Chapter Text
He doesn’t avoid Takeda in the weeks that follow. At least, he does not avoid Takeda per se, he just—there is a space that he leaves between them on the bench, there are eyes that watch the court or the wrinkles in his old shoes, that watch anything other than Takeda’s tongue verging out of his lips, his soft hands as he scribbles in his little notebook.
He has seen too much of him already, Keishin thinks. If Takeda is anything like him, and he must be, he is, they are the same—he must ache to draw the blinds over himself, to become a human nonissue.
Keishin tries to do him that courtesy.
It’s one he doesn’t get himself, from nearly anyone. Not recently, not since he named whatever was in him. Or maybe people always looked, and Keishin only feels it now that he knows they’ve got something to see.
Granddad’s crinkled eyes skewer him on the court. His teammates size him up, appraising, in the club room. Even Takeda watches him, blithely smiling, the end of his pencil tapping at his lips.
The only one who doesn’t see him is Sato. Keishin doesn’t know if that’s a blessing or not, doesn’t know how he would stand it if Sato of all people could see him for what he is. He is clever, Keishin knows, he would find out.
But still there is something like a stray cat inside of him, unruly and small, that wants Sato to look at him. That wants those warm bright eyes to see the jut of his Adam’s apple, the height he’s taking on fast.
That wants that crooked smile on him, that lovely knock-kneed body next to his.
It was so much easier to deal with, when he didn’t have to call it love. And he shouldn’t call it that anyway, it’s just a crush—love is a word for the kind of dramas his mother likes.
Still the word nips at his heels.
Still, like an idiot, he watches Sato. All the time--from the bench, in the hallway. On the court, where he stands now, straining into the corner of his eye to see Sato ruffling an underclassman’s hair, and it pangs in him how much he wants that.
It hurts, and then suddenly--it hurts. It is made real, externalized, it is--it is a moment before he realizes, that he’s taken a spike with his face.
Clear on the bridge of his nose, his skull rings like a tuning fork, he nearly falls. Goes to his knees, with shock and sickness and lost breath.
The next thing he sees is Granddad, the heel of his hand pressed to his temple. “Jesus H, Keishin,” he says.
In the past few weeks, he has been Jesus H, Keishin, more times than he can count.
But it’s--that’s--everyone is crowding him, then, asking in hushed tones if he’s okay. He is, he says he is. Wouldn’t dare be otherwise, but when he presses fingers gingerly to his face, they come away sticky with blood.
He goes a little cross-eyed, looking at it, and then someone is helping him stand and it’s Sato, and even now Keishin is astonished to have him this close, close enough to feel his heat against Keishin’s own shaking.
Still he staggers breathlessly away, once he has found his feet, because somewhere in his hindbrain it is crucial that he not be near him. The instinct says to curl, to lick wounds, to not bleed on the most beautiful boy he has ever seen in his life.
He’s about to go--oh, Keishin has no idea where. Outside, to sit in the dust, or to the nurse’s office, or some other quiet place, away from view. But then--it’s instantaneous--Takeda stands in front of him, and doesn’t let him run.
The smile on his face--it’s like nothing bad has ever happened, a storybook smile. Calmly, he holds out a little wad of tissues, and Keishin snatches them with shaking fingers. Holds them to his dripping nose, not bothering with the rivulets already drying on his skin.
And he lays his soft pale hand on Keishin’s tremoring shoulder, and he turns to Granddad and he says “I’ll get him cleaned up.”
It feels significant to Keishin, that Takeda is not asking. That his voice is immovable as it is kind--that anyone would speak to his grandfather like that.
Granddad nods, and Takeda leads him out into the morning air, and Keishin goes.
It’s a short stumble to the nearest bathroom, cool and dim and smelling soft of bleach. Keishin shudders down to sit against the wall, and Takeda makes himself busy, wetting and wringing a paper towel.
He holds it out to him, and Keishin takes it.
Takeda doesn’t take away his hand--it’s a moment before Keishin realizes he wants the sodden little clump of tissue.
It is somehow humiliating, to pass it to him. But Takeda only smiles, cocks his head a little. Throws the thing away.
The paper towel is warm against the skin of Keishin’s face, and he scrubs with it, moving slowly, dazed.
Takeda is still smiling at him when he looks up again.
“You missed a spot,” he says, kindly, and points it out. Keishin fixes it, huffing something like thanks.
Takeda only nods, asks him if he’s alright. Keishin says that he is--even here, even in the quiet, in the company of only this sweet unshielded boy, he refuses to be anything more or less than fine.
Another nod, a look of gentle understanding. Takeda, Keishin thinks, is someone who knows how to be embarrassed.
“Alright,” Takeda says, with the voice of a homemaker about to set the house in order. “Give me your shirt.”
Keishin splutters, the comfort of that tone draining out of him--huh? His face, already florid with the impact, heats.
“Ah--oh, no! No, no, I--!” A cleansing breath. “Sorry,” he says, quavering a little. “It’s just--your shirt’s going to stain if I don’t get the blood out? Right now?”
It makes sense, though it’s not something Keishin would have worked out for himself, that the warm damp at his shirt collar is blood.
He thinks of Takeda’s voice, the aproned, homely tune of it, and shuffles stiffly from his shirt. Hands it over, and Takeda--
--Takeda does not look at him, in all his shaking, his scrawniness. He only runs the water, cold tap twisted as far as it will go. Only hums a little, an antique-sounding song that Keishin does not recognize.
“How are you feeling, Ukai-kun?” It must come without thinking, Keishin can see him start. Starts himself, a little. “I mean--if it’s alright if I call you that.”
Keishin shrugs, even though Takeda is making a point of looking away. He answers the question with one of his own.
“Why… are you so nice to me?” It comes out hoarse, like the words scraped at his throat on their way out.
“Oh,” Takeda says, lightly. “Because I like you. N-not like that at all!” His voice cracks, his hands tense. Water splatters the edges of the sink, the mirror.
“I owe you,” he murmurs, after a moment. “I owe you--a lot.” He sighs, ducks his head, watches his work. “But you never make me feel like that. It’s noble, I suppose.”
Keishin’s chapped, chewed lips part. He has never been noble before.
But Takeda--he has it backwards. In Keishin’s estimation, he--Takeda has left him with so much, whether he wanted to give it over or not. He coughed that knowledge up into the cup of Keishin’s hands, and Keishin… would never hold it above his head.
He could, though. It would be the easiest thing in the world.
“”S not like that,” Keishin says, softly. He has to repeat himself, his rasp muffled under the rush of the tap.
His next words come slowly to him, but he knows what they will be. He has practiced this conversation, mouthing it silent when he lay awake.
“I--I’ve got something on you,” he ventures, “so you should have something on me.”
Takeda, of course, protests. Says Keishin doesn’t have to, that they’re all square and everything is fine.
He has to tell him, it is only right.
He wants to tell him, it feels right. A secret for a secret.
Keishin swallows, and whimpers with attempted words. Breathes, tries it again.
“I’m the same as you,” he says, with a voice like a skinned knee.
Still, Takeda doesn’t turn to him. If anything, he curls closer on himself, watches more intently the scrub of his thumbpads over the stains.
“Y-you mean boys?” he asks, after a moment. His voice is gentle, gentle.
A sigh, listing toward the exhausted affirmative.
“I mean Sato,” Keishin says, and the way it slips from his tongue--he’ll never forget the unburdening of that weight.
They are even now, but more than this--it exists, now, somewhere outside of Keishin. It is in someone else’s hands, someone he knows he can trust.
“There,” he says. “Now you don’t owe me and I don’t owe you.”
He can catch it in the mirror, Takeda’s little smile. It’s a tender thing, like a cup of tea, a morning spent home sick from school.
“Now we’re friends,” Takeda lilts, sweetly. Like he’s excited to be, more than anything.
Keishin hadn’t even thought of that. He’s not the type for many friends.
“And that’s good! People like us should be friends. People like us,” Takeda tells him, with a bright conviction, “should be together.”
He wrings the water from Keishin’s shirt, and it runs clear. Has been running clear, but still, he scrubbed. He turns, then, and hands it back, and does not look at Keishin’s body.
Keishin takes it, the cold wet bundle, and their fingers do not brush. Still, Keishin’s mind flashes with how they would feel, shivering, dripping.
Takeda sighs wistfully, but there is a weariness in him, too. Like they’ve both done a day’s labor, though it can’t be after eight.
“I promise, Ukai-kun,” he says. Keishin watches the way his small mouth shapes his name, in the mirror. “Even with my big mouth, I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
Keishin knows he won’t. Even if he could not keep the same secret of himself, Keishin knows he won’t. He knows it with the same certainty he knows his shirt won’t stain, that if he or anyone faltered again, Takeda would be there.
He gets up, tosses away his clammy paper towel. Makes to face Takeda, even though his chest is bare.
Keishin holds out his cold-paled hand, and they shake on it.
There is a giddiness in Takeda’s smile when he does, and Keishin thinks of all the promises, all the kindness Takeda has given him this morning.
He thinks he likes that smile best of all of it.