Fallout and Future

Chapter 21: Promise?

A/N: i got no excuse anymore. life gets even worse. i keep writing. i'll finish this, someday, although i find myself fixated with dungeon meshi a lot more than omori nowadays. i only publish my dunmeshi work on my ao3 though. yeah fuckin uhhhh chapter after more than  a year

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Sunny pushed Basil down, fingers tangled in the hair on the back of his head, and pulled back from their kiss only for air. "I didn't actually..." Basil gasped and laughed with the same breath. "I didn't actually think you'd love me back- "

"How could anybody not love you?"

Not allowing Basil to answer that because he already knew and very much disagreed with what he would say, Sunny kissed him again, the hand not in his best friend's hair now cupping his cheek. Sunny smiled against Basil's lips—the boy didn't seem to know what to do with his hands, so they wandered around his shoulders, waist, and collar, anything to hold the two of them together. They stayed like that for a few minutes, or maybe a few hours, occasionally stopping to breathe. The buzz of the dragonflies and gentle rippling of the lake, perfectly mirroring the pink evening sky, was the only sound other than the occasional shift of fabric or whine from Basil whenever Sunny pulled back. The scent of summer storms—future petrichor—hung thick and heavy in the air.

Finally, Basil separated himself from Sunny so he could bury his face in his shoulder, his own shoulders heaving. Sunny allowed him to sit up and crawl into his lap, wrapping his arms around him and stroking his hair.

"Huh..." Basil panted, still laughing. "You... really do like me."

"I love you," Sunny replied without missing a beat. "I mean, I like you, too."

"You've made that... hah... pretty clear." Basil nuzzled Sunny's neck, still smiling, then stopped.

"What's wrong?" Sunny kissed Basil's ear and his best friend shivered in his lap.

"Ah... isn't this..." Basil paused again. "I just thought—Mari wouldn't want this, would she?"

"...Want what?"

"I'm not sure."

"She wouldn't want you to be happy?"

"Not with you."

"Why not?" This again, Basil? It was what anyone would come to expect after being with Basil for a minute and Sunny had been with him for years (although he had only been with him for a few minutes, come to think of it), but it still hurt. He wasn't disappointed, just hurt, in the same way that it hurt when you walked through the bad part of an otherwise picturesque neighborhood. You could hope that the city would put more money into it, try to help the people living there by improving the roads and building stores or playgrounds or safe injection clinics, but it still hurt, and it always would every time you passed through it.

"You know why." Basil shrugged lamely, head still buried in Sunny's shoulder. "Everything."

"She'd understand 'why'. It was wrong and we all know it, but she'd still understand why you did it, and that you're a different person now."

"I..." Again Basil stopped, then started again. "...Do you..." he sighed, taking a deep breath before continuing, "do you remember how angry she was on the night of the recital? If that was over a broken violin, then me-"

"She was angry." Sunny gripped the back of Basil's shirt, closing his eye. "It happens in the heat of the moment. I mean, look at me."

"S-sorry," Basil whispered. "She would forgive you, of course, but..."