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"Chihiro, I'm a little curious…" Hakuri said, looking up to him as they sat together side by side, watching the pond filled with koi outside of the room they currently stayed in.
"Hm?" The other man hummed in attention, his eyes following the red-colored koi. Hakuri thought absentmindedly how serene his face looked—it always seemed like he wore this kind of expression everytime he was around the fishes, and with everything coming to a slow stop, he supposes it was a good time to get to know the man better.
After all, it hadn't been a long time since they became partners—romantic ones, Shiba stressed to them, almost jumping in joy when they had been caught by the older man holding hands together mid-kiss. It was really embarassing the more Hakuri thinks about it, but the way Chihiro squeezed his hands before meekly announcing that they were boyfriends might have been the day where Hakuri saw Shiba at his happiest.
Okay, maybe seeing Azami again couldn't be topped, but that was neither here nor there. He shakes his head absentmindedly, and he breathes out a sigh as he smiles at the other man.
"Why does the Enten, like, you know, manifest through goldfish?"
The question makes Chihiro stop. His mind quiets down completely, that pit in his stomach that he never gave much thought to finally rearing its ugly head again. His hands, preoccupied with tracing circles on Hakuri's thigh, stop too, and the silence drags on for too long, enough that Hakuri swallows the lump in his throat and start darting his eyes back and forth to the pond and Chihiro himself.
"I'm, uh—you don't have to answer if you don't want to, everyone has something to—"
"…It's fine," Chihiro mutters, even as he feels his chest burn, like he's back to that same situation three years ago—fire, smoke and ash filling his lungs—that vision of their little, peaceful and unassuming house in shambles as the boxes containing the Enchanted Blades lay there broken, said swords gone from his vision.
Sometimes, Chihiro still dreams of holding someone that looks just like him—someone much taller, someone much older, someone he loved like the world—
"They were… dad's goldfish," he says, eyes darting to the black, red, and tricolored goldfish. "Oh," is all that Hakuri says, like he's learned the gravity of what seemed to be an innocent question.
"Did they… mean anything?" Hakuri asks, one hand placed on top of Chihiro's own scarred ones, mapping all the lines of previous scars from battle. Chihiro leans his weight onto Hakuri's shoulder just a little bit.
"Mm, they did," he says, hand tapping at Hakuri's thigh. The other giggles, letting Chihiro's weight rest against his body more comfortably by adjusting his head. "Tell me about it," he says and Chihiro nods, even though the weight on his chest feels like its taking away his breath even more.
"The red one… attracts good fortune," he says, a smile forming on his face. His dad was always a bit supersititious when he wanted to. Hakuri laughs. "I didn't know this whole fortune thing applied to other stuff," he says, like it's something normal to say.
He opts to not say anything. He supposes he'll just have to teach Hakuri more about the world. That sounded like a lovely idea—for him to be the one that Hakuri learns from.
"Mm, he had lots of red coloured stuff around the house, he said it reminds him of our eyes too," he says, and at that, Hakuri tries to stifle a laugh, but one look at Chihiro's face makes him lose it, shoulders shaking as he laughs into his own hand. He lets out a chuckle of his own too, but it's hard, because Hakuri's laughs sound like pleasant windchimes, and it'd be a shame if he couldn't listen to it more often.
It takes a few more seconds for their laughter to die down, then Hakuri points at a black colored goldfish, and Chihiro pauses for a moment. Warding off evil… if only that worked against the Hishaku, Chihiro thinks, even though thinking of the possibilities and what-ifs in the world where a man named Kunishige Rokuhira survives torments him daily, more times than he'd ever admit—both to himself and lately, everyone else he's come to call a friend around him.
He coughs into his shoulder, before loosening his shoulders. Hakuri lets out a surprised hum before quickly settling back onto latching himself on Chihiro's arm now, those blue eyes filled with curiosity now staring back at him. "The black one wards off evil," Chihiro says. Hakuri smiles.
"Oh, so… Kuro's function about kissing me in the face randomly was your i—"
"Hakuri!" Chihiro says, cheeks set ablaze as he threw a pointed glare at the other man. At this, Hakuri holds back a laugh, then fails—
The other boy laughs at him again, this time, his teeth on full display as his eyes turn into crescents. It's the brightest he's ever seen Hakuri lately. "Sorry, sorry," he says seriously now, a bashful smile painted onto his face, hand scratching the back of his head. Chihiro sighs fondly.
"… Ward off evil… cut them down, watch over you, or showing my love to you—it doesn't really matter what function Kuro has, since cutting down evil means the people I love are safe," he says absentmindedly, and Hakuri falls silent, breath hitched, mouth hung open slightly as he let the words settle into the space between the two of them.
"Chihiro, you've gotten really romantic, you know?" Hakuri says, leaning away from Chihiro's shoulder as he rests his arms on his knees, staring at the man with a lovestruck smile. Chihiro feels his cheeks flush once more, finding it hard to stare at the bright-eyed man. "I love that about you so much," he continues, one arm reaching out to hold Chihiro's hand like it's the most precious thing ever.
Even if it's mapped with scars that Hakuri wishes were his, only for the reason being that it's some sort of a remnant, twisted desire as a Sazanami to have something that belongs to him irrevocably, Hakuri will settle for being the only one who's able to hold Chihiro's hands in a way that makes the other boy quiver.
"I… Thank you," he says, because it's what Chihiro defaults to—he's not used still to being as open as Hakuri thinks, but Chihiro knows that Hakuri knows that—and he's the only one who gets Chihiro like this.
Soft, so open, so welcoming—so peaceful to look at. Like a fish in a pond who will swim around for as long as it wants to. It's a beautiful sight.
Chihiro is beautiful.
Silence ensues between them once more, their eyes trying to spot a tri-colored goldfish. It seemed like there was none, though, the longer they waited, and Hakuri's fingers brushed Chihiro's hand again, eyes clouded with something like grief.
"The tri-colored goldfish… Dad just said it was super awesome," the man continues. Hakuri pauses, like his brain has shortcircuited. Chihiro smiles, even though it doesn't reach his eyes. "I know, that was anticlimactic," he mutters, eyes darting to Hakuri's face who only looks at him with a sad look in his eyes, even if his lips twist into a smile. "Not that that's bad at all," Hakuri says, even as his voice shakes, like he's letting the words Chihiro say to him settle fully. Chihiro tries not to think about it too much—
Grief, losing someone, losing everything, never able to turn the hands of time back to the days where he was just Rokuhira's son and not a murderer on the path to hell like Samura—
"Chihiro… Who else have you told about… all of this?" Hakuri says, and it's the question that manages to finally break him; Chihiro's eyesight goes blurry, more fifteen than eighteen; like this, Hakuri realizes Chihiro is a kid just like him, forced to grow up alongside the acts of violence he'd committed.
Like this, Chihiro realizes that all he has left of his father are memories of days none of them can go back to—and a single blade that binds him to this world out of a duty placed upon himself.
Hakuri's body engulfs him in a hug of their own, letting Chihiro rest his face on Hakuri's shoulders. His sobs are silent, because all Chihiro ends up doing is almost choke on his spit, the grief he'd buried so deep beneath such a small fishbowl finally bursting out like a tsunami approaching land.
"Chihiro… I'm here," Hakuri says, and Chihiro's sobs stop for a bit—before worsening in volume, like he'd just been… given permission to feel. The mere thought of it makes the white haired boy's heart hurt, and a lot of things never hurt Hakuri anymore.
Hakuri thinks Chihiro's so used to never speaking his thoughts out. There were things that blades couldn't cut down, and just like Hakuri couldn't keep running away from them forever, there were things Chihiro had resorted to drown beneath the blood he'd found himself already drenched in.
"I miss him," He says between sobs. "I wish… I wish I was stronger," he says, snot blowing out of his nose. Chihiro can't care, and Hakuri doesn't want to. So he lets grief overtake him, because Hakuri knows it's what he needs. "Then maybe Dad wouldn't have died like that…"
Hakuri only rubs Chihiro's back, feeling his shoulders shake as the other man continues to sob in his embrace. He's thankful it's just the two of them—Hakuri thinks Chihiro wouldn't have opened up like this—raw, bleeding, suffering. Chihiro's only ever known suffering—but that was all physical, because a moment of grief would be his undoing. Even when his emotions got hold of him, Chihiro would unlock a power through his smarts; and yet, Hakuri knew, there was no way to win against a grief like this.
Chihiro doesn't know how to grieve in a way that doesn't kill him. Hakuri doesn't know how to either, but if it were for Chihiro, Hakuri is willing to find a way.
He'll find a way. He'll do anything for him, because Hakuri needs him. And clearly, Chihiro does too.
Chihiro's sobs start to quiet down, shoulders still trembling. He's heaving still, but it's not as hard as before—he'd been hiccuping in between his cries, like he was still getting used to the act of actually crying his heart out.
Hakuri didn't want to think about the possibility of Chihiro doing this in complete silence for God knows how long, both before he joined and after he joined. Hakuri can grieve things for Chihiro another day—but this wasn't one of those days.
In time, Chihiro stops crying, and Hakuri's careful with the way he moves, because Chihiro's a light sleeper. Maybe releasing all those feelings have finally knocked Chihiro deeper into slumber, and Hakuri hopes that's the case as he carries the man princess style back to their room, determined to find a way to make Chihiro feel better.
It might not be the same anymore, but it would be his goldfish all the same. Hakuri would make sure of it.
Chihiro wakes up to Hakuri sleeping beside him, the memories quickly rushing back to him. It makes him shiver with both embarassment and pain, like he'd just made himself too raw, all those parts he tried so hard to cut to bits now being sewn together with nothing more than sheer willpower—because Hakuri cared, and Chihiro just wanted someone to know.
It hurt. It hurt less with Hakuri, even if it still hurt a lot.
His eyes roam around their room, one hand on Hakuri's hand, interlocking his fingers with Hakuri's as he leans over and grabs what seems to be… goldfish?
It's a crocheted version of the three goldfish that Enten manifests itself with—they're small enough to not be a considered a nuisance for Chihiro's taste, but it's also practical; it looked like the band was adjustable in length somehow, so he could wear it as either a bracelet or a necklace.
Chihiro opts to wear it as a necklace. They're closer to his heart—just like Hakuri is. Sometimes he thinks Hakuri's already inside there, carving a place out all for himself, and Chihiro knows he wouldn't stop him at all. His heart almost skips a beat—and he glances at the boy's sleeping face, looking serene for once instead of pained from another nightmare the two of them were helpless to, regardless of what the other did for each other. Maybe his grief with his father would be like that—Hakuri didn't know what it was like to be loved in a way that he needed from his own kin—Chihiro had the privilege of being loved, all things considered.
Hakuri's sleeping face looks so peaceful. He'd been the image of stability the one time Chihiro needed him the most—at the place with the goldfish.
Chihiro tries not to be haunted with the possibility that one day, he'll wake up to Hakuri's corpse. He tries to blot out the visions of Hakuri with blood sputtering out of his mouth or even his eyes, both sorceries lost as his body pushes itself to the limit to give Chihiro the chance to live.
He doesn't know if he can handle something like that again. Never again.
"Thank you, Hakuri," Chihiro whispers to the man, fingers finding themselves busy with his lock of hair. "Thank you for everything."
Hakuri smiles to himself as Chihiro falls back to the bed, barely opening his eyes to see Chihiro with the gift already snug on his neck.
I'll keep you living on, no matter what it takes. That's the meaning of love.