Notes: Slightly AU; established Hatori/Ayame, if Hatori's curse had broken earlier.
Words: 2,059
Canon: Mangaverse.
Pairings: Hatori/Ayame.
Warnings: N/A.

deliverance

At last liberation comes, within a bright morning hour and a chilly Eastern breeze. It is summer still but these things roll in from the coast, the sharp caress of it informing Hatori of the dampness on his cheeks, the tears he's shedding while the dragon leaves.

He shivers, but does not shudder. He's halfway through the house in a bid to reach the kitchen, to where Ayame is making breakfast amidst a flock of open windows – and he has imagined being released from the curse before, pictured it a thousand times over, but his predictions had never counted on it happening in Ayame's house, while he's thinking of nothing more than what might be cooking.

Ayame is humming something, with all the pomp and pride of an operatic performer, but he stops still when he glances back to find Hatori crying. That's a rare occurrence, especially when there's no physical pain to trigger it – so he turns, abandoning the stove, and furrows his brow into an even rarer display of genuine concern.

"Tori? Is something the matter?"

Hatori says nothing. He wants to, but he can't, at a loss for words now he's missing such a sizeable part of himself. He lifts a shaky hand to his brow, feeling ashamed in the process, and pushes back his long hair while the evidence of just how pathetic he's being drips from his jaw. To start with, he looks at the cold tiles beneath his feet, and then he looks to Ayame, good eye just as blurry as his bad one. There is a quiver in his Adam's apple.

That's when Ayame works it out.

Last night had been so deceptively normal, affording no indication that this was coming: just as it came for Kureno, for Momiji. Two old friends had shared dinner together, and Ayame had fed his overworked doctor just a bit more than he ate himself, and his reward had been a stiff little kiss at the end of it. To bed, then, with Hatori deciding to stay the night, but they hadn't done anything more than jumble together in a mesh of sleep-warm limbs... which Ayame still enjoyed. As much as he does like breaking Hatori's composure by tangling around him, serpentine, with rather more intimate intentions.

Freedom is fast, and lonely; parting so suddenly from the Zodiac is destined to make anyone weep.

"Are you sure?" Ayame says, finally, after staring blankly at each other gets them nowhere.

Hatori opens his mouth, then shuts it, opting instead to nod. If he says it out loud, he fears Ayame will flinch – and Ayame knows Hatori well enough to be aware of that. This is a milestone moment in Hatori's life, but even now, he's thinking of someone else's feelings. Of Ayame's.

"It's all right," Ayame replies, softly. He stands tense and tall: never as tall as Hatori, but outwardly calmer.

He dislikes the reversal of it. He isn't supposed to be the anchoring one. He has never really been able to give Hatori the same comfort that Hatori always gives him, effortless and intrinsic.

"I felt it," Hatori ventures to say. The tears have stopped, and he isn't really upset to begin with... maybe that will all come later. "It just – something left."

"Left," Ayame echoes. It is morbid curiosity that leads him to add, "Does it hurt?"

"No. No, it doesn't." Hatori lowers the hand fisted into his hair, instead grasping the thin material of the shirt he slept in. Shirt and trousers, prim and proper (as opposed to Ayame, at least, who is a snake and therefore required to shed his skin). "It's something.. a weight in the chest. Behind the lungs, almost, though I was never aware of it until..."

He trails off. Ayame nods, keeping up the pretence of being completely and utterly and overwhelmingly calm.

"Until now."

And Ayame is a selfish man. He's been told so enough to know, even if Hatori often tries to soften the blow, to reassure him with kindly lies that he isn't so much selfish as merely inconsiderate. Honest at heart, friendly at best, but sometimes reckless enough not to think before acting.

It isn't true – Hatori might inspire Ayame to become that, to grow inconsiderate instead of selfish – but right now, it is that streak of utter self-absorption that prompts Ayame to ask:

"Are you going to leave?"

The question startles Hatori into staring, so oddly wide-eyed that Ayame almost regrets posing it. But he's never been given the security to think otherwise.

It's no secret that Hatori means the world to him; Ayame loves him with that same selfish streak, wants to keep the good doctor all to himself. His love is sycophantic, making him preen like a pampered pet whenever Hatori scolds him under a policy that means it's all for Ayame's benefit. Hatori's care is quiet, and he shies away from affection because he'd rather not be a bother, so he will stock the fridge with food or tidy Ayame's workshop without ever making it known that he did: Ayame's comfort is its own reward.

Not so when things are inverted. Ayame indulges in holding Hatori simply because he can, and he would rather see Hatori irritated and inconvenienced at having to pick him up from some far-off location simply because it means he gets to see Hatori in the process. So he wonders, sometimes, if Hatori comes to spend the night here out of fondness or loneliness or plain obligation – because he's never clarified, never done anything outside of Ayame's company to indicate they're anything other than friends who get a bit too close.

And Ayame, expecting the world to fall at his glorious feet, has always been too stubborn to ask.

Still, there is hope when Hatori says, "Do you think I'm going to leave?"

"I suppose not," Ayame replies. Though he can't bring himself to touch Hatori, he wants to; though it occurs to him that Hatori could seek the arms of any girl he wanted, now. Kana, never quite forgotten, or even Tohru.

With the petulant jealousy of a child, he turns briskly back to the stove so he doesn't have to see Hatori's face, shielding himself from the sight.

"Akito still needs a doctor; doesn't she, Tori? She'll know, of course; she'll find out that the curse is broken and I assume her begging for you to stay will be terribly convincing. I'll be damned if she doesn't know already. Oh! How I wish I could play witness to such a deliciously difficult discussion."

"I'm not expecting there will be a discussion," Hatori says, mechanical. "That isn't to say I will stay for Akito alone. This family is... Rather, I still have to—"

"Have to nothing." Ayame lifts a spoon, stabbing it bitterly into the nearest pot. "You don't have to do anything, my dear. Not now. And I wonder why we're so much as debating this! If it happened to me, I certainly wouldn't limit myself – I'd move to Paris and mingle with the greatest living designers of the century... No, I would become one; you wouldn't catch me lingering in such an unimaginative town as this."

He's rambling. It's fake cheer. Theirs is only a relationship of convenience, and it isn't supposed to hurt at the end.

For a moment, there is nothing. Hatori doesn't speak and Ayame's only distraction comes from stirring his lacklustre soup, reluctant to fill the silence in case his voice trembles with the petty weight of disappointment.

(He'd wanted to keep Hatori forever, a pet that wouldn't take so kindly to being pampered.)

"Ayame," Hatori eventually says. Maybe Ayame is imagining it, but might that be a note of alarm in the unflappable doctor's voice? "Tell me, is this really your response?"

The spoon, dropped, clatters to a halt. "What do you mean?"

"You're angry. I thought you would... perhaps not be pleased for me, but at the very least see this as positive. Surely this is a good thing – something, in any case, I shouldn't be wasting my time crying over – but you're not..." It's Hatori's turn to trail off. "I don't understand this sort of reaction."

"I am pleased for you," Ayame says, without looking over his shoulder. "This is indeed a moment of hope for the rest of us, is it not? And you're more deserving than anyone for your chance to leave the fold – deliverance, really, from a fate you never deserved, dearest Tori."

Hatori swallows so thickly it's audible. That's the closest he comes to losing self-possession.

"I see. So this is your way of telling me to leave?"

Ayame is startled by the question before he has time to process it. It has never crossed his mind that seeing the back of Hatori could ever be nicer than the front, that a firm farewell is something he could grow to desire. He finally longs to see his friend, turning on the spot – though, no, not friend; lover, he should hope, or companion.

Hatori must have had the same idea because Ayame is met by his arms, a slow, clumsy, too-tight embrace that leaves Ayame crushed up against Hatori's chest. This is not an event he's unhappy about. Instead, his arms encircle Hatori's torso, fingers scrabbling for purchase over his back, and Hatori responds by loosening his urgent grip, the scratch of his stubble gracing Ayame's cheek.

"Please," Hatori murmurs, so quietly that Ayame wonders if he's even meant to hear it. "If I'd so much as suspected this was going to happen, I would have told you. I would always tell you everything, and this – this doesn't change anything. I am still a Sohma. I still..."

He hesitates, while Ayame is unable to tell if it's because it's something dawning on him or something he's deliberated over. Either way, breathing is a function Ayame doesn't think he's capable of until that sentence comes to a close – but he's glad he waited, when it does.

"I still love you."

So there it is.

And see, then, how can it not mean much when those words crash through Ayame like birds shot from the sky?

"I thought... never; I never thought," Ayame begins. He considers elaborating, or at least achieving coherence, but his teeth have detached from his orders to grind exasperatedly together, fingernails digging momentarily into Hatori's shoulder-blades. "You – you stupid man! You stupid, frustrating – darling, my darling."

He could never stay angry, not with the precious creature who's tensing up with utterly typical confusion. Ayame's grip falls lax from familiarity, and Hatori (as though realising he's not exactly adept at grand romantic gestures) eases back his head, peering at Ayame with something like bewilderment.

"I love you, too. Wasn't that obvious?" Ayame tuts, placing his hands sharply on Hatori's cheeks to push them insistently together. It does nothing to remove the uncertainty from Hatori's expression; if anything, it simply adds a tinge of annoyance for flavour. "How could you possibly imagine I'd ever tell you to leave? Over an issue like this, too? You're my dearest friend, you know, and if I hadn't already deemed you worthy of a place in my extremely exclusive heart, you certainly wouldn't be allowed a place in my even more exclusive bed."

Hatori never blushes, but the slightest twitch of his mouth tells Ayame, satisfyingly, that he's flustered enough.

The snake sighs, hands drifting along Hatori's face. He sweeps his fingers across those still-sticky cheeks, to the damp lashes above them; and while Hatori's eyes slide obediently shut to facilitate such a gesture, he takes to pushing his hands into Hatori's dark, silky hair.

"So long as you don't want to leave me," he murmurs, "I will never ask you to. Do you understand what that means?"

Hatori does. Or he is, at the very least, beginning to, because he places his own hands on Ayame's sides with a considerate sort of hesitation. There is a smell infiltrating the room, now, that borders on burning, and it's most likely coming from the stove – but Ayame imagines it's the dragon Hatori never was, a majestic, showy beast disappearing into the clouds with one final defiant puff of smoke.

While the Eastern breeze dies down into a whisper, Ayame smiles into Hatori's stiff little kiss like he always does.

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