn't know any better, "You know we'll always have a place for you, if you change your mind."
He finds it hard to ignore the sweat prickling the hair on his neck, the girls couldn’t be less obvious with where they place their own eyes, hiding behind their parfaits, wondering why their ‘Geto-sama’ would be taking so long. The other, someone Nanami never figured Geto would find the company of in the first place, kept his looks to himself, save for the hopeful glance that Geto would wrap up soon.
Nanami opens his mouth to speak, closing it back up with a dry swallow. He looks down for only a moment, and back up to Geto, whose eyes hadn’t moved once since he’d gotten there.
"You know how I feel." Nanami manages.
"I know how it's lonely."
And it’s like Geto won’t take no for an answer. Nanami's lungs shudder—ache from the breath he had kept. He furrows his brow in thought.
Nanami does not know if he can make a choice like that.
It’s not just whether he would fit, (he wouldn’t) but whether his stomach can settle around them, whether he can come to terms with the insignificance of the average man or woman.
“We have an upcoming report.” Dry, dismissive. Nanami wishes it wasn’t so.
Geto’s smile twitches, eyebrows raised as high as they can.
“Is it one of those end-of-year ones?” Nanami doesn’t mind that Geto doesn’t know the terms.
“Yes.”
“Real important?”
“Yes.”
Geto hums.
He leans back, looking up towards the sky, shading his eyes with his palm. They’d gleam a warm brown if he uncovered them.
“Nanami-kun.”
Obeying, Nanami looks back up. Geto peers back down.
“You know how I feel.” He says, and Nanami wonders if he does.
Nanami looks down, his eyebrows fall in displeasure.
“I’m sorry, Geto-san.” Content in the monotonous day-to-day degrade of his bones, Nanami isn’t equipped to make this heavy of a decision.
Geto shuts his eyes and nods his head. (Maybe he’s counted their names, too.)
His head nods until it slows to a stop.
His lips are pressed into a thin line, the corners curve down until Geto decides to forcefully laugh it off.
“You’re very stubborn, do you know that?”
Of course Nanami knows that.
“Well,” Geto begins, clearing his throat, exhaling slowly, “I shouldn’t keep my family waiting then, should I?”
“No, certainly not.” Nanami had thought of it before. Seeing Geto again, speaking to him about what had happened—why couldn’t he pry deeper? Why is he accepting the goodbye?
Geto stretches out his hand in farewell, and, unable to stop himself, Nanami extends his own out to meet him. Geto clasps Nanami’s palm with both hands—Nanami goes to interject with a suspended Geto-san—and he’s pulled into leaning forward, fingers squeezed by every last thing Geto has to give him.
“You know where to find me, when you change your mind.” He says, and it's the closest thing to a plea Nanami will ever get.
“I— Thank you.” Nanami says in a daze. Geto’s time and his kindness pull back, leaving Nanami’s hands empty. He smiles once more, mouthing ‘think about it,’ before stepping away for good.
Nanami watches Geto’s robes sway with each step, shining hair flowing behind him. Each careful step.
He watches far too long that by the time he registers it might be a problem, Geto’s girls are pulling him around the corner, he’s laughing like he could never be happier.
Nanami blinks and looks back down onto his lap.
He’s not quite sure what to think.
His watch beeps, and he should have left for the office five minutes ago.
It is dinner time when Nanami finally thinks, he wouldn’t know where to find Geto.
He could visit every shrine in Tokyo and he would somehow be on the wrong trail.
Nanami is alone at the table, his dinner lukewarm, his glass of water, half full.
Some part of him feels light. He lingers in himself far too much.
In the back of his mind, bleeding down to the pit of his soul, Nanami somehow knows Geto will slip back onto his path when he reconsiders—
If he reconsiders.
Nanami hasn’t decided yet.