𝚒𝚗𝚋𝚘𝚡 — 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚗𝚒𝚊.

[sacral]

EVEN WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

Comments

[hallowedly]

My dear Subaru-kun, aren't we past pretending at the virgin bride? This is nothing your clan hasn't done for the Koushitsu for years.

[sacral]

I'm not disavowing it.

[hallowedly]

Then?

[sacral]

I'll perform it.

Though already, I can tell you that invocation was made by choice.

[hallowedly]

Keeping busy?

[sacral]

It was only a matter of listening.

[hallowedly]

You keep loving hopeless things.

[sacral]

Maybe so.

[ He doesn't intend to stop. ]

[hallowedly]

As for my small favour, I'm afraid it comes with limitations: look, but don't touch.

( For whatever curse sleeps on it to consume two would be — )

After all, our happy little family isn't at the point of sharing assets. But I'm not so crude: bearing in mind I'm but a humble veterinarian incapable of shouldering the Sumeragi fees, what might I owe you?

[sacral]

[ Look, but don't touch. Look. But don't — ]

His blood wasn't meant for you. I expect the cost will already run steep.

[hallowedly]

A fair conclusion.

[sacral]

Then promise me your safety.

[hallowedly]

Of all the things.

[sacral]

It's what I want.

[hallowedly]

But I refuse to lie to you.

[sacral]

Do you?

[hallowedly]

I've not lied to you a moment since our bet ended.

[sacral]

Then...

Do you want to know? If you have the blood of a dead god on your hands?

[hallowedly]

( Gritted. Teeth. ) You might as well ask for my right eye again.


( Already hopelessly compromised. )

[sacral]

[ A hoisted guillotine's blade, flashed by way of guilt, glinting — to think that he'd nearly had his left, too. Still: ]

Bring the blood to me.

[ In one piece. ]

[hallowedly]

And where is your place of business nowadays?

[sacral]

[ A silent sensation, not as accurate as a tether but still commanded through the Murmur's intrusion all the same: a building in Chelsea, its arched doorway red as a torii gate. ]

[hallowedly]

( Ah, but to learn the rundown location of the Sumeragi scion in his tatters is a greater intimacy than to enter the boudoir of a sophisticated courtesan in her lovely prime. He makes no mistake of it, no delay. There is distance, there is the red-hot noose of his fatigue, there is the high call of white birds drifting over sun-drenched soil oozing between cement teeth.

Manhattan is a lark like this. Sakurazuka Seishirou, battered, bruised, one arm regaled with the bandage fittings shielding a somnolent stab wound, the flickers of his flitting gaze quarry-like, diffuse. He doesn't knock — sends the tacit invitation of a pulse through their strange trinket of a bond — but waits outside, like every stray on the porch, legs mutinously kicked out over slitted stepping stones. Gravel swims in his stillness.

Cold at midday. Colder still at night. He stirs from exhaustion when the door creaks. )

I should have brought a house-warming gift.

[sacral]

[ He is a sensation before he is a sight, and Subaru doesn't look gratified in the interstice of the red doorway to find that both of these things align.

Even if — it sings truth. He couldn't promise him without lying. ]

If it were any other celebration.

[ Maybe he would have accepted it as tiding. As it is, he pulls the door open wide in its own scrape of ceremony, standing aside for him to enter. Knowing tempers the green-glinting trouble of his study, any urgency that would have flourished beneath it. To help yourself to another's offering is an exercise in withstanding. ]

Come in, anyway.

[hallowedly]

( What fool walks into the lion's den willing? One increasingly old, starting to grey and resolutely unwilling to accept the permanence of encroaching wrinkles. He is — himself reduced, yes, bootleg and dusting and frailed, but his roots sing the sakura tree's promise. He will stand, he will hold, he will persevere. This storm will not be what brings him down.

Wind at his back, a groaning door, dust travelled in gravel beneath his dragging footsteps. Wallpaper flayed in stiff, thick peels at waterlogged edges where green peers between electric fittings. Dead LED and predatory fern, cottagecore chic.

For once, along stairs and throttled corridors, he does not offer to remove his shoes. )

Should I really be here unchaperoned? The new generation is quite forward. ( After all, how can Sumeragi Subaru resist his debilitated and impoverished charms? The dark circles attached to the dark circles, that's what modern men crave. ) Tell me you have a cigarette.

( Look at him. Lie. )