Work Text:
"We had dreams, once."
Nosediving into pessimism is not something Oboro will claim to enjoy.
However, it's been a long few years, and he's just so... tired.
"And they were just dreams," he replies, words invasive in his mouth.
A world where he doesn't split his lip by babbling sweet nonsense about dreams and hope and ambition and agencies is not one he'd expected to be in, but the world of the living is not one he'd expected to remain in, either, so maybe that's something.
The subsequent look on Shouta's face is disturbingly filled with grief and, what must be the remnants of fondness. "I know."
They turn their attention back to the shore. Waves lap at the glittery sand like flies to dung.
Watching the sky's colours be coaxed from cerulean to a simmering orange and pink is a sight to behold, clouds parting to make way for the sun to sink beneath the horizon.
Hook, line, and sinker.
Humming low, navy eyes undercut by pale yellow -- nearly white -- pupils cast a sidelong glance at Shouta.
"I wish he were here," he finds himself whispering. His voice teeters at a snail crawl, crackling on the last line like a prepubescent teen just learning to modulate themselves; hand scrabbling to make their mark on the world.
Before they faded away.
He traces a finger over his scar. There's no nerve ending on his left cheek anymore.
If not for Shouta, that very teen would've been him.
"Yeah," and there's a low mutter; Oboro looks away in time to not see Shouta's eyes snap shut, fast as a broken camera lens. "I do, too."
Looking back toward the beach, he allows himself a faint smile. "He would've liked this."
"He would've," Shouta agrees. There's a soft crunch. Out of the corner of his good eye, he can chalk it up to Shouta's foot digging into the sand, burrowing in.
"Maybe not this part," the other admits, and he sounds almost happy about it, complaining as he is, "It's too warm."
"There's nothing he wouldn't have liked," he argues, no real heat within the words, "He just liked the cold because your skin's like a snowman's. Frosty."
A choked sputter from the other renders Oboro doubtful.
Maybe he shouldn't have chosen that, of all things, to dredge up.
There's nothing he can do to change what's already been done anyway.
He digs his own feet into the sand, toes wriggling out from between the blue clasps of his yellow slippers, small as they are now. They'd been a gag gift from Nemuri a few years back.
Before they know it, the brilliant hues of magnolia and carnelion painted in the sky, fleet as it'd arrived, are tinted mirthless shades of black and blue.
Time had ticked away from them both. It's easy to lose yourself in it when the person who made every moment count is swimming in chrysantheums.