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Todays recommendation is:

Fate and Other Impossibilities

by Lelek

105k

exerpt below!

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Slender fingers curl gently around his wrist and when he turns his head Joshua is there, pulling him down to sit side by side, their legs just touching.

“It’s beautiful,” Neku whispers.

Joshua hums softly. He strokes the inside of Neku’s wrist with his thumb, pressing against his pulse point. “I didn’t always think so. I was so tired of it all, so bored. That’s why I did it, you know.” He casts Neku a sidelong glance, then turns his attention back to the skyline. “It all seemed so empty and meaningless, the same series of steps over and over again. Better to sweep the board than let it collapse, the victim of its own entropy. I knew this. I was sure.”

Neku studies Joshua’s profile, the delicate lines of his face. They’ve never talked about the why of it before, not really. “What changed?”

“I picked the right proxy.” A smile, wistful, maybe a little sad. “Or the wrong one. I realized that the problem was never Shibuya at all.” He breathes out an airy little sigh. “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, and all that.”

And had he just seen that a little sooner, Neku would have carried right on living his misanthropic, lonely, angry life. That world probably exists, too, somewhere out in space and time. He doesn’t want to see it.

“Everyone makes mistakes.” He bumps their shoulders together teasingly. “Most people’s mistakes don’t almost destroy an entire city, mind you, but you figured it out.”

Joshua laughs, low and quiet, nothing like the giggle. “Like I said, I picked the right proxy.”

“Or the wrong one.” Neku smiles at him and then returns his attention to the city, too, streaked with rose gold as the sun just starts to set. And he can hear another sound now, different music, more distinct than Shibuya’s in his ear. It’s steady and strong, soothing like a warm hand rubbing his back.

It’s Joshua. He’s listening to the Composer’s song.

It makes him feel foolish and honest and brave and so he says, “I used to find places like this in Shinjuku. Vantage points where I could watch and rest and just . . . exist.” He snorts. “There’s not much else to do in an inverted city, let’s be real. But it was never as nice as this.”

“This is most of what I do,” Joshua tells him in return. “My city is at its best when I let it find its own way.”

“It sounds lonely.”

“I’m the Composer,” Joshua says, like that explains everything. Maybe it does.

But there’s nothing really to say to that, and Neku finally feels like he can breathe again, Joshua expecting nothing of him, the risks already accounted for, nothing here to fear. So he lets himself rest his head on Joshua’s shoulder and, after a still moment, Joshua rests his cheek on top of Neku’s head. He’s humming, a lilting little melody that weaves his song with Shibuya’s, wrapping the music around them both, a blanket to ward off the early evening chill.

Neku doesn’t know how long they sit there together, but it’s long enough to watch dusk fall completely and all of Shibuya’s lights turn on. It’s the most like himself he’s felt since returning to the RG.

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