Chapter Text
Mafuyu
Squeaking shoes in the hallway spiked Mafuyu's heart rate. He flicked his eyes over, through orange fringe, to the open sliding door of the classroom. His stomach roiled, acid bubbles releasing anxious fumes as they popped.
Please be Uenoyama.
Please don't be Uenoyama.
And on and on it went. Every lunch he spent holed up in his classroom, every passing student glancing in.
Please be Uenoyama.
Please don't be Uenoyama.
It never was.
Mafuyu sighed, picking at a loose callous as he navigated the sea of students changing classes. He walked against the flow, going the long way to Chemistry because he couldn't bear to pass Uenoyama in the hall without looking at him again.
Each day since he'd turned down dinner with him, Hiiragi, and Shizu, burning blue eyes had raked over him, begging him to meet them halfway. Scorch marks littered his sweater, hair, face — each of Uenoyama's long stares pierced Mafuyu like a precise, fiery arrow. He didn't have the strength for another direct hit today.
Later that week, he was about to pass Uenoyama's classroom while running an errand for the class rep. Arms full of papers, Mafuyu paused before passing the window of the door. If he angled himself just right, he could watch Uenoyama without being fully visible.
Ue's chin rested on his palm, elbow propped on the desk, waggling his pencil in his other hand. The back of his hair was ruffled and out of place, like he'd just scratched at it. His undercut was longer than usual. Was he too busy even for a trim?
Mafuyu's heart kicked at his ribcage. The thought of texting Uenoyama, "you need a haircut" with a picture of this exact view was tempting — a drop of normalcy in this storm of change — but this decision of music for life, ever-present and growing by the day, squashed it like an ant underfoot.
Time moved somehow too slow and too fast. He blinked and days passed, and yet the second hand of every clock he watched wobbled in place, encased by a thin sheet of ice. He'd check his phone and only five minutes had passed, but he was sure he'd been staring at a blank lyrics document for hours.
At the end of school on some random Thursday, Mafuyu found himself at the shoe lockers; he watched Uenoyama tap the toe of his converse on the floor, turn toward the doors, and walk out, totally unaware. His face, or what Mafuyu had seen of it, was smooth and unmarred. Had he been napping before the bell rang? If he was off to practice with Hiiragi and Shizu — which his guitar implied — surely he'd at least be scowling at his phone.
Another kick from within his ribcage. He begged his feet to move, to catch up to Uenoyama and smile at him — watch as a blush dusted his cheekbones, maybe sneak a kiss before they parted ways at the station. But thick tendrils of fear rooted his feet to the ground and climbed up his body, clenching his chest and twining around his throat before he could even try to call out to him.
A dark room, a squeaking skylight. A pale face at the wrong height. The snap of a broken string.
Mafuyu ground his teeth, jaw spasming, as he fought to breathe, to move, to do anything other than stand there and watch the boy he loved walk away. Sweat broke out on his forehead, his back, under his arms. It couldn't happen again. It was different this time, wasn't it? Wasn't it?
"Mafuyu?" A calm, low voice shattered the memory gripping him. Mafuyu gasped as his body relaxed and the fear subsided, tendrils slipping back below the floorboards, unseen. He whipped his head to the side; Ueki stared from a few feet away.
A moment later, Mafuyu realized he was twisting his hand in his shirt, right above his heart. He dropped it and silently pleaded for Ueki to ignore it.
"U-Ueki-kun! Hi."
"No guitar today? Figured Uenoyama was with you during lunch, but…" Ueki's pause was heavy — loaded with quiet, piercing perception. The sentence hung between them as Ueki watched and waited.
"Ah, no… he's…" Mafuyu's stomach writhed as the words crawled out of his mouth, "…uh, helping another… band right now." He looked away and curled in on himself, shoulders hunching forward.
"That so?" Ueki said, then rumbled, as if digesting that information. "Well, see you." Then he turned and left with a wave over his shoulder.
Mafuyu squeezed his eyes shut as he took a deep breath and held it. Tilting his head back, he released it to the high ceiling and started the walk home.
The door clicked shut behind him, echoing down the hallway. Tama circled him, tail wagging, the entire way to the kitchen. A note on the counter caught Mafuyu's eye — Mom's elegant, practiced handwriting was a little off-kilter and rushed. Picking up a shift. Dinner's in the fridge. He raised a brow and checked; leftover pizza sat wrapped in plastic, his name on a sticky note in similarly frantic script.
He sighed and went through the motions of feeding Tama before trudging to his room and collapsing in a heap on the bed. Another heavy sigh slipped out of him, hanging in the air for a moment before fluttering down to the comforter. His phone buzzed in his pocket; he steeled himself, brows furrowed, and checked it.
Messages on LINE had piled up — Hiiragi's memes in a group chat with Shizu, Hiiragi's memes in DMs, Kaji checking in after their late-night chat. And Uenoyama, with his gruff, distant texting style, eventually petered out as they all sat, unread. If Mafuyu just didn't open the app, put it on a screen he didn't swipe to, the bright red number badge didn't stare at him. He didn't have to see the concern in Uenoyama's words, or that the last time he'd texted was a week ago.
This habit of running, of slipping away into quiet loneliness, was familiar, in a cold, hollow way. His chest ached, a dull throb pulsing out from it with every heartbeat as he lay there; too many thoughts — or was it not enough? — drifted behind his eyes.
He stared at his phone screen, and the notification from the band group chat stared back. He had to do something. Last summer, in remedial classes, he'd managed to say what he was feeling — eventually — and set things right. The memory of Uenoyama so close, eyes squeezed shut and a deep blush across his cheeks as he held back from kissing him, was so bright, so warm, that the cold ache in his chest sizzled and stung. He curled into a ball on his side, phone still clutched in one hand.
That face — so earnest, so attractive — was dangerously similar to the one he'd made on the floor of his bedroom while Mafuyu straddled his lap, holding his breath as he waited for panic that hadn't showed until…
Mafuyu gasped and rolled back over as the stinging spread. God, he missed him. So badly it threatened to swallow him whole. It was different this time. He could make sure of it, even if he didn't have all the right words yet.
Still ignoring the notification, he swiped to LINE and opened his thread with Uenoyama.
Uenoyama
The train jostled beneath Uenoyama on his way to another late-night practice with syh. He fiddled with the zipper of his guitar case, resting between his legs, as his thoughts swirled.
Hiiragi hadn't told him all the details, but Ue couldn't help wondering just how much history was repeating itself. How long had it gone on, before? Had they formed the band at the start of their first year? That would have been almost a full year, then, of Mafuyu feeling alone.
He counted the weeks on his fingers; it had only been about a month or so since the debut offer. Going on two since they'd been in the studio as Given. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It explained so much of Mafuyu's behavior lately — why he'd refused to go to dinner with them, how he'd avoided their lunch spot (and Uenoyama in general)…
The more he thought about it, the more sense it made. He'd been so blinded by his own feelings, both for the offer and the song, that he couldn't have possibly understood Mafuyu's. Not that he'd even had the context for it, anyway. If Hiiragi knew Mafuyu so well, why did he assume Mafuyu had said more than a few words to him about Yuki? Ue grumbled and pinched the bridge of his nose, the back of his head thunking against the window.
Frustrated as he was, this at least still followed a pattern. He'd noticed it multiple times over this last year of dating Mafuyu — he had to actively dismiss how that thought made his heart skip a beat — he gets under his skin, makes decisions like he has all the time in the world, to the point where Ue is seething with impatience. And then, out of nowhere, Mafuyu just explodes.
Singing at their first live. Kissing him in the classroom. Singing for him before CAC. Pouting at him in the stairwell. This was just another waiting game… but they had a hard deadline this time. He had to come to the concert.
The train shuddered to a halt at his stop, and Ue, still deep in thought, automatically stood, following the crowd outside and through the turnstyles. His feet lead him down the familiar path to syh's studio — he'd walked it more times than he could count now — arms folded as his train of thought still barreled forward on the same track.
How could he fix this? Mafuyu wasn't answering texts, let alone staying in the same room as him for longer than ten seconds — wouldn't even meet his eyes in the hallway at school. Even if all of that weren't the case… what would he say?
Uenoyama clicked his tongue. He had never been good at this. Still wasn't. All he ever managed to say was with—
Music.
Ue stopped dead in his tracks, the crowd parting around him like a river over stone. He pulled his phone from his pocket and tried to write a message; if he got Mafuyu into the studio, then surely this would sort itself out. Something hollow in his chest echoed at the thought of hearing Mafuyu sing again.
He'd typed out and erased five different messages by the time he got to the studio. He grumbled under his breath about "communication" and shoved his phone back in his pocket without sending anything.
Hours later, they'd stopped for dinner and Shizusumi had come back with two enormous bags of McDonald's — one of which was entirely for him. Uenoyama's fingertips stung and his stomach gurgled; the break was necessary, even though they'd been on a roll.
He was halfway through inhaling a burger when Hiiragi set his food down and cleared his throat.
"Oi, Uenoyama. Hear me out on something."
"Oh, great." Ue's eyes nearly rolled out of their sockets. Hiiragi's tone implied he had another bright idea about karaoke after practice.
"I'm serious, asshole! It's about that song, so shut up and listen," he said, rising halfway out of his seat.
Uenoyama sighed heavily; he should have lead with that. "Fine." He rolled his head to the side and waited, giving his best disinterested stare.
Hiiragi took a slow, deep breath before speaking again. "You should sing harmony on this."
Ue blinked at him, processing. "What?!" Hiiragi scoffed, but Ue plowed forward before he could get another word in. "Are you nuts? I'm not a vocalist!"
Hiiragi raised his voice now. "I know that, dipshit! Would you just—" He cut himself off and slammed a fist on the amp he was using as a makeshift table; the low static wavered. "This isn't just Yuki's song to Mafuyu; it's yours, too." He sat down with a heavy thud. A beat passed, and when Hiiragi spoke again, it was to no one in particular, his voice quiet and soft. "It shouldn't be just me."
Uenoyama stared at him, mouth ajar and eyes wide. The sincerity of that statement hung in the air around them, sparkling at the edges of his vision. With what he could have sworn was an audible click, a puzzle piece slotted into place somewhere deep within him. Hiiragi had taken all his spiraling thoughts over the last few weeks and thrown them back at him with precisely two sentences. And he was right.
He snapped his mouth shut and stared down at his lap.
"You should do it," Shizusumi said after swallowing the last of his third burger.
Uenoyama huffed and scratched the back of his neck. "I'll… think about it."
A few more seconds ticked by in silence, then Hiiragi was suddenly on his feet and insisting they get back to it. Uenoyama shoved the last of his McDouble into his mouth and stood, too, eager to not think about singing the lyrics he'd finished writing just this week.
When they finally called it quits, it was near the last train of the night. As Uenoyama stepped out of the building, his phone vibrated. His heart almost shot out of his ribcage as he read the notifications.
It was Mafuyu.