Tokyo Babylon Fan Fiction / Yami No Matsuei Fan Fiction ❯ We Share This Humble Path, Alone ❯ Ophidiophobia ( Chapter 1 )

We Share This Humble Path, Alone

Ophidiophobia

Mornings, Hisoka had decided, were better than evenings. He could recall a time, when he had been very small, that he had loved summer evenings. He could recall watching the sun set from the top of a grassy slope on his ancestral lands just west of the main house, and the world becoming cool and mysterious in the darkness, and chasing fireflies barefoot with wet grass sticking between his toes until his mother would come looking and scold him for staining his nice clothes. And they were always nice clothes, whether they were modern or traditional. Kurosaki Rui had always been insistent on that point, that he was the son and heir of a great family and heritage and it did not befit him to dress commonly or to rough-house and make a mess of himself like other children did. Though his father had been the patriarch and adhered strictly to the family code of honor and tradition, as long as his son conducted himself with dignity and behaved with respect and obedience, Hisoka didn't frankly think the man would have cared if he had worn jeans and amused himself in his spare time.

But his mind was drifting to things he preferred not to think about. He enjoyed mornings now, when the sunlight seemed so much more golden and infinitely soft, when the whole world was somehow soft, and fresh, and faintly sweet with the scent of the same dew that had once stained his clothes. He had found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed listening to the birds in the morning. They sounded more cheerful and harmonious in the early morning, while later in the day it seemed to him that they were all bickering with each other. The sunsets he had watched in his childhood now seemed like the burning out of an exhausted day, and he could not enjoy the colors of the sky properly for the rising tide of anxiety that heralded the onset of all-out night. But the sunrise he had come to enjoy as it was softer, less blazing, and lit up the world rather than darkening it. Never mind that his brain was frozen in adolescent development and his serotonin levels would never properly balance out and his internal clock was perpetually set to make him want to sleep late - if nothing else, his parents had taught him discipline which, despite everything, he was begrudgingly grateful for, and he could drag himself up day in and day out no matter how inviting the pillow and the warmth of the bed and even the security of Tsuzuki, if that was where he happened to be . . . and he could have the untainted morning.

Of course, it was well past sunrise now, though not late enough that the soft, golden, misty sense of light and warmth had faded, and he sat on the two wooden steps leading up to the narrow back porch of his small house, with his arm hooked over the rail from underneath.

"We're going to end up being late." he said finally, watching the toes of his sneakers as they nudged slightly at the faintly muddy ground where the rested, digging a tiny trench. In the past months (he wasn't sure how many anymore, as the season never changed anyway) his neat, relatively barren little backyard had gradually exploded into color as his new house-mate claimed the uncharted territory as his own, turning grass and muddy patches into brilliant flowerbeds. Said house-mate, on his knees at one erratically landscaped portion of the new garden with trowel in hand, looked up from his quiet work long enough to check his watch.

"We've got time, we'll just blink straight into the office."

"I wanted to walk." the boy on the steps murmured only half audibly. He *had* wanted to walk, he liked the feel of walking. Maybe it was a lingering effect of his long illness, being bedridden, but he enjoyed walking down the street, the way his rubber soles seemed to nearly bounce against the pavement and he allowed the slightest spring in his step despite his closely guarded posture and indifferent air. "You know," he continued out loud, "they'd probably grow just as perfectly without you doing this every day, just like everything else."

"I know," the older man replied cheerfully, "but I like doing it anyway." That was that then. If playing caretaker to a perpetually blooming, perpetually perfect garden gave Tsuzuki a short respite of true happiness, who was he to challenge it. He dropped the argument but uttered a long suffering sigh to save face. Tsuzuki was resonating faint waves of amusement with him and looked up to meet his bored expression with a wide grin, raising one finger and winking "Think of this, as your moment of zen."

"It's *your* zen, not mine." the boy snapped back with no real venom, faintly agitated at the sense of Tsuzuki laughing at him.

"You seem peaceful enough, sitting and watching like a cat in the sun. You could leave without me, but you don't." The older man retorted smugly before he rose, wiping the damp earth off his trowel before pulling off his gloves. Hisoka didn't have anything to say to that, so he didn't say anything at all, untangling his arm from the railing and scooting over as Tsuzuki sat down beside him, his longer legs folding up comically where Hisoka's younger form fit neatly. "You do like them, don't you?" the man's face and voice came across calm enough, but there was a ripple, a twinge of anxiousness dimly reflected in his eyes that the boy had come to recognize. It was a small thing, an unimportant thing, but it was a thing Tsuzuki wanted to give him, or wanted him to share with him, he wasn't sure which, if the man was being generous or needy, but he relented slightly.

"It's nicer this way than it was, at least. Don't you think it's kind of feminine though?" Tsuzuki's anxiety seemed to dissipate at that, and he grinned again, leaning over and tapping the boy's nose in a patronizing manner that would have gotten him punched if there had been anyone to see it.

"I don't know about *that*, samurai used to arrange flowers before going into battle, and you, my young friend," here he punctuated with another tap that made Hisoka contemplate punching him anyway, "are a samurai, *so* . . . by my estimation, this should be right up your alley."

"Ah." Hisoka replied in a noncommital tone as Tsuzuki withdrew from his personal space, leaning back into his own side of the steps.

"Which ones do you like?" he asked casually. For a moment Hisoka was silent, surveying the garden studiously, taking his answer more seriously than Tsuzuki had probably intended.

"I don't really care for the pink ones so much . . . I like the darker ones best. Those . . ." he pointed self-consciously towards the edge of the yard where a line of tall, dark flowers stood up against the fence.

"Irises." Tsuzuki supplied quietly, trying not to sound condescending in giving him a lesson. Hisoka only nodded and pointed to another patch around the base of a young tree.

"And those . . ."

"Mojave Aster."

"This one . . ."

"That's an orchid."

"And those over there."

"Purple-loosestrife."

"And that one."

"Foxglove." Tsuzuki was grinning madly now, and fairly radiating delight and amusement.

"What?" Hisoka frowned, suddenly suspicious. Tsuzuki only shook his head, reigning in his smile.

"It's nothing, it probably doesn't mean anything and you'll get flustered and tell me so, but it makes me happy so don't worry and just let me keep it so I can enjoy it." Hisoka blinked once, twice, then shrugged uncomfortably and looked away, still frowning. It probably *didn't* mean anything . . . but every flower Hisoka had professed to like was purple. Hisoka either hadn't noticed, or it really didn't mean anything, but for the moment, to think it did, made Tsuzuki immensely happy.

They continued to sit in companionable silence for a while, all hopes of walking to work flying farther away with each passing minute, but Hisoka found he didn't really mind anymore. This was calm . . . this was pleasant . . . this was a good morning.

"So . . . where do you want to go for lunch?" Tsuzuki stretched his legs out and leaned back, resting his elbows on the porch. Hisoka snorted.

"We haven't even gotten to work yet and you're thinking about lunch?"

"Well, this way we aren't wasting work time discussing it." the older man replied with a cheery logic. Hisoka's snappy retort was lost as something green moved beside his foot and he yelped in panic, jumping up onto the porch without seeming to have ever stood up. Tsuzuki burst out laughing as the boy stood in the center of the floor, looking around his feet anxiously.

"Shut *up* and be useful! Kill it or something!" The boy hissed, glaring at his partner between furtive glances at the ground.

"Kill *what*?" the words were hard to get out through the humor bubbling unstoppably in his throat.

"The *snake*!"

"That was a garter snake! Don't *tell* me a big, tough, I'm-not-a-kid shinigami like you is afraid of an itty-bitty garter snake."

"I *hate* snakes."

"So I gather," he lost his train of thought for a moment as the laughing started all over again at his mental image of Hisoka standing on a chair in a dress with a rolling pin, but he didn't dare describe this image out loud.

"I *hate* snakes, I've *always* hated snakes, when I'm five hundred years old I'll *still* hate snakes, I used to have *nightmares* about snakes as a kid, now stop laughing and kill it! Or are you too much of a head-case to whack something as stupid as a snake without a massive guilt trip!" Tsuzuki managed to sober up and give him a wounded look.

"Aren't much for tact today, are we."

"Tact is for people who aren't witty enough to be sarcastic."

"And you're a real wit, you know that?"

"I'm Oscar fucking Wilde, kill the damn snake! *What*?!"

Tsuzuki was grinning against and Hisoka's irritation was mounting. "You're scared of snakes." that seemed, to Tsuzuki, a perfect explanation.

"What's your point?"

"You're letting me *see* you being scared of snakes."

Hisoka didn't have anything to say to that.