Pairing: 1+2 implied
Cliche: Day in the life/secret admirer
Warnings: fluff, sap, AU
Summary: Someone admires an odd pair on the train.

Katase Enoshima
by Stargazerlily

A hot breeze fluttered the hem of her sun dress. She liked the feeling of the very nearly sheer fabric swirling around her smooth, tanned legs. The heated air, however, was not anything like refreshing, so she was pleased to hear a recorded voice announce the arrival of the next train.

The uniform line of connected carriages came to a lumbering stop and a blast still hotter air shot up from beneath the carriages. Then, the train door slid open and a wave of artificially cold air swept over her. The beads of sweat tingled on her skin when she stepped aboard. Lightly perched upon the bench style seat, she swept her long, straw colored hair over her shoulder and savored the shiver of air conditioned air brush along her bared back.

First, she arranged her large, woven straw bag neatly upon her lap. Then, she plucked a stylish hand towel from an inside pocket and delicately pressed it against her face and neck to wick away sweat. After replacing the towel, she took stock of the plethora of adverts neatly arranged along the molded curve where the sides of the car bent into the ceiling. Still more hung high and lengthwise across the aisle. Mostly, they were glossy advertisements for weekly ladies magazines and celebrity rags. Honestly, she would never understand why it was so important for people to know that the starlet du jour had once allowed herself to be photographed suggestively or that yet another politician was caught philandering. But occasionally, museums would announce coming exhibitions and if she had an actual hobby, going to the museum would probably be it.

The last part of her regime, before pulling out her book and getting lost in the pages of another world, was to take a brief look around at her fellow passengers. The trains were nothing if not good for people watching. Seeing little scraps of the everyday slog were not exceptionally interesting, but at the same time, it was a habit she could not break. Her large blue eyes swung left first, then right and ended with a look at the bench directly across from her. There, her eyes stopped.

Upon the burnt orange bench seat were two young, almost impossibly attractive men. They were situated towards the middle of the bench and, though not alone on the seats, seemed to be quite apart from their neighbors. Only one of the window shades had been drawn against the burning sunlight, but it was just past midday so the harsh rays only caught the hair of the one on the right and lit up his hair like melted chocolate. His fringe fell in spiky chunks, nearly hiding his closed eyes. The man was napping and his head lolled on his left shoulder, away from his friend snoozing to his right. The friend's bangs would have been even more obscuring given their longer length, but they had been tucked haphazardly behind his ears. Despite having the proportions of a full grown man, the dappled light from his shaded window made his light skin glow bright as any babe.

She spared a thought for that kind of effortless beauty, envious because she invested quite a lot of time and effort into maintaining her fresh looks. Her eyes then traveled down from their faces. The one on the right wore a simple white v-necked tee-shirt and the one on the left wore black. Further down, splash of color caught her eye.

Their trousers, pegged army green for the one on the right and thread-bare-at-the-knee jeans for the one on the left, were covered with splotches of paint. Pink spots, blue streaks, orange and white and green and purple. It looked as if they had had a tussle with a liquid rainbow... and lost. The daubs and splatters and drips went right down to their feet and there, too, she was given to pause.

Their shoes didn't match. Or rather, they did match, just not in the expected manner. The two men obviously wore roughly the same size because the one with the army green trousers had a black thong on his right foot and a white one on his left; the one in jeans had the colors reversed. Black and white save the fact apparent that paint had also gotten splattered on the shoes as well.

It was mesmerizing, that rainbow mix of colors. It did occur to her that paint splattered pants had been quite the fashion trend a few years back, but the same colors adorned their mostly bared feet. Obviously, the paint must have come from some project they had been working on previously. She found herself wondering what on earth they could have been doing to be so covered in paint, but as they carried no telling packages of any sort, she was left with whatever answers her imagination could supply.

Her eyes continued to rove. They truly were a handsome pair. Back up the shins, over the knees and to the... hands.

Their fingernails bore streaks of black paint, mostly in the notoriously difficult to clean crease where nail met bed. She noticed how their inside hands laid. The one on the left, his hand was palm up on the plush seat covering. Nestled inside it was other one's hand, curled into a loose fist. She did a double take as she realized that hand was holding onto the end of an extremely long braid (also adorned with a smattering of splatters). More than friends, she decided, lovers... partners... two halves of a whole, if she wanted to get poetic.

"Mamonaku Katase-Enoshima ni touchaku itashimasu. Shuuten degozaimasu. Owasuremono no shinai you ni wo ki wo tsuketekudasaimasu you ni yoroshiku onegaishimasu. Mamonaku Katase-Enoshima desu."

The train slowed down as it approached its final destination. The girl pulled herself from her contemplation of the beautiful pair and collected her things neatly in her lap and made ready to depart. Minutes later, the train lurched to a stop and she stood to join the crowd waiting to disembark. When the doors hissed open, a wave of superheated air whooshed into the car and people reluctantly left the cool carriage.

She spared a final glance at her eye candy. They were still snoozing, apparently dead to the world. She stepped up to the dark haired man on the right and gently but firmly tapped him on the shoulder.

"Oniisan... Oniisan, tsukimashita yo."

He opened his eyes and gave a start.

"Ah, nechatta," he said.

"Ano, shuuten ni tsukimashita yo."

"Ah! Arigatou," he said with a congenial nod of his head.

"Douitashimashite," she answer, then turned to leave the car herself. As she walked to the door at the front of the carriage, she caught a snippet of conversation:

"Haa, shimatta! Oi, Dyuo, okite. Norisugiteshimatta yo."

"...matta kai? Ima doko?"

"Enoshima da."

"Enoshima... beach ni ikanai?"

"Hn."

She smiled to herself as she stepped onto the searing hot blacktop of the open-air platform. Unlike in the city, here, so close to the ocean, the breeze was blessedly cool. It was a small reprieve from the endless summer heat.

Although it had been only the most fleeting, the most tangential of meetings -- barely more than sharing the same immediate space, really -- the paint covered pair had almost magically instilled a sense of rightness in her.

Despite all the woes of living with the daily grind, people could and did still take solace in one another and loved.