deuceoftears | TLV IC Inbox

Gonou softens into a smile, leaning just close enough to brush their shoulders together as they walk.

"You could draw on my pots. They're shockingly undecorated."

"I was hoping I might," Jedao admits. "Any thoughts on personality?"

"Mint bullies other plants with its enthusiasm," Gonou says cheerfully, freeing a finger from the edge of his boxes to hit the elevator buttons. "Rosemary is fussy but productive when it's comfortable. Aloe is thorny and low-maintenance but very soothing."

It's an open question whether these are personalities or growth habits, but with plants, he rather thinks they're they same thing.

"What a group," Jedao remarks, laughing along. The door opens for them automatically, of course, which is convenient; Jedao brings Gonou's things back to the bedroom.

Gonou sets his boxes of books and pots by the kitchen door, standing up and placing both hands on his lower back as he bends backwards into a stretch.

"One more trip!" he calls cheerfully in the direction of the bedroom. "Then we can unpack. Or celebrate?"

"It's up to you, Gonou-shei," Jedao tells him, emerging in time to see a bit of the stretch and imagine dipping Gonou on a dance floor, someday. Not that he knows how to dance.

"Celebrate," Gonou decides, straightening back up with a smile. "Unpacking can wait. Ah... mostly."

He hesitates, then admits in a rush, "I'd -- like to bring the memorial cabinet up here, too. If there's a good place for it. A little shelf...?"

"Would the living room or the study be better?"

The living room they spend more time in, but it's also where Jedao brings all manner of guests for tea and video games and general information-gathering; it feels more public to him, more exposed in some nebulous way. People like Nat, who Jedao loves but who does not have any particular reason to respect or care for Gonou, have a standing permission to come through the main door on file in the room grid, whereas the study is more protected.

"Or the bedroom?" Even if Jedao feels a little odd about the possibility.

"Not the bedroom," Gonou says immediately. Some associations do not need to be made, and that, he thinks, is one of them. The living room... well, the living room feels more public to Gonou, too. It's for entertaining, not for private things, and Kanan's memorial is deeply private.

"The study, I think," he says at last, and leans slightly against Jedao: he's not putting his weight on Jedao's shoulder, exactly, but it makes him feel supported nonetheless. He hasn't interacted with that cabinet since he returned. At home, he hadn't had any kind of memorial beyond the mountain nearby, beyond his own mind and body. He remembers this one, but it's still... it's a lot, to bring himself to go through the rituals of remembrance.

Since Gonou is vehement about it, Jedao allows a little of his relief to show.

"Plenty of shelves there. You can pick out the best."

"One of the higher ones, I think," Gonou murmurs, and then bumps his shoulder deliberately against Jedao's as he opens his cabin door. "I wouldn't make the two of you share a bedroom, you realize. She wouldn't appreciate it either."

He takes a carefully hidden fortifying breath as he steps into the room: there's the plant box on the table and the cabinet, now. He points the plant box out to Jedao with a lift of his chin and heads over to the cabinet, reaching up to lift it down with the kind of care he'd take with ancient porcelain.

"I did get that feeling. But it's going to be your bedroom too, so." So if Gonou had wanted her that close, he'd have managed.

"Hello, everybody," he murmurs sotto voce to the plants, running one hand overtop of the fragrant leaves, by way of giving Gonou at least a suggestion of a private moment.

Gonou sets the cabinet down with care on the other side of the table, his gaze flickering up towards Jedao with gratitude for a moment, at his careful turning-away of attention.

He takes a breath, then undoes the latch, and checks inside. The saucers and incense are sitting on the bottom of the cabinet; he'll have to tuck those into the drawer built for them. The bud vase should fit beside them, but if not, he can put it in his own pocket for the short trip down to Jedao's room.

Slowly, his gaze rises to the pencil portrait framed and inset at the top center, and his breath catches in his throat.

"I forgot how much she looked like me," he says at last, his voice thin. He had almost forgotten what she looked like at all.

Jedao wishes he'd taken pictures while she was on the barge. It's hard to imagine her letting him, though.

"She did. When she replaced you, for one flood, I recognized her right away."

"I didn't have any pictures." He has to close his eyes, at last, to break his stare at the drawing. He recognizes his own style, but it's more careful and spare than his usual drawings, a painstaking attempt to capture the face he'd known. He'd drawn her laughing. "When I could have drawn her, I... couldn't have borne it."

Carefully, he opens his eyes again, looking down at the delicate saucers as he packs them into their drawer, slides the bud vase in beside them -- it does fit. The little water in it is dry, and it will need cleaning before he puts a new flower in.

"I'm glad I could here." The doors close without a sound. He drops the latch into place.

Jedao swallows.

"I'm glad you could too." He balances the bin of plants carefully and gets the door for them both.

For a moment, Gonou wants to say, Wait, wants to wrap his arms around Jedao and hold him before he has to pick the cabinet up again and bring it to its new home, his home.

Long habits of pride stop his tongue, and he smiles slightly instead, a polite public mask dropping into place as he wraps his hands around the brass-bound bottom corners of the cabinet and follows Jedao out the door.

Jedao pauses for a moment, picking up on something but not sure what. When Gonou doesn't speak, though, he nods and heads down the two flights of stairs home.

There's something unsteady caught between Gonou's ribs, but he keeps it trapped where it is, far away from sight until the door of Jedao's room is closing behind him and he can hurry to the study to find a high empty shelf.

One of the higher shelves, in pride of place over the desk, currently has an enameled plate decorated with hummingbirds displayed on it. Jedao had set its stand there when he first shuffled around all the art the quarters originally came with. It wasn't as crassly direct as hawks or sparrows, but it was still birds.

He follows behind Gonou, reaching out to pluck the plate off the shelf with a mothpull before he can even put the plants down.

"Alright?" he asks, without specifying the place or Gonou himself.

"That should do," Gonou murmurs, choosing to assume the question is about the shelf. He lifts the cabinet, settling it in place with only a little unnecessary fussing over its angle and position. The shelf doesn't creak under the weight, even if a brass-bound memorial cabinet is considerably heavier than a decorative enameled plate.

He lets his hand linger on the cabinet door for a silent moment.

This is home now, Kanan. I wonder what you'd think of me? The laughing face in the portrait was so young. Once they'd been the same age: now, she would never grow older than twenty.

He'd like to think she would be pleased to see him happy. In truth...

"I don't believe there's anything left of her but memory," he admits, stepping back with his gaze still lingering on the cabinet. "But this is a better way to remember her than bad dreams."

"The longer I'm here, the more I'm certain how important memories are," Jedao murmurs. "Are there any...rituals you want me to be part of, or - things I shouldn't do?"

"I don't think there's anything you shouldn't do that you would do," Gonou murmurs in return. "Rituals... not right now."

He pauses next to Jedao, resting a hand lightly on his shoulder. "Maybe tomorrow. I have some incense to burn for her."

More briskly, he adds, looking down at the desk, "Move the inkstone, you said--?"

Jedao shuffles it into a drawer; he doesn't actually practice calligraphy often enough to give it pride of place, even if it's beautiful. He does the same to a lovely stacking game with coiled, translucent pieces that he kept out just for the visual effect. He bustles the plants around in a semicircle, swapping until he's happy with who's next to who, based on their supposed personalities, then runs a thumb pensively over the edge of the hummingbird plate.

"What does it mean to you?"

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