Your Beauty Is a Knife, a honey and clover fanfic

Title: Your Beauty Is a Knife

Fandom: Honey and Clover

Author: su-dama/smokingace

Pairing: Yamada/Nomiya

Rating: PG-13

Words: 4, 170

Disclaimer: H&C belongs to Chika Umino et al.

A/N: Title is taken from the song by Eagle Seagull. The beginning scene is not the scene from the live action series.

-Your Beauty Is a Knife-

On the first day of the rest of her life, Ayumi kisses Takumi and they live happily ever after.

If only it were that simple. And if only it were that true.

On the first day of the rest of her life, she hears Nomiya call her by her first name and lean down, right there on the wharf, to kiss her, softly, different from anything she's ever experienced, or fantasized. He smells like store-bought musk and human-man musk at the same time. It is beautiful. She forgets to kiss back.

Nomiya says, "Ayumi." And she knows he's trying to tell her something.

Please, kiss me back. Please, I need you. I might love you. I probably do. Maybe.

She wants to ask him if he's in trouble for it.

He tilts her chin up again and she kisses him back. It is a hard kiss now, a hard, insistent kiss that makes Mayama's tobacco prone image flutter away. Yamada can feel her lips shake under his kiss, her chin shaking from the shame and guilt and—is that relief? Relief.

She might be a little relieved, after all. She can start over. She can be happy outside of Mayama.

Goodbye, Mayama, goodbye.

"Takumi?"

He pulls her into a hug, just a tad more room to breathe.

"Takumi?" she says again, lips ew-ing slightly.

"Yeah?"

"It's nothing. I was just trying it."

She feels him laugh that familiar delicious laugh and grab her hand.

He drives her to a park that night. It is strung with garish lights, smells like candy, and courts her by the mere sight of it. Ayumi takes one step into it and can feel herself begin to break.

Shatter like baked clay.

It takes all her energy reserve to keep the breakdown at bay. It is from shock, all of it, and that's okay. This is normal. Nomiya—

Takumi tells her it's normal, haha normal, when he sees the look on her face. She must look like a trembling maiden. She feels positively innocent, in front of all the innocence of the park. A part of her wonders if there had ever been a tryst of some kind, maybe in the bushes.

It is a nice summer night but she still shivers, smelling past showers.

"What look?" she asks him.

"I don't know. It's just that look."

"Is it bad?"

He laughs out loud. "Ah, that would depend."

"That reminds me, I never finished that order," she says quickly, somehow putting depend together with something vaguely on her mind.

"Clay pots can wait, you know."

Ayumi blushes when he says her name again. He decides to lead her to a tree, shrouded in twilight. Briefly she thinks how Hagu-chan could paint this so well. She could paint a rainbow that would make the world believe in it. She could paint a shadow of ink that would shift like the Mona Lisa.

Takumi points to something up above them, on a stub of a branch that looks like a shoulder, and says, "There's a family of birds up there."

"Really? Let's see, lift me up!"

He lifts her, accidentally, or maybe not, brushing against her belly. She gets a foothold in his hands, being careful not to scare whatever's in the nest.

"Takumi?"

"Yeah?"

Ayumi flares her nose at the sight of a dead baby, covered by straw. She knows it's dead, and that it's a baby, and that Takumi doesn't know this. Oh, this is bad, this is very sad.

"Nothing. It's beautiful."

When he lets her down, there is nothing to say except a hug that speaks of greater things. She hugs him with everything on her mind, of which they do not speak.

On the first night of the rest of her life, Takumi drives Ayumi south, then west, wherever the map may take them. He won't reveal the secret until they're halfway there, but she threatens to jump out of the car. She makes a motion to do it and he finally gives in; they end up tossing a coin, and now they go where Ayumi says so.

This is great stuff.

At a rest-stop, like a child, she won't let go of her one-hundred Yen coin and tries to use the hole in the ground. The shack is barely there, infested with spiders, and all Ayumi can hear is the underground gurgling beneath her.

What. Is. That.

She immediately adjusts her skirt and runs out. "There's a daddy on my back!"

Takumi laughs against the car in that god-you-crack-me-up way. "Let me see your daddy-long-legs."

He says that he's wiped it off, which makes her insist it's still there, which makes him feign wiping it off and saying that he thought she wasn't afraid of anything.

She pouts indignantly, pushes him away, and goes back to trying to pee in a safe(r) place, where he will never hear her peeing.

Takumi just leans against the car's hood, taking out a cigarette or two.

By the time she returns, she spots three cigarette butts on the ground and one chewing gum in his mouth.

She wonders if his tongue tastes good.

Ayumi fiddles with her fingers and finally asks, "I thought you'd quit." Or she thought she was asking.

She watches his fingers on the wheel. His knuckles flex in the streetlights. When they get off the main road and onto country roads, his fingers change tightness. It is a long time before he tells her he really can't do that right now. Takumi is telling her that there are just some things people can't talk him out of.

Ayumi thinks of Mayama for the first time tonight and can almost resent Takumi for thinking this way. It only reminds her. Of everything that turned futile.

Days and nights of endless wanting.

Without asking, she flips on the stereo. Takumi only turns it down when a concerto comes pouring out. His eyes are dark behind his glasses. She watches his nose for a time until he notices, playfully putting his hand in her face as if to pinch her nose. She musters up a few giggles and then goes silent, still studying him.

She's thought this once before, but it's infested in her mind like the spiders: why.

Why is he confident and engaging and beautiful?

Her hands lay open in her lap, waiting to be just as beautiful.

Ayumi would just die if he used to be a model.

That would just about seal her inadequacies.

Oh God, he couldn't have modeled! He's too disgustingly perfect!

Etcetera!

". . . ."

Hm, well, she'll just never ask.

They arrive at the rocks. They arrive at the sand. They arrive at the very shore of Toyama. It is past midnight. It is three in the morning. Ayumi's father must be wailing with fury.

My fool of a daughter! What idiot has stolen you from meeee—!

"Yo," Takumi says, bending down to pick up a shell.

"How did you find it so quickly?" Ayumi gawps, digging in the sand with her toes. The breeze is a bitter cold that thankfully numbs them before they can register just how cold this beach can get. He simply shrugs, passes the coral to her, and wanders off. The tide limits their walk. She waits a moment, then follows him, her bare feet sinking into his footsteps.

She mumbles something about men. Takumi seems to be ignoring her.

Now this is confusing. Boys. Really.

A seagull flies overhead, saying something about boys, too, and Ayumi can't help but recall the image of the dead bird.

Suddenly, in the midst of thinking about dead birds and people who just don't know better, she walks right into Takumi.

"Something wrong?" she asks.

"Shh. You hear that?"

Ayumi narrows her eyes in order to spot anything out of the ordinary. "Ummm."

"It's Mayama. Tell him to go away."

She silently balks at his laughter, which is unrestrained, his hand holding onto her shoulder, as if to keep hold for good. But it's not too tight, not too loose. Then she is free to laugh at herself. And maybe love him a bit for his ability to place second in order of importance. Alas, it must be a sad specialty.

While she is laughing, her lips are met with a fierce pride, lips that have been dying to touch her, anywhere. Kiss her. She can tell.

She kisses back, feeling his hands grip her hair, thread through her hair, undoing the French braid she had gotten so used to doing. She tries so hard at first, but then it comes naturally when she stops addressing the issue.

Oh, he's kissing me.

He's kissing me.

Kissing me.

And it's not Mayama.

In fact, it's Takumi, Takumi, Takumi, and his tongue tastes really, really good.

She wonders what it would be like to make love on the beach.

Actually, she wonders what it would be like, period.

Wait, wait, wait. Iron Lady says stop.

Would it be like making love, or would it be like having sex?

Or something really gritty like f-fucking?

His hands are cupping down her back, toward her bottom, and she has to wonder now how much he's had. This thought becomes so consuming that she has to ask.

In a veiled but-I-don't-have-to-answer-back way, of course.

"Takumi? Do, do you usually do this with. . .?"

He stops pressing her to him and opens his eyes. "What?"

"I don't mean to ruin this. Um, whatever it is, but what is it?"

"Which question is which?"

"Oh no, I'm not making sense."

He laughs and squeezes her and lets her go, just a little. "No, not really." He stops to kick at the sand. "Though I can take a hint."

Oh yes, please do, that would be a big help, thank you.

She realizes that she'd been blushing for the past fifteen minutes or so. Her cheeks feel swollen in the breeze. They feel like they're containing all of her senses, every single ounce of humanity.

"And what hint is that?" she finds herself asking.

He cradles her head to his chest.

God, his heartbeat.

On the second-first morning of the rest of her life, Ayumi is driving Takumi instead as per not usual.

This is an agreement they have. They do not talk about it.

They look over at each other.

She chews her sandy lip and he is doing something in the passenger seat. Maybe he is concentrating very hard on having faith in her driving skills.

New driver and all.

She sits up confidently, just like he would do, and pretends to vibe goodness of skill.

She is Iron Lady! She is might! She is full of energy booster (and pocky)!

The empty cans rattle around on the floor.

But. Doesn't he also lean back?

"You are so cute."

She nearly slams on the breaks and he nearly pleads for his life. "What?!"

"You heard me! But if it's gonna cost me an arm and a leg, then forget it!"

"What?!"

"I said you're—wrong lane!"

Early traffic! Aaah commuters!

"What!?" She finally calms down from the sugar rush. She also gets a headache. "Ack, ack. What."

"Never mind."

"No, say it again."

He looks in the mirrors to check for cops. "I'll tell you when we stop moving." He laughs quite nervously.

She has the urge to pull over right then and there.

They stop in Tokyo for sustenance. When Ayumi goes to buy more energy drinks, Takumi gives her a look that says no-way-no-way-no-way. She sighs and doesn't buy them. For some reason she buys cheap sandals, for future spontaneous beach trips and other groovy things. She doesn't buy a kerchief because, frankly, she does want Takumi's fingers in her hair. And forget the shawl. Lord knows she wants his fingers on her—

Takumi's fingers enclose over her own and she looks up. "Gotta go," he says.

"What? Where? We just got here. Waiiit, where're we goiiing?"

They run across the street, her shoes skidding across the worn pavement. "Hurry or we'll miss it!"

"Miss what?!"

They head through a few more blocks and then straight on for the Tohoku Shinkansen. Uh oh. He's at it again.

Two minutes into paying, Ayumi is studying Takumi like a studying machine.

Three minutes into entering the train and finding a place to sit, Ayumi takes her eyes off of him long enough to figure out she is squashed between Takumi and Very Pregnant Lady.

Call her paranoid, but she's afraid of catching it, even if she's made of iron.

So she shimmies herself out.

And gets stuck between a pole and Punk from Street Corner.

What's he doing up so early? You know, early by his standards.

Five minutes into the train ride does she get a totally biased invite from Takumi.

"You can sit in my lap if you want to."

"Wouldn't that be. . .slightly inappropriate?"

She tells herself not to be paranoid.

His lap is lean. If she bounced on it, it would be due to her own body fat and nothing else.

Bounce, bounce, oops.

She takes on an alarmed expression when she feels his lower body start to stiffen, thighs and. . . She pretends to not be paying much attention to, haha um, what might be vying for her attention in turn.

Takumi laughs politely, face burning.

He spares them both from further embarrassment by pushing her to one of his knees.

Thank God she's not straddling it. You know, his knee.

They sit like good kids until Takumi looks at his watch. He adjusts his glasses and yawns.

"Ready to drop yet?" she asks knowingly.

"Not according to the clock. I'd say I've got about twenty more hours before it really kicks in."

"What about your car?"

"Ah. Do cars drop from exhaustion?"

She pokes him in the chest.

"It's okay, it'll live. I'll get it when I come back."

"Is there any other reason for you to come back?"

"Sure. For more fuel."

Suddenly he bears an uncanny resemblance to Morita.

Thirty minutes go by while Takumi tries to sleep and Ayumi waits for a seat to open up. They are going north all the way to—

"Where're we going again?"

"Hachinohe, in Aomori."

"Isn't that a kiddy playground?"

"Would you hold it against me if I said it was an adult playground?"

She smiles.

Pervert.

Oh, is it breakfast? She will see if this menu is better than hers at home.

Wait. Lemon bread?!

Two hours into the train ride, Ayumi has been able to move to the next seat, and Takumi, out of celebration, gives her a piece of gum. He claims it'll keep her awake.

She wonders if her breath stinks.

He reads her mind. "Don't worry, you don't stink. You smell like sugar."

"Really? Sugar?"

"And sand and cold beach and yummy conditioner."

She begins to smell her hair when he's not looking. She kind of hopes he'll lean in to smell it, too.

But as it is, he doesn't.

She pulls out a book from her new work sack. It is a self-help book on learning French.

Takumi taps the cover.

Ayumi says, "Sensei says it's very pretty."

He pinches her cheek.

A minute later she nabs his glasses and puts them on to read.

This is when she discovers he is practically blind. "Imagine being blind at your age!"

"Don't you worry, little one, your time will come."

Needless to say, she believes him. It's a good thing she can work clay with her eyes closed.

She falls asleep, even after all that effort to stay awake, against his collarbone. She must have drooled for a bit because he is mopping something up from his collar by the time she is aware that she had dropped.

She mumbles.

"Sorry, didn't catch that."

She mumbles an apology.

"You mean your gum? I think you swallowed it."

She mumbles an apology as well as something along the lines of I-swear-I'll-drop-kick-you-if-you-mention-me-and-drool-in-the-same-sentence-again.

Despite her sleepy-wired self, she continues to drool.

Her dream is long, disconnected, radically charged. Her longing is sporadic.

The humming of the train sets the mood quite nicely.

She probably would have been better off making love in her sleep rather than dreaming about driving Takumi's car over the rocks and into the sea. With them both in it.

"Do you usually moan like that?"

She opens her eyes to find her face muffled in his sleeve. "Huh?"

He snorts.

She narrows her eyes at him.

Per. Vert.

But when she finally gathers herself to look around, she notices her French book in his hands, his eyes staring hungrily at the words.

Her breath catches.

Before she knows what's happening, she's being woken up again by a jolt and an urgent hand on her brow. It's oddly comforting.

Aaah, sleeeep.

"Ayu-chan."

"Hagu, baby, grow up, go away."

A man laughs. "Ayumi, we're here."

"Oh, you're not Hagu."

"No, but you are mean. Imagine how your poor Hagu friend would feel."

Ayumi snaps to attention. "What, where?" You smell like coffee. "Where are we?"

The passengers are clearing out.

"You'll see. Bus or taxi?"

She makes sure her bag is still in her hands when they exit, no, leap off the train, onto the platform, and race out of there, her sandals trying to keep with his loafers.

The street is crowded. There's a food stall nearby that smells almost exactly like Ayumi's cooking.

"Do you want some?" Once she asks, it is clear that he makes it his life's duty to divert her away from the smells.

Wait. Does this mean her cooking terrifies him?

Oooh, that's it, she's making him taste her new curry recipe when they get back home.

Wait. They don't have a common home.

Again, what is this?

On their walk to Hasshoku Center, Ayumi broods.

Takumi is probably brooding, too.

The center is full of food, admittedly tastier than Ayumi's attempts at cooking.

Oh she gives up, she really is that bad.

But she's still learning!

Takumi smiles around a mouthful of teriyaki to calm her, and orders her a pint of chilled oolong tea. It's amazing how he can read her mind, especially when she spends so much time avoiding his.

"You are not one to diet, are you, Ayu-chan?" he says slowly, pausing to watch her sip her drink. She gives him the look of (dishonest) disbelief and he retracts his statement by leading her to a taxi that whisks them away to a place called Lapia. Ayumi is forced to hold her bladder until Takumi finally notices.

It is too embarrassing when he asks if she needs permission to visit the toilets, and for a few minutes, they do not speak lest they somehow lose each other.

Ayumi visits the restroom in Uniqlo, the indoor amusement park that people around here might be too fond of. She's not exactly a willing participant anymore, especially when she herself starts to desire coffee.

She accidentally tells Takumi about the little girl who spazzed to her mama in the restroom about the cute, cute carousel until she realizes they are not supposed to be talking at the moment, which is then what breaks their silence. He rustles her hair and she is glad she had gone to the restroom.

Oh dear, oh dear.

To disguise her further embarrassment, she says, "I want to ride the carousel." She makes a nervous laugh.

And he says, "I'll join you."

Dot, dot, dot, beeeeep. She makes a very nervous laugh, flushing to the roots. Never in her life did she ever expect Takumi, of all the men in Japan, to join her on a kiddy ride. This day is madness. There was something bad in his chicken. He had ingested bad teriyaki and she must inform the health association quickly before people die!

Pause.

Nonetheless, she composes herself quite nicely (by her standards), grooming her rustled hair with her wetted fingers. To add to her ongoing love of embarrassment, her summer dress gets caught on a unicorn's horn, a very young child calls her okaasan instead of oneechan, and the tiny heel of her shoe snaps.

She wonders if God likes playing with her. Really, he had taken away Mayama—

She catches herself just as she's about to toss away the broken heel.

"Ayu-chan?"

Ayumi hides her blush, and the realization again that Mayama's first name is the same as Nomiya's.

"Nomiya-san," she begins, heading out of the complex.

He follows her, presumably silent. She can't hear him breathing with all the noise surrounding them, crowding them.

"Don't fret over it," he tells her. She shrugs, walking on the toes of her shoes.

Maybe he knows what she's thinking right now.

"Would you like to see something?"

"I thought we have been."

"No, this is something better. Better than Yokohama."

She remembers the Ferris wheel as their own, and she's not so sure if it still is. Oh she should just ignore herself; her head is messier than the sinks at her old university.

Um.

"Um I was just wondering if we could ride the wheel I mean the Ferris wheel so it can be just like old times not that I want things always to stay the same I mean really things change I'm open to change you know?"

"Uh," he says.

"And if you don't want to then that's okay things do change like I said I could always go by myself then again I don't like being alone on things like that not that I'm trying to pressure you."

"First and last of all, Ayu, what?"

Her shoulders go rigid with the feel of his hands on them. He peers around her body to see her face burning.

Good God why is her face all hooot? You know, with the exception of it being summer and stuff.

She has the urge to shake off his hands. Not because they bother her, but because she thinks she is bothering them. His hands, that is. Yeah. Buuurn.

"If you don't want to answer me, that's fine. We can keep walking."

And they keep walking until they make it to a taxi that gives relief to Ayumi's feet. Takumi insists for the sake of her blisters (because he does not want to hear her crying about them later, how thoughtful), and he tells the driver to take them to see the view of Hachinohe.

"You mean Hachinohe-san," Ayumi says quietly.

"Eh?"

A joke. "A little bird told me," she says to the window. Suddenly she is thinking about the dead bird again.

The driver ends up taking them to Golden Palki.

This is where she wants to tell him about the dead bird. Takumi, not the driver.

She psyches herself up to do this and then realizes that it's ridiculous and rude and inappropriate and very unnecessary. What could ever possess her to. . .?

She can't find the right word for this one. In fact, it's the toughest yet.

Ummmm. Ermmmm.

"Ayumi? Do you have to visit the restroom again?"

"No! Er, no, thank you." To making me sound like a child. I refuse to be a child.

In truth, she wants to tell him how she loves the smell of tobacco on him. And how she loves his hands on her, even if she wants to throw them off at the same time. She's a girl; girls don't make sense. Yes, that's what she should say. And she wants to tell him how he should always wear his glasses, always, because they are charming, and not in the Mayama-charming way.

Nomiya is different.

No, Takumi is different. Erg.

Which is good. Which tastes good. She also loves the taste of the tip of his tongue. His chin when he hasn't shaved. His nose knocking into hers. His hand grabbing hers, when it takes her for a journey like this one. Good God, man, that hand.

Okay, so it would be moot to say her face is really burning now. Like, it hurts, she thinks, to love someone else.

Because.

Whatever would Mayama think, if he knew, if he knew how far she's fallen for Nomiya. Would Mayama just die? Would he writhe in jealousy and possessiveness and want to beat Nomiya down?

A small part of her smiles at the thought of Nomiya beneath her.

"Hey," she says softly over the honking and music in the distance. She's going to say it. She's just going to say it.

He's in the middle of mumbling something about how he should take her to the ends of Japan, then maybe to Russia, to see the Siberian plains, to see the birds. Another part of her drowns the last part out on purpose.

She's just going to say it.

"Takumi!"

He gives her a startled look which would have been almost amusing if not for the mess in her head.

"I!"

"Haha, you're doing it again," Takumi says lightly, leaning over the rail.

"I, I'm sorry."

"Why?"

Not don't be sorry. Not please don't be sorry.

"Because. Because. Iloveyoutoomuch?" Because you don't know how sorry I am that you've been waiting for me.

He backs off from the rail, shoulders back, fists at his sides, looking at her as if he had half expected this, half expected his world to end today. Something with sugarcoating and sour lemon in the middle.

Then he pulls her by the hand and holds her, holds her.

He holds her for a very long time, smelling of grass and the need for a cigarette.

It's like he'd stuck a poisoned knife in her back from the moment she'd entered his office long ago, and yet, her body was meant for his, to clean the poison, to revive, to walk up to him.

It might just all be very beautiful.

There is no knife after that.