Archive of Our Own ^beta

1

“Let me have one,” Uruha pleads.

“No.” Samura rises to his tiptoes, holding the pack of cigarettes out of reach. “Your mom’s gonna kill me if she catches a whiff of smoke on you.”

Every year, Uruha believes he will finally grow tall enough for Samura’s trick to stop working. He hasn’t.

They’re both running hot from training, reeking of sweat and the weathered wood that made up the walls of their dojo. Samura is also a smoker, and smells like one. Uruha watches him slide a cigarette between his lips, looking at the stars as he lights it. Orange embers smolder at the other end of the stick, a beacon in the night sky.

“One day you’ll buy your own, kid,” Samura grins. He carefully exhales a wisp of smoke upwards, then leans back in, the ashy residue lingering in the air between them.

Suddenly, Uruha wonders how it would feel to swipe the burn from the curve of Samura’s mouth with the tip of his tongue. To let it dissolve under his skin and etch itself into every cell of his body, the way it has done to Samura Seiichi’s.

He doesn’t. Just sighs, “That’s so far away.”

2

The country lives a lifetime in just over a year’s time. Uruha becomes one of the chosen, sees a national fall and rise, and walks across a field of flowers where the birds don’t sing.

To him, it all goes by in a flash. When there’s a North Star, it’s easier to shove into a far corner of his mind the scent of rotten flesh, charred skin, and sickly-sweet nectar that festers out of a garden of men.

He remembers being told the wounded nation now needs heroes. It makes sense; he’s plenty wounded, and he has needed that, too.

He remembers seeing Samura, shortly after the island but before statues start sprouting around the country like mushrooms following rainfall. Perhaps those are a kind of flower as well; Samura doesn’t talk about it anymore.

“What will you do?”

Samura lights a cigarette, takes a slow drag, and frowns. “Try to quit smoking,” he says, finally. “Inori wants a kid someday.” There’s doubt in Samura’s voice, like he can’t quite imagine it yet.

He remembers silence hanging, as orange flame licks away at dried tobacco leaves and rolled-up paper. Samura doesn’t offer him one; never has. Probably never will, now.

3

Uruha has thought cigarette smoke to be impossible to purge, but he picks up only the warm, comforting scent of breakfast leftovers and fresh flowers as he steps into Samura’s house. An altar lies tucked in one corner, Inori smiling in a framed photo behind a colorful congregation of offerings.

“Iori’s at school,” Samura says over tea. The man might wear fatherhood awkwardly like ill-fitting clothes, but it seems to suit him, despite everything.

Uruha glances around the home – bright, cozy, lived-in. “So you really did manage to quit.”

“More or less.”                   

The theater scene that Uruha returns to after the war is abundant in vices. He, too, dabbles a little bit in everything, except one – his mother insists smoking will ruin his voice and face, both indispensable tools of the job, so he steers clear. Easy to do, since he has never developed a taste for it anyways.

Yet, the urge hits him like a freight train when he sees Samura years later, in a husk of a home, a child’s absence deafeningly loud. A cigarette rests between Samura’s lips, dented from the pressure, unlit the whole time.

The smoke never quite goes away. Surprisingly, neither does the craving.

4

Fushimi knows how to motivate him. Get up and eat, because the hard-working kitchen staff would be crushed to see his meal untouched. Join our training, because the enemy might attack any moment and the men could use some pointers with their swordplay. Let’s go for a run, because their contingency plan involves him escaping on foot to Atago Station miles away and he needs the endurance.

Baby steps, little missions from a squad captain for a man who has lost his North Star.

“Can’t sleep?” Fushimi asks, stepping out to the veranda.

Uruha nods, takes a wordless sip of alcohol as Fushimi settles beside him, their knees almost touching. He watches as Fushimi fishes out an e-cigarette and puts it to his lips. A bubblegum-scented cloud of exhale floats idly to the moonless sky alongside hot spring steam.

“I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Don’t tell my mom,” Fushimi says, startling a laugh out of him. “Wanna try?”

He takes it. The vapor travels down into his lungs with surprising smoothness, like breathing in a phantom memory. Uruha catches Fushimi staring at the line of his throat, and the second time he exhales the bubblegum gets trapped between their mouths.

5

“There’s someone, isn’t there.”

Fushimi says, casual, as if talking about the weather and not having just asked Uruha to slice open his guts with a blade. “What’s the great idea?” Uruha scowls.

To that, Fushimi remains unfazed, the same easy half-smile. Not much seems to faze him, in general – only twenty-seven with his life sworn away in defense of an idea as nebulous as the country. Looking at Fushimi feels like déjà vu, and Uruha doesn’t know if that infuriates or terrifies him.

Fushimi’s long fingers comb through wild blond hair, smoothing it into a semblance of order. Pointless, when evidence of what they just did is blooming purple on his tanned skin. “Just felt like your mind was elsewhere, that’s all.”

“Does that bother you?” There’s no point trying to insult Fushimi’s intelligence, and Uruha Youji wasn’t raised a liar, regardless. “Maybe we should stop.” Maybe I should.

Fushimi raises an eyebrow. “Why, worried you’d hurt my feelings?”

The effortless clarity with which Fushimi walks this earth baffles him. “I’m worried I already have.”

Another easy smile. “You won’t,” Fushimi leans in, pressing a bubblegum-flavored kiss to the scar on Uruha’s shoulder. “Because you understand what it’s like.”

6

The tall bodyguard asks, suddenly, when their aimless morning walk has taken them to the lakeside, near the edge of Kokugoku Fortress. “So, Uruha-san, you and Fushimi…?”

Uruha laughs, even as his chest twists sharply into an alien shape. “I don’t know,” he says, honestly.

The man lights a smoke and offers one to him, to which Uruha shakes his head, and takes out his e-cigarette. He inhales, exhales, watches the feathery tendrils of vapor and ashy smoke curl together and vanish into the sunlight. “Is this the part when you give me the shovel talk?” Uruha asks, all feigned nonchalance.

“Hell no. I’m just nosy.” The response is immediate. “Fushimi’s a grown-up. So are you.”

He tells Fushimi about it, later, when they’re both sweaty and boneless, drawing from Fushimi an exasperated laugh. “Sorry about that. I’ll tell them to stop.” Fushimi kisses the back of his neck before sliding out of the covers, the marks on his body disappearing under his pajamas with familiar efficiency.

Before he leaves, Fushimi kisses him goodnight, chaste but playful. These days, Uruha isn’t sure if the bubblegum on his tongue is his or Fushimi’s. It feels like a different kind of craving.

7

“What will you do?” Uruha asks. “After this is over.”

Sitting on the veranda, Fushimi exhales a misty cloud. “I’d get a new mission somewhere, probably. You?”

“Back to the theater. Where else would I be?”

Uruha has his own e-cigarette by now, one Fushimi has ordered for him, but Fushimi still offers his when they’re together, seemingly out of habit. Uruha takes a slow drag, tastes the slightest hint of sugar on the tip of his tongue, like a whispered secret.

“You’re a grown-up, Uruha-san. You can do whatever you want.”

There’s a burn in his chest that has nothing to do with nicotine. “My mother would be livid that I’ve picked up smoking.” Uruha stares straight ahead, words nearly tripping over one another on their tumbling way out. “Once I leave, I’d better call the guy who gave this to me and give him a warning.”

Uruha expects Fushimi to laugh it off. To dissipate this thick atmosphere with his usual easy chuckle, play along and let the moment pass like fog rolling over glass. But when he turns Fushimi pulls him into a kiss, stealing the air right out of his lungs and filling them with bubblegum.