#anyways cherry blossom viewing is technically the end of march but like. shhh

[lunarscaled]

"..... what's with that look, doll? plan on just gawking, or are you gonna enjoy watching the sakura trees with me?" toji teases lyric lightly as he shifts in his seat, trying to get comfortable on the park's stiff bench. despite his plain colors in clothes & the sleek black of his parasol, the ex-sorcerer hunter looks..... happy. soft, in a way. his lazy gaze flickers from his partner back to the sky, wistful. his lips are curled in a light smile.

"..... the view is really nice."

-> They catch themselves staring at the lines of his face that weren't there almost a decade ago—fine ones, so faint they almost miss them until the corner of his mouth catches in that too-sharp-almost-sneer that has preceded his cruelty to them on more than one occasion when they were younger. How the lip splitting scar on the corner of his mouth has not faded with time and instead become a more deeply impressed part of him like the stitch scars on the shoulder joint where he lost his arm and a segment of his side, narrowly avoiding death by exsanguination. It's been nearly 7 years since then, when Shiu dragged him half-conscious to their doorstep and assumed they, a sorcerer and the only recent address he could remember, were someone to help him. Somehow better or cheaper than hospitals, and Lyric was left fumbling to find an affinity or a method of saving the man bleeding out on their rug and couch. ( it turned out to be something he needed a hospital for anyways. but he needed somewhere to stay and heal after that, and for whatever reason he could not return to where he had come from—if it existed to begin with. ) He stayed on their sofa after they tried to scrub the bloodstains out. Lyric peeled off gauze and replaced it when it bled through; cleaned his wound with saline and redid popped stitches when he moved too much. Shuffled awkward and irritable through him learning how to use one arm and the long healing and their hands around his throat on the couch, both of them teetering on despair and longing for death and neither of them able to have it.

The more time they spent in Lyric's shoebox apartment comingling lives, the less they fucked. Lyric didn't even think about it between working sorcery and non-sorcery jobs, managing the condition of his wounds, trying to make a home where they didn't want one to be.

-> He's dressed for the blossom viewing, something Lyric has never done because it didn't exist in their life before: he wears a charcoal grey kimono with a striped obi for the belt, a thin black coat Lyric doesn't know the name for draped around his shoulders against the windy spring chill. His socks and sandals are the same color, along with the grip of the parasol he carries, the span of its canopy a teal in a color too close to the type Lyric wears in their regular clothes. His eyes crease at the corners, subtle crows feet from age, when he inclines his head towards them at his side. What's with that look, doll? It doesn't have any of the bite like in the past. Maybe it's good that it doesn't. Proves that they're both more grown now, Lyric nearing their 26th birthday in oncoming May, but it still leaves a small hole of how things used to be. The distance they used to keep, to protect themselves. It doesn't exist anymore. Toji eventually found a stable occupation that took advantage of the physical prestige his Heavenly Restriction granted him, and even if he has softened up around the edges and in the middle in a more comfortable life, Lyric knows he is no less dangerous even onehanded and retired.

-> It looks good on him. Caught them off guard the first time they thought it, and again the first time he was gentle to them intentionally: his broad hand holding a lace-loosened shoe for them to slide their foot into it in a little boutique store where a trendy pair caught their eye briefly in the window. How he made sure it fit close to their sole and didn't pinch in the toes when Lyric tied the laces. The softened-up teasing when he held the box out of reach so Lyric couldn't put it back on the shelf because shoes like that were expensive and their work was difficult, and Toji bought them anyways. Left them on the coffee table in their apartment, slightly less shitty than the last one they lost the deposit on for obvious reasons. When he was stretched out on the couch, Lyric tucked one leg between him and the back of the cushions and settled on his hips, anticipating an exchange that had become typical of them for almost a year before he lost his arm. Felt their breath catch in their chest when his calloused fingers skimmed up their spine and stopped on the back of their neck.

Felt more confused than understanding when he laid them on his warm chest and kept watching the news, his knuckles drawing circles on one shoulder blade.

"... I just thought you looked good these days, is all. It's different, but good. You look better."

-> Healthier, they want to say, but don't. Happier. ( they wonder if they are apart of that happiness. if there's a place for them in it, or if he wants to make one, and where they exist in each other's lives as they are. Lyric had never planned to stay in Japan indefinitely. ) A gentle breeze plucks pale pink blossoms from their collectives and sends them tumbling through the air and across the blue eye, so bright and wide Lyric has to squint to look at it properly. They remember laying on their back in a field as a child and feeling they could fall both up and down at the same time when they stared at nothing but sky; they think of being as light as a cherry blossom petal and tumbling through the air to somewhere new. Of how the piles of them cover even the grey sidewalk and dark road asphalt and leave fantasy trails alongside hills of green grass until the whole world is colored by fleeting beauty.

"... it is pretty. There's so many of them, the trees."

-> They wonder if the reflection of the sky in their eyes changes their color, warps their world view. They wonder if they were squinting and didn't notice when Toji lowers the edge of his parasol into their vision and blocks out the tree line and passing bodies of people just enough—just as Lyric opens their mouth to protest he's defeating the point, they turn their head towards him and catch the dark of his hair where the choppy edges barely overlap his eyes, the profile of his nose to his cheek to his mouth. Catch his mouth, and theirs, and the gentle way he kisses them on the bench. Their fingers curl around the sides of the messenger bag in their lap, holding their essentials for going out. Squeeze it and expect something, but nothing comes; his mouth is gentle and warm, lightly chapped, and he kisses them chaste and slow like the moment can draw out forever. Lyric is almost scared that it will with their heart hammering away in their chest. One of their hands clutches the collar of his kimono and the underlining, trying to ground or balance themselves. They lean a little closer to it and don't know why. Just want something that sits in their mouth but that they never say.

They think about how he says doll like a mockery, but also how his mouth shapes their name. They think about him calling them baby, once, nose in their jaw and barely awake and their chest squeezes.

-> He parts them quietly and they know their cheeks and ears are flush, pink as the trees that surround them. Their hand loosens where it grips his kimono, but he keeps the parasol low enough they are just out of view of everyone else. His smile is too sharp because it knows them too well, and Lyric thinks of how Toji brings them coffee sometimes when he comes over, because he comes over, for no reason. Lyric thinks about how Toji wraps a scarf around their neck even when they insist, they don't need it, they've worked in way colder conditions. Lyric thinks about Toji, less cut like facet jewels and more like a living being, still visibly string and yet soft enough it doesn't hurt to touch him anymore, in their apartment kitchen taking a call from a client on their day off as he leans over their shoulder with his nose to their hairline as he watches them highlight passages in a local paper for potential curse leads. Lyric thinks. About Toji. About their heart in their throat like a wild animal when he leans back into his own space and takes the parasol with him, lets their hands rest in their own lap. How he smiles, a little gentler than it needs to be, and says:

Yeah. View's good.

He does not look at the trees.