#speaking about a Lluvia de líridas vs a Lyrids meteor shower

[skuag]

Lyrids

Hi! Look at me writing in English! And a special thanks to @lightchildofthespring for her help and support.

Fandom: Digimon

Characters: Takenouchi Sora and Ishida Yamato

Genre: Romance

Lenght: One-shot, 1500ish words. 

Summary: Sora receives an unexpected visitor during the quarantine.

Lyrids - FF.Net / AO3

(More under the cut)

Sora and Yamato rented their first apartment together while they were still at university. It was a very small apartment, on the 10th floor, one floor by the stairs. Right next to the machine that powered the elevator, which made it particularly noisy and cheap. It also had a private terrace, almost bigger than the apartment, where Yamato placed his telescope and taught Sora everything she knew about the sky, and where she prepared herself a corner with a chair, a small table and a lot of colors, where she could draw, think and enjoy sunny days.

She thought about leaving the apartment when Yamato left to Chitose to start his training at the Air Defense Missile Training Group, and then again when the first two years went by and his training continued, and then again… but there were a number of things that prevented her from leaving, and even if she explained out loud that rent was low and it was close to her mother’s, the truth was that she just couldn’t bear to part with all the memories that she had created there, and all the firsts, and all the happiness that the small apartment had meant to her. Yes, she had grown tired of going up one floor through the stairs, every day, many times. Yes, she was able to pay for something bigger, yes… and yet there she was, all those years later, still enjoying the small space where she had created her first home with Yamato.

It got particularly difficult in 2020, because suddenly she wasn’t able to go out as often as she wanted to, and she wasn’t able to receive as many friends as she was used to, and she started to spend her little time off from work cleaning and disinfecting, all the time, the same small space… but finally she received the unexpected news that Yamato was going to be allowed to leave Chitose for a few weeks, in fact, until further news, and her small apartment suddenly felt huge without him, but only for a little longer… and she cleaned and disinfected and brought flowers and watered her plants and made sure to try to teach her cat, Piximon, to sleep on the couch… (at least for a while).

Yamato arrived on April 21st, 2020, and for the first time in years he didn’t have a return ticket. Sora had prepared everything, she had bought his favorite foods and enough supplies to last them for over a week, but she hadn’t prepared herself for the surge of emotions that she felt when he entered the apartment with his own key and left his suitcase next to the door. When he absentmindedly pat Piximon on the head while he smelled his baggage, and when he smiled at her, happy, but didn’t run to her.

“I need to disinfect myself,” he explained, and she knew, of course…

So she sat and watched him. She watched him as he removed his shoes and sprayed them before storing them in the genkan. She watched him disinfect the suitcase, the wheels, and she watched him remove his coat and hang it separately from hers. It was incommensurable how slow time moved while she waited for his hug. But finally, he cleaned his hands and was ready for her, and she was ready for him, and they could have hugged and kissed for a lifetime.

“Do you have my old telescope?” he asked, and for a minute she felt annoyed that he wanted to start studying right away.

But she did have it, and she had cleaned and disinfected it too…

“I have plans for today and we will need it,” was all he explained. And Sora wanted to know more, but the plans included her, and for the moment it was enough.

Yamato felt impatient for the rest of the afternoon. She knew for the way in which he checked the time every few minutes, for how he scratched his head every time he realized that he was doing it, and for how early he decided to start cooking dinner. Sora, on the other hand, only wanted to look at him, and follow him around, and mess with his hair, and just to stay close to him, as close to him as possible, no matter how against the sanitary recommendations it was.

But she knew something was odd when he insisted that she took a shower, that he didn’t need help in the kitchen, and basically just escorted her to the bathroom and closed the door in her face. She shrugged, what could she do? Yamato obviously had been planning something for a while now, and she was in his way.

So she took her shower, and chose his favorite perfume, the one that she barely ever used, and took a very long time to decide which pajamas to wear – because she was not going to get dressed only to sit inside, even if with him. She chose a light pair of pajamas, designed as a huge panda. She knew he found it very funny, and maybe even cute.

But she had definitely not been expecting him to prepare a night picnic on the terrace, right next to the telescope, and yes, her pajamas were way too light for that chilly night. She didn’t complain, though, nor did she change her clothes, even if it looked odd to be sitting in her pajamas next to his fully dressed boyfriend. She took a knitted blanket with her and sat under it with Yamato, and with Piximon, of course, who couldn’t be anywhere else, obviously.

“Do you know what’s happening today?��

Was that a trick question? Because according to Sora, a lot was happening that day – even if the only thing she cared about was her boyfriend being there.

But it wasn’t a trick question, and he immediately started to explain, and she cared more than she expected to. She had always enjoyed hearing Yamato explain the space, to her, to Takeru, even to Ken and Miyako’s daughter, just to anyone who wanted to listen. His eyes lighted as they did when he played the harmonica in their childhood or when he performed with his band… That Yamato whose voice used to carry her away, and who she watched over fondly when he performed… she knew, probably, that he thought she wasn’t as interested in the explanations as he expected her to be... She was, however, but she just cared more about watching him explain things that drove him crazy, and she could have watched him monologue about brands of toilet paper if it lit his eyes, colored his cheeks and raised the tone of his voice as speaking about the Space did.

“… and the Lyrid’s meteor shower starts every year around April 16th, but what’s different is that this year it coincides with the new moon, so the viewing conditions are magnificent. I know it’s a little cloudy, but since it’s peaking today, I’m sure we’ll be able to see a few. I’m so happy I was able to arrive today.”

Sora left her unfinished plate on the blanket to move closer to him.

“So that’s why you wanted to come? To watch the sky?” she asked, her face dangerously close to his. She watched him blush.

“Just to watch it with you…”

She kissed him.

“There are basically no meteor showers between January and April, so I always look forward to watching the Lyrids… but I’m not usually around, I mean with you, this time of the year… and it’s so silly because you don’t even need a telescope, you could just turn off the lights and watched them here, every year…”

“So let’s turn off the lights.” She moved closer, once again. Her movement annoyed Piximon, who left.

And they were left alone, on the top of a building, on an April night.

“Sora…” he whispered, right to her ear.

“Are you done with your food?” she asked, but she removed his plate without even waiting for a response. “I’ll turn off the lights, so we can watch the stars…”

He smiled, because he knew her just too well. She turned off the lights and suddenly they were only illuminated by the buildings that surrounded them.

“I’m still eating…”

“But I want to watch the stars…”

“It’s still early… the best time to watch the Lyrid’s meteor shower is between midnight and dawn…”

“… works for me.”

She couldn’t undress him fast enough, and he laughed watching her struggling with his food plate, that he was still trying to eat while she stubbornly tried to sit on top of him and play with his hair, and remove his shirt and just do the hundred things that she needed to do before midnight.

Sora heard him speak until very late that night.

“Lyrid meteors radiate from near the bright star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Harp… but they will appear unexpectedly, in any and all parts of the sky… it is amongst the oldest known meteor showers… Records of the Lyrids go back for almost three-thousand years…”

Comet Thatcher, orbital paths, earth’s atmosphere… Sora could remember many words from that night, even if scattered and unrelated, like the dozen meteors that they saw, watching during many hours, and with a lot of patience.

Piximon eventually returned and took his rightful place on her legs, and purred. Sora purred too, on her own, particular way, and hugged Yamato like it was their last night, even if it was just the first.