Chapter Text
In typical Kakeru fashion, he figured out nothing, and sidestepped the issue by throwing himself into more training. Prince kept prodding him, knocking all the time at his door, unwilling to stay silent any longer. Kakeru only got more creative with his excuses, but it didn’t help anything. Unlike before, Kakeru’s avoidance was plagued with fitful feelings of want, stings of frustration. Initially, he gained stability after he cut Haiji out of his life. Now, it waxed and waned by the day, spinning into listless afternoons and late-night runs beneath the moonlight. Kakeru was surprised when the summer heat started to break in the late evenings. Whole months had slipped behind him.
On an unremarkable Thursday, Kakeru was woken up past midnight by the buzzing of his phone. He fumbled it, but answered quickly.
“Nico? What’s going on?” He wasn’t sure how he had done this so many times, to the point where late-night calls in the past had little effect on his blunted nerves. Tonight, after so many months of quiet, he couldn’t suppress the panic that rose into his voice.
Nico’s words did nothing to help. “I don’t know. Kakeru, he was doing fine, I swear. And I wasn’t going to call you, but I’m out of town.” He spoke faster than normal, his voice jumping into a pressed register he didn’t normally use. “He was staying at his mom’s house, so I thought- she lives nearby, Kakeru, and I don’t even know if he’s drinking, but if he gets picked up by the cops again-”
“What?” Kakeru sat upright in his bed.
“Shit.” Nico paused on the other end of the line. “Look, I didn’t mean to- I didn’t know if I should tell you, it was half a year ago, now, and nothing really-”
“Where is he?” Kakeru’s voice had gone cold.
Nico hesitated before responding. Kakeru heard shuffling as Nico shifted the phone in his hand. He sighed. “The river. Near the meet-up point.”
Without a response, Kakeru hung up the phone and threw on a jacket. On his way out of the building, he passed Prince, who was walking towards his room with a mug of tea in his hands. He looked Kakeru up and down and reached a hand out to stop him, the tea sloshing and dripping to the floor.
“Where are you going?” He demanded.
Kakeru could have shaken him off, but Prince’s scowl was tinged with concern. “Nico’s out of town.”
It wasn’t a location. It wasn’t even an explanation, really, but Prince already understood what was happening. He shook his head tightly. “Kakeru, he can’t- you can’t do this to yourself again.” He squeezed Kakeru’s arm and spoke softer. “This has to stop. You don’t owe him anything, and you can’t keep picking up every time-”
“I have to,” Kakeru whispered. He hated how small his voice sounded. “I have to. I’m sorry, I can’t let him… he might not be…” His words trailed off. He made eye contact with Prince, pleading. He didn’t have a good reason to go, only good reasons not to, but he was desperate to be understood.
Prince slowly dropped his hand. He pushed back his hair down the center. “Kakeru, I swear to god, if this goes badly I'm bolting your door closed.”
Kakeru nodded and straightened his shoulders. “I’ll be back soon, I think, he’s not far.”
It was deep into the end of summer, and the heat of the day no longer lingered into this time in the night. Kakeru crossed his arms over his stomach as he walked. He reached the car, dropped into the seat, and started the engine. As many times as Kakeru had run to this spot along the river, he had never driven to it. He tapped his foot impatiently whenever he hit an empty stoplight and rolled through stop signs. It felt like forever, but the drive couldn’t have been more than ten minutes. He parked haphazardly in the empty parking lot and slammed the door.
The city lights glowed brightly from across the river, silhouetting everything along the nearest bank. Dark shadows of trees and bushes tangled together. Kakeru ran in short spurts along the water, stopping every few moments to look around. He should’ve asked Nico for more details, instead of hanging up the phone in a panic. He exited a sparse grove, and the grass opened up in front of him. He spotted a rounded shape on the hill sloping down to the river and approached it, breathing heavily.
Haiji was sitting, completely still, staring out at the steady current scattering the light from nearby buildings. His knees were pulled up and his arms crossed over them.
A stick snapped underneath Kakeru’s foot, and Haiji whipped his head towards the sound, startled. He took a second to squint into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. When they did, he scrambled to his feet, wincing when he pushed up awkwardly on his knee. “Kakeru? Is that…”
Kakeru froze. His chest squeezed tightly. Haiji seemed fine so far, but maybe Kakeru wasn’t close enough to tell. Maybe it was too dark to see the sloppiness in Haiji’s movements. It would only take one hint. One slurred consonant or whiff of alcohol would have them right back where they started, with all this shit, and even though Kakeru had rushed to get out here, he suddenly questioned his decision. A breeze picked up over the river, and blew straight through the fabric of his jacket, chilling the skin underneath. He didn’t want to get any closer, but he wanted to know, now. His voice barely lifted over the wind at his ears. “Are you drunk?”
“What?” Haiji’s mouth hung open, and he shook his head frantically. “No, I swear, I just-” he waved his hands in front of him, palms out. His eyebrows slid into a question. “How’d you know I was here?”
Kakeru breathed out past a knot in his throat and pressed his face in his hands. He dragged his palms down his cheeks and behind his neck. He looked up to see Haiji watching him carefully. “Nico. He called me.”
“Ah-” Haiji dropped his head, guilt hung over his shoulders. He dug his phone out of his pocket. “Shit. Sorry. I didn’t know he still looked at my location. It’s my fault, I’ll text him.”
The phone location was a hard rule Nico kept, born out of an ultimatum that Kakeru had never asked the details of. He took a few steps forward as Haiji tapped out a text. The glow from the phone lit up his face, and the screen reflected in his brown eyes.
“What are you doing out here?” Kakeru asked.
“Oh, um-” Haiji put his phone away, plunging them into darkness again. Up close, Kakeru could definitively tell that Haiji was sober, but he still looked… bad. His eyes were rubbed red, and his shoulders were weighted with stress. He shuffled his feet, and his face flinched when he stepped weirdly on the incline of the hill. Kakeru silently slipped a hand under Haiji’s elbow and led him back down to the ground, watching closely to make sure his knee didn’t twist. Kakeru sat down next to him, his fingers threaded through the cold grass.
“I just walked too far on it,” Haiji explained, bending and unbending his knee in front of him.
Kakeru hummed in response. “Why are you out here, Haiji?”
Haiji sighed, having no room or right to avoid explaining. “My mom’s getting ready to move, she lives nearby, so I’ve been helping her out.” He paused to look over at Kakeru. As much as Haiji talked about other people’s problems, he was surprisingly slow to talk about himself. He looked down at his hands. “We had… a fight. I guess.”
Kakeru nodded but remained silent, unmoving, leaving the air open around them in the hope of drawing out more of Haiji’s thoughts. He clearly had something on his mind, and he was stalling. He plucked a piece of grass and fiddled with it between his fingers. He slid his feet up and crossed his arms over his knees. He stared out at the city skyline, the lights glinting across his irises. They shined, and Kakeru would’ve said he was beautiful, the wind tossing at his hair, except his eyes read bleary instead of bright. Kakeru waited. Haiji took a deep breath and buried his mouth in his elbow.
“I didn’t-” Haiji stumbled into his words and his voice was muffled by the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “I wasn’t talking to him, Kakeru.” His body tensed, feet pressing into the ground and hands tightening into fists. He hid his face completely. Kakeru ached for him. He had been afraid of this, at the funeral. It struck close to home, because this was something they shared, and Kakeru knew about ignoring phone calls and skipping holidays. Haiji sucked in a breath. “And we weren’t close, but I thought I’d be able to... I don’t know. But then he was just gone.” He sniffed and continued, his voice wavering. “And my mom, she’s still mad at me for not being around. She says it’s not my fault, what happened, but I- I did everything wrong, and I wasn’t there, and he’s just-” His head shook in his arms. “I can’t take it back. I can’t take anything back. I never thought-”
Kakeru had enough. He pulled Haiji tightly into his chest and held him there. Haiji buried his face in Kakeru’s jacket and his hands knotted into the fabric at Kakeru’s hip, his chest. Everything cut loose at once, tearing Haiji into pieces and racking him with painful, aching sobs. His body shook, and his breathing hitched. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I know I messed up.”
Kakeru tipped his face forward, pressing his forehead against the hood of Haiji’s sweatshirt. He traced over Haiji’s back with his palm.
“And with you- fuck, Kakeru. I didn’t- I couldn’t-” his sentence trailed as he fumbled for words. His hands tugged on Kakeru’s shirt, tightening it against his ribs. There was too much to say, too many nights to recount, the memories buried down deep or missing altogether. They had volumes of painful history between them. He went quiet for a moment, then spoke, landing on a single thought. The place it started. “I wanted to run with you forever, Kakeru.”
“I know,” Kakeru whispered, dipping his head into Haiji’s shoulder. He meant it, because it stung, how much Kakeru felt the same way. Haiji had never actually told him, or anyone, that he would never run again. He simply slipped away from it altogether, leaving everyone to assume the worst. Until now, Kakeru realized, he had held out a tiny thing of hope for rediscovering those early mornings spent running into a rushing wind, Haiji at his side. It was stupid, to think that in the first place, but now Kakeru knew it was really over.
Kakeru wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that. After a while Haiji’s breathing evened out and the tension spilled off of him. His limbs turned heavy. Although they were pressed tightly together, the cold managed to snake up from the grass, settling in gaps and over exposed skin. Haiji shivered, and Kakeru leaned to look at him.
“It’s getting cold,” Kakeru said as he moved to his feet. He hooked his arm under Haiji’s elbow and steadied him as he stood. Haiji tested out a few steps, putting careful pressure on his leg. Kakeru watched him with a frown. “Come on, I drove here.” Haiji nodded, and they made their way back to the parking lot.
Kakeru’s please stay was spelled out quietly, in the way he didn’t ask where Haiji’s mom lived once they reached the car, the way his fingers fidgeted absently with Haiji’s sweatshirt sleeve as he drove, and the way he pulled Haiji into his room, by the wrist, through the empty and dimly lit hallway.
Kakeru could’ve kissed him then, against the closed bedroom door with the air rushing in from his cracked open window, but Haiji yawned and his eyes wandered towards sleep. So Kakeru settled for dragging his hand above Haiji’s ear, fingers drawing lines through his hair and pushing off his hood.
“Is this okay?” Kakeru asked, and he didn’t know what he meant. All of it, or just this part, or something in between.
Haiji closed his eyes, tilting into Kakeru’s palm. “Mmh,” was his response, along with a nod, and a weak smile at the corners of his mouth.
Haiji was asleep the second he curled his face into Kakeru’s chest. Their feet tangled together. Kakeru dropped an arm over Haiji’s back, breathed against his hair.
Kakeru laid awake. He was afraid of what Haiji was, what he had been. He worried that Haiji would disappear if he didn’t watch over him, like dust particles dissolving in the absence of light. He pulled closer, reached farther, every touch an anchor.
He stayed awake as long as he could, but eventually sleep took him anyway. When the sun broke over the horizon, Kakeru stirred awake. His arms were empty, but Haiji sat upright on the side of the bed, close enough to touch. The light from the window blurred hazily around the edges of Haiji’s sweatshirt, his hair, turning him soft and ethereal. Kakeru pushed up onto an elbow. He loved Haiji at all times, but overwhelmingly on mornings like this. When Haiji looked over, hearing a small shift of blankets, his face was flushed, his eyes were bright, and his whole person glowed with the clear and undeniable dawning of a new day.