-- and Josh is going to see things from his perspective now, and what that night was like: standing outside of the club, out back, with the heavy thrum of the music a distant vibration through one's body. The Blade King there, against the wall. Makoto's arms braced on either side of his head.
"You can't keep this up, and both of us know it. You need to let me go."
"Don't you dare even think that I'm going to do that."
More words, voices escalating - or, more accurately, Makoto's. Hikaru Shinta continues to remain painfully, infuriatingly calm, even as the look in his eyes is dark and maybe a little sad.
He still looked that way, even after Makoto closes in and kisses that mouth, fierce and rough. It's not the kind of kiss that's looking for reciprocation: it's the kind of kiss that demands a response, regardless of whether the other party wants to give it or not.
And he's letting Makoto do that. He waits all the way until Makoto's pulling back, breath harsh and accusing in his lungs, and watching him again with that same look that is driving him up the wall.
"You need to let me go."
Once the memory's done, Makoto's very quietly lifting the cigarette to his lips and taking another long drag.]
[ It's a strange thing to see all that like he was there, if he had been Makoto: insistent, desperate, heart-broken over the Blade King.
It's a strange thing, the feelings in the memory both distant and present at the same time, and for one quiet moment, Josh is grateful that he isn't Makoto's Bound, that Makoto is not his geist the way Davis is -- because he's not entirely sure how he might have handled resonating with the former Sin-Eater after a flashback like this.
As it is, he's not entirely sure what does it, what it is about the scene glimpsed in his head that brings back old memories, but it does.
And it hurts. It hurts like a fresh wound. Like the day Angel had rammed into him and he couldn't get his legs to work right. Like the day the doctors told him the final diagnosis I'm sorry, son. I'm really sorry.
( Maritess Cambio had left her old tablet with him that day, had kissed him on the cheek like the son she thought of him as before she and Phillip -- his best friend since he and the other boy were in kindergarten, getting in trouble for running up the slide -- left with that bus. She'd been on the other end, patching the game through for him to watch as Cindy hovered by his side because the disease wracking his body had progressed to the point that he had no choice but to sit in a wheelchair most of the time, robbed of strength and movement and the freedom to do as any other twenty-one year old boy would.
By the time the team had returned, he'd been waiting in their living room, had asked his sister to help him put on varsity jacket, his number still stitched to the arm, their school's name stamped to the back. There were no apologies spoken, just the bent heads of a quarter of the total number of his team because their house wasn't big enough to fit them all.
Julian wasn't in the room. Neither was Angel. Phillip was though, one hand on Greg's shoulder as Josh bent forward, coughing because he'd been scolding his peers for a good five minutes straight before a fit overtook him.
He was always cold now. And always in pain. But all that was a helluva lot more bearable to seeing the team he'd helped pull together fall apart -- and all because they couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that he would never step on that field alongside them again.
You get that through your heads. There's no miracle waiting in the wings. I'm not getting up from this goddamn chair and it's not right that you're not listening to your new Quarterback.
It was the one and only time he'd lost it in front of them all, feeling helpless and frustrated for a good twenty minutes until he'd finally calmed down.
I'm expendable, he'd whispered then, voice a little too loud in a room where everyone present was silent. You can't put that weight on your seniors and think that we'll always be around. There is a reason why we are a team and why we make it a point to groom the incoming kids.
Do you even know what I saw, stuck here at home? You could have won that game if you had just had a little more faith in Greg. He isn't me. And I don't want him to be me. )
Josh shuts his eyes now, shakes his head and stares down at the cigarette perched between his fingers. To the ash burning away at the end. ]
You still love him. [ Simple. Upfront. Factual. ] You're angry and you're hurt. But you still love him.
[He is catching all of that, watching it flash through your brain and straight to your heart quietly. No need to comment on it, though. As things stand, he's incapable of saying anything that might be comforting. That, and what you're saying now is... well. It's hard to hear. Hard to face.
[ Trying to shelve that memory away now, and failing -- a thing he accepts because given recent events, but it's time. He spent six years running away from a life he'd decided he could no longer have. Impossible was that first year away from home, putting Cindy and his father out of his mind.
Sure, he has them back now. But that was chance and maybe fate and a little intervention from people with more reach than him; people who weren't too close to the issue. ]
Nothing in the physical world is impossible to turn from. [ He doesn't know why he says it, only that it feels right. That, and for all that he suspects Makoto may react violently to being told this, Josh does sincerely think, it's time.
( You have to let me go. Unfinished business. The reasons why ghosts remained, why geists crawled up from the depths of the Underworld. ) ]
You just have to decide for yourself if stubbornly hanging onto something is good or bad for you. [ Flashing back again, to a girl whose laughter put him at ease, who he'd turned his gaze towards the window for, eventually giving up when it was clear she wasn't going to come by. ]
[There is no violent reaction: there's just a certain look, a painful twist of lips, and long and shaky sigh as he's sinking his face into his hands again, pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes.
It hurts. It still hurts. It's probably going to keep hurting for years to come.
(And even when it fades, all it's going to take is a look from that one, or the sound of his laughter, or the precise way that he walks through the world and towards everything in it to bring it back, sharp and brutal, to his awareness.)
The words are gone for a long moment, but the air around them remains steady. He has a better hold on himself now, and - in as much as he hates to admit it - he needed to hear that. It shows.]
I'll... [Swallowing.] I'll have to work on that.
[Releasing his hold, he means, and hanging it over Hikaru Shinta like some sort of guillotine. This isn't going to do anything but hurt them both, after all.]
[ He doesn't know why he thinks of her now, only that he does given the ties she'd established with everyone else he'd left behind.
( Midnight Riders get shore leave, Josh. She takes hers and goes back home to your little town to touch base with your boys. )
He'd read up on the Riders then, tried to reconcile the girl looking helplessly out over that ledge with the lifestyle led by a conspiracy whose people were always on the road.
Remembering now, the look that Hikaru Shinta had sent his way when he'd quietly murmured I guess, we just... drifted apart. I got sick, she never came by and we just... it was just gone. And then looking up to feel a hitch in his heart, because the Blade King was still looking at him, with eyes that knew too much.
He'd tried to leave then, rising quickly from his seat in that bar in Shin Yamatai's entertainment district, the core of him utterly rattled because Annie Finnick had been his Great Perhaps -- and he'd missed any chance with her all because someone's wires got crossed. ]
Letting go usually is. [ A kind look now, sent Makoto's way. That sympathetic silence that just goes: I feel you, bro. ]
[The amount of relief he feels the moment he catches the expression on Josh's face is a little ridiculous. They had long since established that they had much in common, but there was also the fact that technically speaking? They had not been with each other for all that long.
Still. Why did he seem to regard Joshua LaRue in the same way that he used to look at Kaien Yamazaki, or Feranen?
Ridiculous, really, this thing people called 'attachment'. When he smiles, it's more for himself than it is for Josh, but that's probably going to be difficult to tell.]
I suppose you're going to be stuck with me while I figure it all out.
[ For whatever reason that the former-Sin-Eater-now-Geist is smiling, Josh is just glad that he is. Honestly, he likes the guy. Makoto has, surprisingly enough, been such a grounding presence in various respects. ]
I got nothing but time, man.
[ He's offering you his pack again. The first stick is good for grounding, the second, you should be able to enjoy just for what it is. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[No wit here: all of it has bled out, because the pot it used to contain has most definitely broken.
Taking more than a few drags again before he's talking.]
I think I'd rather show you than tell you.
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Go ahead.
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-- and Josh is going to see things from his perspective now, and what that night was like: standing outside of the club, out back, with the heavy thrum of the music a distant vibration through one's body. The Blade King there, against the wall. Makoto's arms braced on either side of his head.
"You can't keep this up, and both of us know it. You need to let me go."
"Don't you dare even think that I'm going to do that."
More words, voices escalating - or, more accurately, Makoto's. Hikaru Shinta continues to remain painfully, infuriatingly calm, even as the look in his eyes is dark and maybe a little sad.
He still looked that way, even after Makoto closes in and kisses that mouth, fierce and rough. It's not the kind of kiss that's looking for reciprocation: it's the kind of kiss that demands a response, regardless of whether the other party wants to give it or not.
And he's letting Makoto do that. He waits all the way until Makoto's pulling back, breath harsh and accusing in his lungs, and watching him again with that same look that is driving him up the wall.
"You need to let me go."
Once the memory's done, Makoto's very quietly lifting the cigarette to his lips and taking another long drag.]
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It's a strange thing, the feelings in the memory both distant and present at the same time, and for one quiet moment, Josh is grateful that he isn't Makoto's Bound, that Makoto is not his geist the way Davis is -- because he's not entirely sure how he might have handled resonating with the former Sin-Eater after a flashback like this.
As it is, he's not entirely sure what does it, what it is about the scene glimpsed in his head that brings back old memories, but it does.
And it hurts. It hurts like a fresh wound. Like the day Angel had rammed into him and he couldn't get his legs to work right. Like the day the doctors told him the final diagnosis I'm sorry, son. I'm really sorry.
( Maritess Cambio had left her old tablet with him that day, had kissed him on the cheek like the son she thought of him as before she and Phillip -- his best friend since he and the other boy were in kindergarten, getting in trouble for running up the slide -- left with that bus. She'd been on the other end, patching the game through for him to watch as Cindy hovered by his side because the disease wracking his body had progressed to the point that he had no choice but to sit in a wheelchair most of the time, robbed of strength and movement and the freedom to do as any other twenty-one year old boy would.
By the time the team had returned, he'd been waiting in their living room, had asked his sister to help him put on varsity jacket, his number still stitched to the arm, their school's name stamped to the back. There were no apologies spoken, just the bent heads of a quarter of the total number of his team because their house wasn't big enough to fit them all.
Julian wasn't in the room. Neither was Angel. Phillip was though, one hand on Greg's shoulder as Josh bent forward, coughing because he'd been scolding his peers for a good five minutes straight before a fit overtook him.
He was always cold now. And always in pain. But all that was a helluva lot more bearable to seeing the team he'd helped pull together fall apart -- and all because they couldn't wrap their heads around the idea that he would never step on that field alongside them again.
You get that through your heads. There's no miracle waiting in the wings. I'm not getting up from this goddamn chair and it's not right that you're not listening to your new Quarterback.
It was the one and only time he'd lost it in front of them all, feeling helpless and frustrated for a good twenty minutes until he'd finally calmed down.
I'm expendable, he'd whispered then, voice a little too loud in a room where everyone present was silent. You can't put that weight on your seniors and think that we'll always be around. There is a reason why we are a team and why we make it a point to groom the incoming kids.
Do you even know what I saw, stuck here at home? You could have won that game if you had just had a little more faith in Greg. He isn't me. And I don't want him to be me. )
Josh shuts his eyes now, shakes his head and stares down at the cigarette perched between his fingers. To the ash burning away at the end. ]
You still love him. [ Simple. Upfront. Factual. ] You're angry and you're hurt. But you still love him.
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Perhaps he'll try again later.]
He's impossible to turn away from.
[Always has been, always will be.]
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Sure, he has them back now. But that was chance and maybe fate and a little intervention from people with more reach than him; people who weren't too close to the issue. ]
Nothing in the physical world is impossible to turn from. [ He doesn't know why he says it, only that it feels right. That, and for all that he suspects Makoto may react violently to being told this, Josh does sincerely think, it's time.
( You have to let me go. Unfinished business. The reasons why ghosts remained, why geists crawled up from the depths of the Underworld. ) ]
You just have to decide for yourself if stubbornly hanging onto something is good or bad for you. [ Flashing back again, to a girl whose laughter put him at ease, who he'd turned his gaze towards the window for, eventually giving up when it was clear she wasn't going to come by. ]
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It hurts. It still hurts. It's probably going to keep hurting for years to come.
(And even when it fades, all it's going to take is a look from that one, or the sound of his laughter, or the precise way that he walks through the world and towards everything in it to bring it back, sharp and brutal, to his awareness.)
The words are gone for a long moment, but the air around them remains steady. He has a better hold on himself now, and - in as much as he hates to admit it - he needed to hear that. It shows.]
I'll... [Swallowing.] I'll have to work on that.
[Releasing his hold, he means, and hanging it over Hikaru Shinta like some sort of guillotine. This isn't going to do anything but hurt them both, after all.]
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( Midnight Riders get shore leave, Josh. She takes hers and goes back home to your little town to touch base with your boys. )
He'd read up on the Riders then, tried to reconcile the girl looking helplessly out over that ledge with the lifestyle led by a conspiracy whose people were always on the road.
Remembering now, the look that Hikaru Shinta had sent his way when he'd quietly murmured I guess, we just... drifted apart. I got sick, she never came by and we just... it was just gone. And then looking up to feel a hitch in his heart, because the Blade King was still looking at him, with eyes that knew too much.
He'd tried to leave then, rising quickly from his seat in that bar in Shin Yamatai's entertainment district, the core of him utterly rattled because Annie Finnick had been his Great Perhaps -- and he'd missed any chance with her all because someone's wires got crossed. ]
Letting go usually is. [ A kind look now, sent Makoto's way. That sympathetic silence that just goes: I feel you, bro. ]
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Still. Why did he seem to regard Joshua LaRue in the same way that he used to look at Kaien Yamazaki, or Feranen?
Ridiculous, really, this thing people called 'attachment'. When he smiles, it's more for himself than it is for Josh, but that's probably going to be difficult to tell.]
I suppose you're going to be stuck with me while I figure it all out.
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I got nothing but time, man.
[ He's offering you his pack again. The first stick is good for grounding, the second, you should be able to enjoy just for what it is. ]
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Time, and an awareness of how to use it.
[That is a compliment, done in the typical Makoto Kuzunoha style.
Yeah, he is getting better.]
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--and then glancing over to his clock only to find it obscured by a pillow. ]
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[He's not going to force you if you don't want to, but... yeah. As things stand, he's better.]
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Killing his finished cigarette, reaching for another. ]
I'll stay up for a bit more. [ This is a smile your way, Makoto. He'll deal with sleep in a bit. ]
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As long as I get to smoke another one too, then.
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I'm good with that.