Chapter Text
metronome , n.
a device used by musicians that marks time at a selected rate by giving a regular tick.
☰
Tick, tick goes the metronome.
Back and forth the needle swings, all day, every day, for the rest of its days. It is the epitome of repetition, of sameness, of rhythm and order and symmetry.
Tick, tick .
Tick, tick.
Same shit,
Different day.
Redd was never that interested in music. That stupid metronome was just another ware of his and Tom’s to be sold (read: yet another defective item Redd was going to swindle a customer into buying one of these days). God, he hated that stupid thing. No matter what he tried, the metronome would refuse to stop ticking over and over and over again and it was driving him crazy. He’d attempted to stuff an old t-shirt into the space between it and the moving needle, but the most that did was mute the ticking and eventually work a hole into the center of what was otherwise a perfectly good shirt.
“Tom,” he shouted into the kitchen of his flat, where his partner was busy making them some coffee, “that fucking metronome’s back at it again!”
Tom sighed loudly enough that Redd could hear it from where he stood in their bedroom. “I keep telling you to put it in the storage unit with the rest of the stuff to sell, Redd.”
“And I keep telling you to quit bringing it back into the flat!” The fox snapped back. God, the ticking was grinding his gears especially hard today.
“We are not having this argument again.” Tom appeared in the doorway, an exhausted look on his face and a steaming mug of coffee in his hand. “Throw the damn thing away if you’re really so sick of seeing it around, and quit accusing me of bringing it out of the storage room. I’ve already told you I wouldn’t do something like that if it bothered you that badly.”
“Well, it’s gotta be getting out of there somehow ,” Redd retorted. “And I know for a fact it’s not me who’s moving it!”
The tanuki groaned. “For the last time,” he said, gGet that thing out of here if you can’t fix it up to be sold.”
“But who says we gotta fix it up first, though?” Redd argued. “We can just tell the customer it’s running as part of the display or something! It’ll get this thing off our hands and put some extra bells in our pockets!”
Tom paused for a very, very long moment before replying, “No, Redd, it would be putting extra bells in your pockets.”
“Huh? That’s not true and you know it!” Redd retorted, tail swinging indignantly behind him. Sure, he was a bit of a swindler, he’d admit to that much, but he would never dream of stealing money from his own partner. Hell no! Not after all they’d been through together, gradually helping one another climb out of rock-bottom poverty through any means necessary until they ended up here. “We share the funds we make, Tom. Don’t tell me you’re about to accuse me of cheating you out of cash.”
“No,” Tom said, “that’s not what this is about at all, actually.”
A pit of dread began to form in Redd’s stomach. He didn’t think he was going to like where this was going at all, and he was right.
“Redd, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” Tom began, refusing to make eye contact with his partner. “And I...I can’t keep doing this anymore. The swindling, the stealing, the cheating of our customers...it’s wrong. You know it’s wrong, I know it’s wrong, and I just...I can’t, Redd.” He swallowed, sounding a bit choked up.
The fox felt like he’d been punched in the gut. All he could manage was a quiet “what?”, and all of a sudden he felt like he couldn’t stand upright anymore.
Tom narrowed his eyes at him. “Don’t act surprised, Redd. We’ve talked about this. You know I love you, right?”
Redd barely managed to nod, unable to bring himself to reply any other way.
“Good. But look, if the two of us can’t find a way out of… this, ” he gestured around them at the dingy apartment they’d barely been able to afford on the inconsistent income they’d raked in for the past few months, “then...I’m sorry. However,, but I don’t think I’m gonna be able to see a future for us.”
Redd didn’t say anything. He couldn’t even bring himself to look at Tom anymore. His eyes were now permanently fixed on the floor.
Where was all this coming from? Not even a few weeks ago, they’d finally made enough Bells in one month for them to start putting some away to afford a nicer place. Redd in particular was ecstatic; Tom had always been a family man, and the idea of marriage and maybe even children excited him greatly. The pair was so overjoyed by their earnings, in fact, that Redd has used a bit of pocket change and some charm to procure a bottle of some good stuff for him and his partner to split as a celebration. Within an hour, the whole thing was drained, and the fox couldn’t remember ever being this happy with anyone else in his life.
So why the sudden change of heart?
“Tom, what are you talking about?” he asked. “Come on, we just got started saving up to do exactly that. If we kept up the pace we have been with selling things, we’ll be out of here within the next six months!”
“But will we?” The tanuki returned bitterly. “Redd. It’s taken us nearly two years of nonstop work to get us here and only now are we actually able to afford saving up for things. I certainly wouldn’t say this is the most reliable way for us to be providing for ourselves, don’t you think?”
For some reason, hearing that hurt Redd in a way he couldn’t describe.
“What other options have we got?!” he demanded. The swindling, scamming lifestyle was the only one that had ever been able to procure him a decent income. If he didn’t have an issue with it, why did Tom?
“I— fuck, Redd, I don’t know. But I do know that I can’t just keep going around tricking people for a living. It’s not right!”
“ Not right ?” The fox demanded, standing up to look Tom dead in the eyes for the first time in this conversation. “Listen, if a person’s really dumb enough to get scammed, that’s their problem, isn’t it? What’s really not right here is how you’re basically threatening to destroy this relationship over a little difference in morality!”
“I’d hardly say this is a little difference, Redd!” Tom snapped, his tail puffing up angrily. “I, for one, don’t want to be remembered as a criminal for the rest of my days! I don’t want my family, my children to remember me as the one family member who was a good-for-nothing swindler for as long as he lived! Is that how you’re trying to be remembered, Redd?!”
The question felt like a slap in the face. The fox’s own tail puffed out and swung from side to side violently.
And the worst part was, he had no idea how to respond.
“How the fuck else do you think I’m going to be remembered, Nook?” Redd’s jaw clenched hard enough that it threatened to crack the powerful canines lining his jaw. “I’m a kitsune. You know how just about every other animal species out there sees us. We’re all tricksters and thieves and criminals by default, no matter what we actually do with our lives! And you know what?” He pointed a claw at Tom, “You, a tanuki , are no fucking different! You’d be seen as a crook in disguise no matter what you tried, too, so what on earth would be the point of trying to be anything else than what people expect of you?!”
Tom, for the first time in the nearly three years they’d known one another, looked genuinely hurt.
“Redd…” He said, sounding a little choked up, “That’s not really how you feel, is it?”
Seeing the look of utter betrayal on the other’s face made Redd’s heart shatter. He’d fucked up, and he knew he’d fucked up. Every single part of his brain screamed at him to say no, to say he’d love and support Tom any way he could because it was true , but when he tried to speak the words...they just wouldn’t come out.
Tom took the silence as a reply in itself.
“Well,” he turned from Redd, clutching the coffee mug so hard it nearly broke the handle, “if that’s how you feel, then maybe I should just go.”
No! Redd wanted to shout. Don’t! Tom, please, you know I’d never mean to hurt you! Not you. Never you.
But it was too late. The words wouldn’t come out no matter how hard Redd tried, and before he knew it, the flat was devoid of all life except for him and that stupid god damned metronome.
He threw it against the wall. It ticked on until its final moment, when it shattered into chunks of plastic and metal from the impact.
His stomach was killing him all of a sudden, and his head ached twice as badly. Redd was not one to allow himself to cry under any circumstances, but today, he had to make an exception.
Oh, god. What had he just done?