Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He gets the message at precisely 3.33 a.m.

It’s a bit uncanny, seeing that precise sequence of numbers light up on his screen. He’s not particularly one for superstition – if anything, he’d cackled more at the abrupt and severe allergic reaction Kuramochi had developed to this particular time of night after convincing him and Zono to watch The Exorcism of Emily Rose that one night back at the dorms, when they still had the carefree privilege to ditch their responsibilities under the illusion of somehow evading the consequences.

It’s the witching hour, he insists now, tucking himself into bed well before two in the morning and refusing to budge until, at least, four.

And yeah, college has fucked up their sleep schedules. Yeah, having been a sound engineering student, all those nights staring into computer screens with headphones clapped over his sweaty ears had fucked it up even more. It’s the only explanation for why he hasn’t been able to get in one restful night’s sleep in, edge-wise, though moving into a new apartment and the constant blare of Tokyo’s night-life in the background definitely contributes.

His body clock is messed up, his skull is packed with wool, and he slides the message open despite the digital warning sign the three identical numbers flash at him.

It’s from an unknown number.

Hello

And that’s it. Kazuya squints. He stares hard at the last couple of digits of the number, partly because he doesn’t have his glasses on, sifting through his memory to try and recollect if he’d seen it anywhere. Work? One of his friends? The electrician he’d had to call after realising his air conditioner’s spewing out rancid, unrecycled air?

He’d have been more inclined to consider those options, were it not the for the ungodly hour at which the text arrives.

But he doesn’t get time to dwell on it. A thin line of text on his screen indicates Unknown Number is typing again.

You’re at no. 2 right? The new guy

Kazuya frowns. The inevitable lethargy that dulls the nerves and blunts out the edges of awareness dissipates a little, leaves him just a tad more alert.

If this person knows where he lives, he’s compelled to be a bit more serious about this.

He types, Who is this

A reply bubble swoops into his screen almost immediately.

Oops

Sorry

I got your number from the group chat

Kazuya tsks, even as the slight tension gathered in his shoulders release. The group chat. Of course. The landlord had told him that he’s going to add Kazuya to the text group he has with the rest of the tenants in his moderately sized apartment complex – it doubles as a community forum, but, from what Kazuya’s seen up until the point he’d simply turned his notifications off given how often it dinged, was more of a collective complaint box for everything from stolen parking spots to someone sticking their coloured clothes into someone else's whites in the laundry.

This is why Kazuya doesn’t like social media, he thinks, grunting as he straightens up in his couch, jostling the laptop he’d been balancing on his knee and feeling the cracks tapping up his spine – it’s too social. It’s too easy to be found.

Which is a great inconvenience to people who’d just like to be left alone, thank you.

After a moment’s consideration, Kazuya lowers the volume of the YouTube video going on autoplay in the background that he’d not bothered to change as he idly searched for a movie or something to kill time, and responds with a terse, I still don’t know who this is

He figures he might as well give this person the benefit of the doubt. It might be an emergency – the hour’s a bit portentous, either way. It gets a smirk out of him, thinking how Kuramochi would have reacted in this situation.

A reply pops on to his screen.

I’m from number 18!

Sawamura

The name doesn’t ring any bells. And if Kazuya’s understanding of the layout holds, flat number 18 should be the floor above him in this two-storey complex, a U-shaped building around the communal courtyard in the centre. The landlord’s fond of gardening and company, and frequently mixes the two down there.

But that’s not the pressing point here.

The pressing point is, Number 18 doesn’t exactly sound like they’re having an emergency.

Starting to run out of patience, against his will – Kazuya’s not heartless, at least not gratuitously – he thumbs into the keypad: Can I help you?

This time, there’s a noticeable delay before he gets a reply. Kazuya’s eyes flick to the tiny clock at the corner of his laptop screen, stomach churning the way it always does when he begins to resign himself to the fact that he’ll be showing up at work sleep-deprived and grouchy again in a couple of hours. It’s got to stop, the thought, starting to sound a little hollow from the number of times he’s said this to himself, floats through his head, riding the muggy clouds of exhaustion burgeoning bigger inside his skull with every passing day.

It isn’t healthy. He’s managing to hold up for the time being, but if this keeps up it’s going to start to put a dent in the quality of his work – as it were, his work situation isn’t exactly ideal.

And yeah, he’s aware that a part of his situation is his own doing – the rebellious disregard for routine and structure in college, the late nights spent out, and even right now, staring into a computer screen probably emitting way too many UV rays to be good for either his naked eyes or the rest of him –

It’s just easier for his cranky, fatigue-ragged brain to channel that frustration at a different outlet.

Namely, Number 18.

Who’s just messaged him saying: No it’s just that

I saw your lights on again

On a different day, when he’d be more attuned to his surroundings and circumstances, his eyes would have snagged on the word ‘again’, and his brain would’ve been able to pick apart the syllables and reassemble them to deduce just what, exactly, all this implied.

Instead, he feels the abrasive tension of one too many nights without rest corrode his patience, and types, almost belligerently,

Is that bothering you?

His phone is assaulted with a barrage of messages. Kazuya’s neither impressed nor appeased by the speed of the replies.

Oh no no no

Sorry

It’s just I thought maybe

You were having trouble sleeping too

This time, Kazuya’s eyes do snag on the last word of that sentence.

Having trouble sleeping too.

There’s an effort, an attempt, somewhere at the back of his mind, to examine what that means. A sputtering, like a gas-stove clicking on again and again with flames that disappear almost as quickly as they alight.

But the rest of Kazuya is tired – the rest of Kazuya feels like his head has been sandpapered, like all the blood in his body’s turned into wax, slow and uncomfortably warm and sticky and rolling arduously down his veins, clogging him up, weighing him down; like his tendons are made out of worn-out rubber, pulled and stretched until he’s inched close to the point where he can just bend over and break.

The rest of Kazuya is well aware that he has a scant couple of hours left to at least attempt to get some sleep before he has to head out to another full day of sitting inside a studio surrounded by the harrowing fear, growing more pronounced and profound with each passing day, that he’s not going to be able to produce a single, decent enough melody to at least convince his supervisor that maybe he’s good enough to start training.

That he’d not made a colossal mistake, defying everyone who’d said he wouldn’t be able to do this.

That this – everything he has worked toward since he’s graduated high-school, his Big Dream to becoming a music producer, haughty ambitions of the kind of genre-bending music he’d introduce to an industry growing stale with the same old formula rehashed again and again – has all been a mistake.

Like his father has always told him it is.

It’s a moment of vulnerability, honestly – a moment of self-doubt that’s probably been lurking around in the dark for a while, biding its time and searching for an opening to pounce out, to side-step his justifications that he’s just hit a slump, all artists do, and if he could just sleep – if he could just lay down and close his eyes and block out the incessant buzzing behind his ears, drown out the pessimistic repository of doubt and dread dammed up inside his head, he’d be better, he’d be able to think, find inspiration again, rhythm at his fingertips and etched into the bars of music-sheets.

It gets to him – the same guy Kuramochi has always accused of being too thick-skinned, too haughty, too unaffected, far too arrogant.

It gets to him, and Kazuya resents it, is repulsed by it, and maybe there’s some truth to it, to the witching hour; maybe there is something unholy about this time of night and everything that’s still awake and wandering around in it.

There’s bitterness in his bones and volatile ire that’s not really ire in his fingertips as he curtly replies: Actually, I am trying to work

His phone spazzes out again, text per millisecond.

Oh my gosh I’m so sorry I disturbed you

I’ll leave you to it

All the best with work :)

Kazuya looks at the last message he receives and thinks it’s the type of ambiguous sentence you can choose to see either as an invitation to keep talking, or a definitive conversation-closer.

He picks the latter and tosses his phone away, even though another twenty minutes pass before he can make himself haul his stiff joints out of the couch and in the direction of the bedroom, too much of a realist to really believe that maybe this time, he’s going to get some shut-eye.

***

There’s something about going prolonged periods of time without a decent night’s rest that does things to your memory – if you’re retaining anything in the first place. His senses are dulled out, a rusty prehistoric radio antenna that does little more than pick up indistinct crackles you’d be wasting your time trying to decipher.

Kazuya feels that way – feels gingerly around the gaps and chasms inside of his head where his knowledge of what he ate for breakfast should be, the faces of the people he shared his train with, whether he greeted the manager on the way into the office or not, what exactly he spends all those empty hours stretching into the night doing.

That’s probably why it takes him a while to comprehend the meaning of the six-pack beer he finds in front of his door when he shuffles back from work that day, mind idling on neutral if only to stave off the wave of self-deprecation threatening to surge if he lets it, another day spent in the studio being of no other use than a trainee doing the filing and running errands for one of the directors.

As he bends toward it, a lot confused, and almost a little resentful at life for constantly throwing baffling things at him when he’s too bummed out to even colour-coordinate his clothes in the mornings, he notices a yellow slip of paper.

A post-it note.

Kazuya moves to pick up the beer, belatedly notices the dull throb in his back – yet another self-inflicted injury no doubt caused by the gymnastics he pulls on the couch trying to balance junkfood and his laptop at once – and grabs the note instead.

I’m really sorry about disturbing you last night! I hope you will accept this as an apology :)

It takes Kazuya the entirety of seven shameful seconds before he grasps what the hell this is all about, before his hand subconsciously pats down on the pocket he keeps his phone in.

Oh

Number 18

He blinks, bleary. Not entirely sure what to think of it.

Not entirely sure what to do.

He eyes the beer, and is conscious of an uneasy prickling inside his chest.

He feels…bad?

It’s…quite an elaborate act, to go get a peace offering and leave it diplomatically outside of his door, and Kazuya wonders, retrospectively, if he’d been a tad too harsh, his demeanour too clipped. After all, even if Number 18’d had the questionable courtesy to not only root his number out from the group chat and decide three-thirty in the morning was a good time to make small talk, this had still been his first time interacting with a stranger who, for all intents and purposes, hadn’t exactly meant harm.

In fact, now that he thinks about…maybe they had something in common.

But he still doesn’t know anything about this person other than their room and contact numbers and their last name, the latter having slipped Kazuya’s mind like many little details these days do but which he can find in his messages if he can bother himself with it –

The question is, does he want to bother?

Kazuya’s not particularly up to the task of overthinking this – aside from the fact that he’s kind of standing blankly outside of his door, evidently stumped by half a dozen cans of alcohol – but if he were to wager a guess he’d say Number 18’s just…being friendly. Maybe overly friendly, because Kazuya firmly believes that there’s an etiquette to the world of texting and strangers do not just initiate conversations in the middle of the night, whether or not they’re reaching out to fellow insomniacs, but then again, he knows some people can’t stand the idea of being disliked by or upsetting others – he’s always criticising Nori for being too nice like that.

Huffing out a sigh, Kazuya decides he’s just going to take the beer and leave it at that. He could drop a text to Number 18 saying thanks, but he’s wary that it might be interpreted as some kind of invitation – maybe that’s what this is, a conversation opener, a ploy to get Kazuya to invite them for a drink under the dictums of politeness.

Kazuya, low on the reserves of all the easy charisma that’d made him effortlessly popular with his peers back in college, decides he can’t be bothered.

So he picks up the liquor and makes his way indoors, thinking that their disappearance should be a good enough equivalent to explicitly accepting Number 18’s apology.

***

And then he finds another reason to be thankful to Number 18.

If it makes sense to be thankful to someone for letting them get totally drunk and passing out until the next morning.

Kazuya doesn’t know how he’d not thought of this himself – he’s never been prouder of being the lightweight Kuramochi always laughs at him for being. It takes him a can and a half after dinner to lull himself into that fuzzy grey-white trance so familiar to him from those drinking parties ritualistic in the lives of university kids, and the exorbitant amounts of exhaustion he’s amassed push him that extra step to tranquilise him altogether. He doesn’t come to until five in the morning, having KOed for close to eight hours in a spread-eagled heap half on the floor and half on his couch, and it feels so weird to feel rested -  like he’s had cotton stuffed inside his ears and someone’d just pulled it all out, and all the muffled sounds are crisp and clear again. And slightly headache-inducing, but that might be a hangover headache and not a I just slept for more than an hour and not the spacing out with my eyes open on the train type headache. If there even is a headache for such a blissful thing.

Lord, his thoughts aren’t even making sense. Sleep’s supposed to fix his mental incoherence.

That’s what he’s thinking as he hoists himself off the floor, surprisingly spry considering the leaden ache clawing into his shoulder from where it’s been digging into the couch’s frame all night, and heads into the shower absently grinning to himself.

***

Work goes relatively better – nothing extraordinary, nothing drastic, because of course all that damage cannot be recovered overnight. But he’s alert. He sees and hears and processes things markedly faster than the slug-like pace he’s only now realising he’s been moving at over the past couple of weeks. He shuffles through his notes, the works-in-progress he had shelved for fear of ruining with his lack of inspiration and is able to look at them a little more forgivingly than he has in the past, is able to gather up the confidence to take them up to the director he’s been fetching iced lattes for all of last week with at least some of the composure he’d harnessed when presenting his projects to his lecturers.

There’s critique, there are notes, there are suggestions for change, a commendation here and there, and a final Show me when you’re done, and Kazuya has had the best day he’s had in a long, long time. The pessimist in him would have dourly commented on how sad it is that his standards for a good day have fallen so low, but he’s going to take what he can get.

This newfound buoyant mood also makes him re-evaluate his position on Number 18.

So maybe they hadn’t exactly intended to orchestrate the best night’s sleep Kazuya’s had in the longest time. And yes, drinking himself to sleep is a terrible idea in the long-run no matter how effective it’d been last night.

But Kazuya’s good mood spills into his generosity in his estimations of people, and Number 18 is quite possibly his favourite person in the world right now.

Even though he doesn’t know much about him. Or her? Kazuya can’t recall a face as their profile picture, and he’s inclined to think it’s probably a guy, given the tenants he’s seen coming in and out of the complex – people around his age, all guys, young working adults who can’t afford to be picky with their accommodation in the city. Maybe he’s even crossed paths with him before. The guilt which’d only begun to take root in his conscience yesterday blooms a tad more as it sinks in, more acutely than before to his now sharper wits, that he knows or remembers so very little about them, aside from the fact that they live upstairs and –

Wait.

Kazuya frowns, absently reaching for his phone, the steady movement of the train for once not feeling like a prolonged lurching nightmare of vertigo. If Number 18 lives above him…

How did he know Kazuya’s lights are always on at night?

Kazuya clicks open his messages. Scrolls through them. Flinches, a little, at how curt he’d probably come off. Damn, now he feels awful. Maybe the insomnia wasn’t so bad if it helped dull these kinds of feelings out.

Hesitating, not sure if he’s supposed to let sleeping dogs lie – he could try to make up for his coldness, but he’s not sure if he can correctly forecast the outcome of that, and isn’t sure he wants to commit by belatedly bringing all of this up again just when it’d simmered down.

The fact keeps reiterating inside of his head – he still doesn’t know this guy.

On impulse, he clicks on the contact number and into their profile.

Username: Sawamura Eijun

There’s a picture of a sunflower, and underneath, what appears to be a quote: “There is a romance about all those who are abroad in the black hours.”

It’s not a quote Kazuya’s familiar with, but a part of him feels, as he steps out of the train, brisk, that he knows them slightly better now.

As the realist that he is, Kazuya should have known better.

Insomnia can’t be cured overnight. Of course it can’t. It doesn’t take him much to relapse – go back to that torturous routine of lying awake in his bed painfully aware of every contour of the mattress that doesn’t meld into his spine, the slightly troubling angle of his head against his pillow that won’t sit right no matter how much he shifts. This bizarre, pointless restlessness that burns under his skin like an itch, like an allergic reaction he can’t assuage.

He’s looked it up, done his research, because it’s started getting to the point where it’s becoming worrying. Kuramochi tells him, when they meet up one weekend for lunch, that he needs to lay off the coffee, go see a doctor, ask them to prescribe you sleeping pills or something. Dude you look terrible.

He means well, Kazuya knows, can see it in the genuine concern etched in the furrow between his brows and the all but daily texts he gets, disguised as casual inquiries, but he feels helpless and afloat and desperate because he thinks he already knows the cause of his insomnia. The notes he had left space for on his music sheet are tantalisingly blank again, mocking him, the bridge that he was supposed to write gone, poof, out of his head and he can’t help but worry that this time it’s gone permanently, those melodies, the tunes he used to be able to improvise with his now untouched guitar and his ex-dorm-mate’s expensive Launchpad.

It’s a vicious cycle, the anxiety of not achieving what he’d envisioned achieving feeding into his fractured mental state, the insomnia feeding into the physical exhaustion that leaves him unfit to even walk in a straight line these days, let alone create music.

And Kuramochi means well when he says, Dude you look terrible, go see a doctor, ask them to prescribe you sleeping pills or something, but the bare, naked, shameful truth is that Kazuya is afraid.

Kazuya’s afraid of what he’s going to be told. Kazuya’s afraid of having a medical file shoved into his hands telling him things like, Hey, you are way too stressed to be working on music now. Take a break, rest, do other things. He’s afraid it’ll tell him things like, You know what? Maybe this isn’t for you.

He’s come all this way, all this way, and it can’t be for nothing.

Can it?

God, no.

Please, no.

Not after everything he’s had to give up, everything he’s had to do –

And so he lies there, sleepless, slowly being eaten alive by his own mind, a living corpse buried under a flurry of restive ants picking him apart.

There’s a new quirk to this cycle now, though.

Now, he spends a lot of the blank hours where weariness weighs on his mind like an inescapable thing and sleep eludes him thinking about Number 18.

Wondering if they’re like him too.

Wondering if they grow as frantic and anxious in the noisy silence of quiet bedrooms where they have nothing but their demons for company.

It doesn’t seem too outlandish, when he thinks about it like that, to imagine someone would look at a lit window in the night, maybe while they pace, feet uncoordinated and clumsy, round and round the courtyard, just to have something to do, and think, hey, maybe that guy’s like me too

Maybe it isn’t too outlandish to think that it’s a little nice, to have someone who could relate.

Kazuya’s Googled the quote he found in Number 18’s status. It’s R.L. Stevenson. Kazuya can’t exactly say he’s all that well-read but he isn’t uncultured – he knows who that is.

It makes him wonder about Number 18. Is he the type to simply search ‘quotes about insomnia’ online to come off as poetic? Or does he actually read? Does he try to escape into books when he can’t shut his eyes and quiet the voices inside his head? Run away into a different world and a different person’s problems? It’s sort of romantic, if you think of it like that – a sentiment that can be made into a song.

There’s even something poetic about the irony of his profile picture – a sunflower. Framed by a bright sky of blue, a strange choice for someone who’s perpetually trapped by the night.

God, Kazuya’s really losing it. He’s starting to wax poetic about what might just be a stock photo lifted off the net.

He needs to sleep.

He keeps staring at his phone, and the unnamed contact number.

He sees the time.

3.30 a.m.

His finger hovers over the text bar. Number 18 is online.

Oh what the heck.

None of WebMD’s articles mention recklessness as a very real side-effect of insomnia.

Chapter Text

It’s not like he meets him.

Not straightaway, at least.

He texts, thanks for the beer btw, and gets a reply back after roughly the interlude it takes for someone to get over the surprise of receiving a message in the middle of the night from a relative stranger. Kazuya ought to know.

no problem :D

I hope we’re good, now :)

Bright, Kazuya thinks, and eyes the sunflower image that’s sending these conversation bubbles at him. If a person possesses the ability to muster up that many smileys while combatting sleep deprivation, they’re pretty much eligible for sainthood.

More pressing, though, is how Kazuya’s supposed to reply. He’s blunt enough as it is face-to-face – he actually wants to put in the effort to temper his responses to be at least a little more amicable.

He settles on, it’s fine, seriously

don’t beat yourself up about it

He considers adding a smiley, decides that he’d rather not do anything forced, and leaves it at that.

When a reply bubble pops up, and he reads the oshi! the sunflower is cheering, Kazuya smiles a little, inadvertently, in real life.

***

The first time he does actually see him is a few days later, and entirely accidental.

(Even though he’d told himself it’s because he’s too restless to stay indoors.)

(Even though he’d thought he’d just jog over to the 24/7 convenience store and grab some iced coffee to tide him over.)

(Even though he’d scanned the courtyard as he was leaving and glanced up at where he thought Number 18 is.)

He’s coming in through the double gates, short, stout and wooden and worryingly scalable if anyone decided to commit, and his footsteps falter before his brain catches up to it, even though his eyes had done a sweep of the perimeter half-expecting to see someone

– and he’s not disappointed.

There’s – someone, pacing, standing out against the shadows in their grey – or is it white? – hoodie.

They don’t notice him.

Kazuya hesitates a moment, and thinks about what he wants to do.

He draws blanks. Quick-marches to his door.

Just as he pushes it closed, though, he catches the figure in the dark startle, and look in his direction.

***

The next time is

(genuinely)

inadvertent.

One of the groups contracted with the studio he works for is shooting a series of music videos for their upcoming album, and the director’s vision had turned out far more ambitious in execution than it had been on paper. Kazuya’s been busting his back helping with storyboards, no matter how far out of his skillset it’d fallen, and had somehow managed to get himself recruited along with all other available trainees and interns to get the sets ready pre-production – moving props around, hauling heavy equipment, making sure lunch (and then dinner, when shooting’d run on longer than expected) was ready and warm for cast and crew in between takes.

By the time Kazuya returns home, he’d like to say that he feels numb – except he doesn’t. There’s a smarting burn gnawing into his chest, spasms bitter-sharp, and yes, he knows this industry is unforgiving and sometimes it takes years before people have a breakthrough, years of hard-work to polish up and magnify talent –

But his ego’s taken a blow, has been taking blows for days now, running around doing menial, menial chores which fall so disappointingly short of the excruciating hours of training and practice he’s put in at university that his dignity can’t help but feel a little abused. A little wounded.

That’s how it goes, bro, Kuramochi’d told him over the phone, as sympathetic as his self-proclaimed tough-guy persona lets him be when Kazuya’d not been able to take it anymore and decided to vent, that’s how it’s going to be for a while, you just have to make the best of it. And keep a hit-list of people who piss you off, for when you’re famous.

Kazuya’d laughed, at that, but he’s not laughing now. Even the scowl he’d felt his face twist into as he wrangled with his bruised pride and the unfairness of it all has faded, giving way to pure weariness – exhaustion that leaves his bones feeling hollow and fragile, his body a marionette held up by some fickle, sputtering force.

It’s not that he’s conceited – arrogant, maybe a little a bit, but he’s never seen anything wrong with taking pride in good, decent work. And he does know that he’s capable. He’d survived one of the most gruelling programs in the country for music production, and he knows that he has a knack for it, the talent. That’s not bragging, that’s not conceit – it’s fact. It’s something he’s truly believed and tried uphold, tried to better, for years and years, and now, suddenly, somehow, not being good enough threatens to destabilise him. Pull the ground out from beneath his feet and leave him careening into nowhere.

He’s thinking about that, thinking about all of that, about how he’s probably going to skip shower and skip dinner and maybe even skip changing out of his clothes, only to crawl into his mattress and stare at the cracks in the ceiling till they start resembling faces, when he almost smacks someone in the face with the gate he’d shoved at without looking over it.

“Sorry!” his near-victim squeaks, almost immediately, and Kazuya’s nerves receive a jolt – an extra push of current from a failing battery cell. He blinks his surroundings back into existence.

“No, I should be saying sorry…are you hurt?”

The guy shakes his head. The hood of his jacket slips off from the enthusiasm of it. “I’m fine! I just didn’t see you there.”

Kazuya tries not to frown – it’s instinct, from the days before he’d finally relented and let his dad drag him to an optician’s, a habit he’s picked up when he’s trying to zero in on something his vision doesn’t fully have in focus.

Instead, he pushes the gate again, this time more cautiously, the guy stepping out of the way, and as Kazuya shifts through, he chances a glance in his direction.

Brown hair, brown eyes, and –

A smile?

“Are you…by any chance, are you the guy who lives at Number 2?”

***

The name beside the sunflower image worryingly higher up his chat-list than it should be goes from Number 18 to Sawamura Eijun.

***

He’s heard that the sound of rain is like Mother Nature’s lullaby – hushed sweeping white noise that sedates and soothes you into sleep. Or, at least, a lot of these self-help blogs scattered online when you Google “insomnia” with links to Rainy Mood would give him to think.

What actually happens, though, when the deep-throated growls of thunder he’d been hearing in the distance for a while finally break, a thin cobwebby string that snaps as noiselessly and unobtrusively as that first drop of rain to hit the ground, is that he finds himself in his living-room, watching the tiny antenna icon at the bottom corner of his laptop blink as the WiFi signal buffets under the sudden storm

– and thinking that Sawamura won’t be able to amble around the courtyard tonight.

He can’t pretend he’s working up to it – he already knows what he wants to do. His phone is out, in the palm of his hand, and the text he’d probably send clearly scripted at the forefront of his mind.

But spontaneity isn’t really his strong suit, and so he deliberates, turning it tentatively over in his mind to try and justify it.

Because it’s not like he can sleep anyway.

Because it’s not like he has anything to do.

Because it’s not like Sawamura can either.

Because it’s not like he’s going to be finishing the leftover cans of beer in his fridge by himself.

Spontaneity isn’t really his strong suit, but for a while he’s not really known what is, anymore, doesn’t remember how to play things by ear as he used to, when he’d sit in his room at his dad’s place and experiment with his cousin’s toy keyboard until he got the opening notes of the Swan Lake ballet down pat –

And so he sends the text before he can overthink it, a casual (careful) invitation, and some fifteen minutes later there’s the short, quick buzz of his doorbell.

“Hi,” Sawamura breathes as the door swings to reveal him standing on the threshold, swathed more in shadow than light by virtue of the dim, energy-saving lightbulbs the landlord has thriftily decked out the passages with.

Ignoring the slight tightness in his rib-cage (what is that? Acidity? Dehydration?), Kazuya replies, “Hi,” back, standing off to the side to make way for Sawamura. It gets lost, a little, under the spatter of water, streaming off the sloping awnings and smattering into the paved grounds of the courtyard. It’s raining harder than he’d thought it was. “I guess this puts a damper on your evening stroll, huh?”

Sawamura’s in the process of taking off his shoes when he throws a smile over his shoulder – it’s a knowing smile, a secretive one, like Kazuya’s made a private joke. In a way, Kazuya supposes he has.

He doesn’t get to think about that, though, because he’s too busy coming to terms with the realisation that this is the first time he’s actually seeing Sawamura.

Like, properly seeing him.

In the feeble, gloomy lighting of the courtyard, with a single dying lamp-post with a cracked pane and more grime than anyone’s bothered to clear out for what looks like years, Kazuya didn’t stand a chance to notice the finer details of Sawamura’s features.

Like those freckles.

So many freckles.

He realises a beat too late that he’s staring, and thinks that the only reason Sawamura doesn’t notice is because he’s as dazed and out of it as Kazuya is.

“It’s cooler down here,” Sawamura comments, even though he shrugs out of the jacket he’d come down wearing – it takes Kazuya two slow-blinks to realise that one of the sleeves look a little damp, probably the casualty of some of the violent splashing happening outside. “My room’s directly under the sun, it heats up like an oven.”

Kazuya supposes that makes sense. The roofing of this building is tin, and while he’d not been the most attentive of kids in his physics classes, he doesn’t need to be a genius to know metals heat up ridiculously quickly. He makes a noise of sympathy.

“It gets damp in here, a lot. Musty,” is what he says, after a few more moments – they’re in the living room, and it’s only now, after he’s gone and done it, after he’s gone and called his neighbour and acquaintance of a handful of minutes over and laid out two beer cans condensing in their miniature puddles on the table, that the awkwardness skirting the outlines starts creeping more boldly in.

Sawamura looks up at him, not touching his beer – nods. “I bet it’ll get terribly cold during the winter.”

“I bet it will.”

They look at each other. Or maybe ‘stare’ is the right word. At least, for Kazuya it is.

He blames the insomnia. He’s not in his right mind, honestly. It’s hard to be decorous when there are neon-coloured paint splatters blinking behind his eyelids every time he closes his eyes, and smooth tan-lines on Number 18 – Sawamura’s - arms.

“Um, so…you’re not working tonight?” Sawamura asks. It’s the same tone Kazuya’s heard him use before – a hush that sounds like it would be a whisper, if it were a few decibels quieter.

Like he’s making a conscious effort to keep his voice down.

It’s weirdly fascinating, for some reason.

Maybe because Kazuya’s mind is actively trying to avoid having to confront the question he’s just been asked.

Because maybe…just maybe, he’d told a lie. Not a lie lie, just a…white lie. A harmless thing. Told Sawamura, the night he’d almost broken his nose with a wooden gate, that he’d been doing overtime nearby. It’d been more a personal thing than any kind of wariness of Sawamura, his frugality with details – the kid had told him about where he was attending college and what course and what year and what semester and what sports scholarship in seconds as though this is the speech he always delivers when introducing himself to people for the first time, and any doubts Kazuya’d had of the guy and his intentions as anything but an over-eager social butterfly had evaporated on the spot.

Nonetheless he’d still been recovering from his own resentment at his circumstances, still sore from the self-deprecation he grapples with at his total inability to stop himself spiralling into self-destruction just because he can’t sleep, and at the time he’d thought the lie – the half-truth – was justified. He couldn’t bring up his workplace or profession without a ping of shame at how little he deserved to boast of it, and so he’d chosen not to.

But right now, with Sawamura peeking up at him through his bangs, his skin a couple of tones paler than what would constitute a healthy complexion despite his tan, his lashes beating down with the slow indolence of someone either about to drift into sleep or fighting against the pull of it…

It’s much, much harder to be defensive about it.

“I…usually don’t work into the night,” is what he finally ends up saying, mouth too dry – he reaches for his can, the metal cool and wet in his palm, and snaps off the tab, “unless I can help it.”

Sawamura seems to buy the answer. He nods once, and reaches for his own beer. “I thought you had a night job, maybe.” It takes him a second to snap his beer-can open.

Kazuya shakes his head.

“Oh,” Sawamura says. Blinks at him. “Moonwalking?”

Kazuya blinks.

“…moonwalking?”

Sawamura blinks.

Blinks again.

And again.

And then abruptly goes cherry-red.

“Moonlighting,” he squawks – actually squawks, the volume of his voice swelling and sounding less like a stage whisper, “I meant moonlighting! Autocorrect!”

Kazuya quirks an eyebrow. “Autocorrect?”

Sawamura’s entire face scrunches up – his eyes almost disappear into his face. There’s red slashed across his cheekbones. Kazuya thinks of wine stains on white shirts. “I meant! M-my brain! Autocorrected it!”

It’s a while before Kazuya realises that the feathery feeling tickling at his lungs is laughter.

Sawamura, evidently, realises it too – takes one look at his face and cuts his eyes away, cheeks noticeably rounder and is he pouting? Yes, he is. “Not funny,” he sulks, a little petulant, a lot embarrassed, and when Kazuya sniggers: “A slip of the tongue is no fault of the mind!”

Kazuya feels his mouth twist. It’s a grin, he knows it’s a grin, but it’s also a grin he’s not consciously pulling and it’s been a while since he’s grinned like that.

“And here I was thinking you wanted me to do my Michael Jackson impression.”

This gets Sawamura’s attention. Almost immediately. As though between one blink of Kazuya’s papier-mâché eyelids – fragile from too little rest, sensitive and crinkly – and the next, all that sullenness has been swapped out for curiosity like a magic trick.

“You can do Michael Jackson impressions?” he asks, and there’s a spark in his eyes, and yeah, they’re definitely a lot livelier than they’d seemed in the semi-dark outside, and even though his blush is fading, and yeah, it makes the pallor of his skin stand out more, that sickly grey tinge that invariably gives away people living a less than ideal lifestyle no matter how tanned they are…he doesn’t look as lifeless as he did that night in the yard, and it’s a moment before Kazuya realises why.

He almost feels a little bad that he has to disappoint him. “Only when I forget to run the hot water in the shower first,” he says, light, and watches.

And.

Eijun takes a moment –

And –

The moment he gets it, his eyes glitter, and –

He laughs.

Cackles, actually.

It’s almost a brash sound, staccato and loud, crisp over the crackles of the spray relentlessly beating down on the sides of the building, and Kazuya’s not a fan of loud noises, but as he watches that broad-toothed grin spread, bright and out of place in a living-room he’s spent endless nights stewing his misery in, he doesn’t remember to mind.

***

He doesn’t get to sleep that night, either, despite the alcohol in his system.

But when the sugary, grating strains of bird song begin to seep in over the dissipating hisses of rain, he doesn’t feel as homicidal as he usually does either.

***

Three days into the week, stomach weak and stinging, like all the meals he’s skipped from a lack of appetite are finally catching up with him and all those digestive acids have actually started metabolising his organs instead, Kazuya caves.

He runs a quick but thorough search online for over-the-counter sleeping pills and appropriate dosages, and makes a pit-stop at the pharmacy – downs one after force-feeding himself plain white rice, and nearly throws up.

The next morning, he feels a curious cross between rested and as though someone’s repeatedly banging a gong inside his skull.

And that evening, as he’s waiting for the medication to kick in and start dragging him down under, fending off the slight quiver of panic that’d come the first time he’d felt as though he were losing control of his own body, slowly feeling his consciousness seep out of his fingertips and swooping over him like water gushing in to fill his lungs, he thinks about sunflowers.

***

The next time they meet, there’s no alcohol involved.

But it does rain.

And Kazuya does catch the words Sawamura Eijun is typing flashing in his chat list before they abruptly disappear.

It’s the weekend, and Kazuya’s got seven more tablets of sleeping pills, but they sit on his hand with undue weight, heavy with the knowledge that he’d promised himself he wouldn’t be taking them unless he absolutely needed to – the last thing he needs is to become dependent on drugs, even though there’s a queasy feeling in his gut when he sees the clock edge toward midnight and yet can’t tune out the static in his head enough to drift off.

It’s a little easier, this time, to take the plunge.

 Hey, you free?

“Rained all over your parade again, huh,” Kazuya says, and tries not to wonder if it’s going to become some kind of ritual now, him making precipitation-related puns at the doorway as he lets Sawamura in, sizzle-sharp slivers of water thumping an earthy crescendo in the background.

This time, Sawamura’s less reserved. He grins, broad, and Kazuya notes how he seems to smile with his whole face – how it just keeps growing bigger and bigger until his eyes have to squeeze shut to make way for it.

“I actually don’t mind the rain,” he confides, murmuring a quiet “Pardon me for the intrusion” to Kazuya’s shoe-rack, before starting to shrug out of his jacket.

Kazuya notices the damp sleeve.

Kazuya wonders if Sawamura sticks his hand out into the deluge on purpose.

Wants to feel the tap-tap-tap of cold, wet rainwater against his skin.

He doesn’t dwell on it. Dithering half a moment, he reaches out for the jacket, “Let me hang that up by the stove, it’ll dry.”

Sawamura brightens. “Thanks!” he hums, hands over the jacket, and then does that thing again, where he rubs his hands up his arms. It’s cooler down here.

Kazuya pours out tea.

Sawamura brightens even more.

“Tea during rainy evenings is the best,” he hisses in pleasure as he wraps his hands around the cup, leaving them there for a while; there’s pure glee in his smile. He’d almost look wide awake, if it weren’t for the puffy eyes. The jittery way his fingers twitch around the cup.

Kazuya watches him. “Even when they keep you from prowling round in the dark?”

Sawamura frowns. “That makes me sound like a creep,” he says, almost scoldingly – you wouldn’t think that this is only the second time Sawamura’s found himself in Kazuya’s home, the third time they’re face to face. “And anyway, when it rains, it’s not too bad to be indoors. The night feels more…” Sawamura waves his arms, a little jerky, “alive.”

Kazuya thinks about the first time he’d seen Sawamura, watched him scuffing his feet against the stone in the yard outside – the stifling humidity of a summer night, the bleary beams cast by the dull yellow lightbulb housed in the only lamppost just enough to distinguish silhouettes.

He thinks about wandering round and round out there, night after night as the world slept like the dead, and thinks he understands.

It’s poetic, somehow. A sentiment that can be made into a song.

Kazuya’s fingers are restless, drum an absent rhythm against his knee.

“If you don’t mind my asking,” he blurts – startles himself, because he doesn’t remember conjuring any intention to say what he’s about to say, can barely recall thinking it, “…do you play baseball?”

He knows he’s hit the nail on the head when Sawamura goes wide-eyed, jaw slack. The cup he’d had his hands wrapped round, still on the table, clatters a smidge.

“How did you know?” Sawamura breathes, after a moment. His expression is bewildered.

Kazuya wishes he’d not brought it up, honestly.

But apparently, when your brain’s no more than a limp, oversaturated sponge trying to do just the bare minimum to get by, self-control is part of the collateral damage.

“Your tan-lines,” he says, gesturing – Sawamura’s arms run bare up to the hems of the short sleeves of his tee, and a distinct line bands off the bronzed, sun-kissed skin running past his elbow down his wrists – his upper arms are paler, a tad too honey to be exactly fair, but definitely a lot fairer than most of his visible skin, “my dad always said you can tell baseball players by their tan-lines.”

Sawamura’s looking at him with an expression akin to awe. Kazuya’s starting to think Sawamura gets awed very easily. “Oh. Oh. Er…yeah. I er…play college baseball.”

Athlete, Kazuya thinks, immediately tallying up other details he’d filed away corroborating to this, like his toned stature, not bulky when it comes to muscularity but definitely fit. He mulls it around in his head, intrigued for reasons

(he doesn’t want to think about)

beyond his understanding.

“What position?”

Sawamura almost beams. “Pitcher.”

Kazuya hazards a guess, “Southpaw?”

This time Sawamura’s mouth falls completely open.

“How did you know that?”

“You’re a leftie,” Kazuya says – notices that he enjoys the look of mingling surprise and amazement morphing over Sawamura’s face. He’s always been good at reading people – maybe he’s a little rusty after all the self-imposed isolation he subjects himself to these days to cope with his own black moods, but it’s nice to know that he’s not completely rusty when it comes to casual socialising.

Except if he’d been completely himself, he probably wouldn’t have gargled all this out.

Except if he’d been completely himself, wakeful and nonchalant, he’d probably feel self-conscious, revealing how closely he’s been observing Sawamura.

(How much he winds up thinking about him when – )

Instead he focuses on how Sawamura’s brown eyes shine copper as he exclaims, wonder palpable in his words, “You’re like an IRL Sherlock Holmes!” and laughs.

***

Maybe he is. Maybe he is an IRL Sherlock Holmes, because his database of trivia about his neighbour keeps expanding almost unbeknownst to him.

Tiny, mundane things, like the way he whisper-speaks at exactly the same volume as a normal indoors voice.

Tiny, mundane things like, as the evening wears on, he starts forgetting that he’s trying to keep his voice down.

Tiny, mundane things, like the way his curiosity shows on his face even before he asks a question – even when he’s about to ask one and falters last-minute.

“Do you play instruments?” he’d asked, wide-eyed and impressed, when Kazuya’d finally offered up particulars of where exactly his day job is.

Kazuya’d nodded, trying not to let the instant admiration he sees spark in Sawamura’s eye get to his head. Validation is nice and all, but it amounts to nothing if he’s not even managing to produce one good song since he’d started working. “Guitar.”

And a look had washed over Sawamura’s face, a look as clear and obvious as the sun in the middle of an azure blue sky, as blatant as the words he chews back last minute.

Kazuya’s shrewd, though. He hefts a sly eyebrow.

“You want me to play for you?”

He locks up details inside of his head without knowing he’s doing it, absorbs them – tiny, mundane things, like the way Sawamura flushes berry-pink high in the apples of his cheeks every time he’s found out.

How it breathes life into the haggard mask left there by sleeplessness.

“You – you get that a lot don’t you,” Sawamura huffs out, a little too high-pitched for it to be entirely as offhand as he intends it to be. Kazuya chooses to let it slide, this once.

Shrugging, he says, “I haven’t played in a while though.” Requests are pretty much a part of the package if your peers see you lugging a guitar around campus.

“Oh,” Sawamura chews on his lip. Another detail, another entry into the database. And then – “How come?”

Well.

Because I can’t sleep.

Because music doesn’t come to me anymore.

Because Dad was probably right.

They push, crowding in at the fringes, ever-vigilant, ever-aware of every dent in his defences.

But Kazuya’s not going to let them in. Not now.

Not here.

The dark clouds belong outside.

He looks at Sawamura, looks at his eyes, somehow bright even though he staggers on his feet like a drunkard and his speech is sometimes slurred and slow, and a part of him understands that in some weird, twisted way, this is his distraction – this is his coping mechanism. His compromise on joining a support group, or getting help. His denial, or his desire to feel understood.

He says, “Haven’t had time to tune it…the strings are all rusty.”

“Oh,” Sawamura says again, and Kazuya can’t help it, can’t help but gather all these details, these tiny, mundane things…including the way Sawamura tries to keep it light, but his disappointment rings out loud and clear anyway.

***

Sawamura Eijun: Can I ask you a question

Miyuki Kazuya: You just did

Sawamura Eijun: Haha

Sawamura Eijun: Very funny

Sawamura Eijun: Anyway

Sawamura Eijun: What do you do when you can’t sleep?

[Read: 3.39 a.m.]

***

Miyuki Kazuya: Nothing, usually

[Read: 10.45 a.m.]

***

Sawamura Eijun: Maybe you could come walking with me

Sawamura Eijun: If you like

[Read: 11.01 a.m.]

***

Miyuki Kazuya: I’ll think about it

[Read: 8: 03 p.m.]

***

He doesn’t intend to, honestly. Back in the loop of the weekday, back on his precise doses of sleeping pills that leave him keyed up because he’s scared he might snooze through his alarms, it feels like a reckless thing, in hindsight – it feels like giving in to the reality that he can’t just traipse into dreamland like a normal, healthy person ought to, and settle for traipsing around in the dark in a barely lucid stupor instead.

It feels like admitting that yes, he can’t sleep either. That yes, he’d bent the truth a bit, though maybe Sawamura probably already knows that, has decided to give him an easy out.

That’s what he says to himself the first time.

That’s what he says to himself the second time too.

He doesn’t get any texts from Sawamura these two days.

As he lies on his back, stares at the cracked patterns of the ceiling he’ll be able to draw out from memory from the number of nights he’s spent blinking up at them, he wonders if it’s because Sawamura still feels he’d been intrusive.

He remembers the message Sawamura’d been typing to him that other time, the message he’d never sent.

***

The third time, he doesn’t really think about it. Doesn’t let himself.

It’s the weekend, he’s laying off the drugs, it’s not like he has anything to do.

That’s the drill that’s starting to sound a little like an excuse in his own head, but he manages to ignore it.

Trips out into the bleak shadowy courtyard, doesn’t ask why he’s bothering to leave his hallway’s light off and softly pulls the door to so he doesn’t give himself away, doesn’t want to acknowledge how it feels like giving up and it should sting, more, and he gives his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness, and –

There he is.

Kazuya’s about to call out to him –

And his voice sticks in his throat.

Sawamura’s sat on a bench at the other end of the yard – he’d have a clear view of Kazuya’s hall window from there – except maybe sat is not the most accurate expression. He doesn’t look like he’s upright, almost doesn’t look like he knows how to hold himself upright in the first place, like he’s just been propped up somehow and left to the mercies of gravity. Shoulders slumped, posture stooping – Kazuya eyes him, barely conscious of the alarm starting to prick at his fingertips, taking in his eerie stillness, how his head’s dipped toward the ground, and –

He moves, a little, and the heel of his shoe scratches the rough concrete, and in a motionless night as this, even this infinitesimal of sounds carries like gunshot.

Sawamura looks up.

And even though it’s dark –

He beams.

“Hi,” he says, in that same hush of his, that same phony whisper. The solitary lamp standing guard nearby illuminates his face just enough to catch and glimmer off his smile.

“Hi,” Kazuya says back. It’s a moment before he realises he’s talking in that same hush too.

Sawamura scoots a bit to the side, making space for Kazuya on the bench.

The unease which’d struck him, like that false, startling jolt of electricity when you touch a frayed wire, uncoils and spreads and tangles round his gut.

“You…look tired,” is what he finds himself saying, his voice grating, like he’s speaking around a throatful of rocks. It takes a false start before he can make himself move toward Sawamura.

The pitcher shrugs.

“Long day,” he hums, and Kazuya settles down next to him, and this close, with the distance between them spelled in inches, Kazuya doesn’t need light to see the gaunt lines etched into his skin – somehow, dauntingly, more pronounced than they are in the light.

“You looked like you were dozing off,” Kazuya continues, and he’s hush-talking too – like there’s something out here he doesn’t want to disturb.

Someone –

Sawamura laughs. “Believe it or not, that’s my habitual state,” he confides, joking, and there’s that slurred speech again, the slow dragged words, like he has to expend a little effort to put them together and sound them out, and yeah, Kazuya’s heard him speaking like that before but –

But the image of Sawamura, looking almost…almost broken, is stark and centre-stage in his head, burnt behind his eyelids, and the contrast between the before and after is so huge that…it unnerves him.

Kazuya’s mouth runs a little dry, his throat a little tight.

Sawamura’s smiling, but in the dark, that gleam in his eye looks fainter, farther away.

A feeble thing, a dying star, a –

“Why don’t you go sleep?”

Sawamura grimaces, and something twists in Kazuya’s stomach.

“Can’t.”

He says it with a shrug, a miniscule gesture, a bare hitch of the shoulders, and somehow that’s worse because he looks so used to it. So accustomed to sitting here, on this very bench probably, night after night, sleep scratching behind his eyelids, muscles brittle and limp, and it’s not like this is news to Kazuya – the only reason they’ve struck up something resembling a friendship is because they’re birds of a feather, he knows, he’s known –

But this is probably the first time it’s truly sunk in.

Struck him, that this guy who laughs so easily and can’t help but be loud even when he’s trying not to be, has demons of his own chasing him out of his dreams.

That no matter how much he’s stockpiled into his database, it’s still so incomplete.

And Kazuya feels –

Feels –

“Hey…are you free? Tomorrow?”

Sawamura peeks up at him, the way he does, with a little head tilt and the question in his eyes before his mouth shapes around it. “Yes?”

“I uh – “ Kazuya’s about to wring his hands, self-conscious, acutely aware of the things crawling out of his mouth and just as acutely

(reluctant)

helpless to stop them, “I was thinking of going into town…buy some new guitar strings. Do you wanna come?”

Chapter Text

The music store Kazuya favours has picked the rather clever location of being the first thing you see as you slide up the escalators to the second floor of the mall. The place is tastefully decked out – spotlights, tiny lightbulbs in hanging jars, wiry racks that look like they were bought in bulk from a hardware store and bent into shape by a kid with a non-existent attention span, all add to the hipster-y vibe of the narrowish interior stacked from floor to ceiling with as many stringed and woodwind instruments as the lot can probably hold.

Kazuya’s been here often enough while in college for the occasional browse for that initial awe to have waned – the business of going up to the counter, asking for a pack of D’Addario EXP16s and no, I can tune them myself, thanks, takes a rough ten minutes, fifteen if he’s up to making small-talk with a cute salesclerk.

It winds up taking forty-five minutes, though, because in the time it takes for Kazuya to approach the counter, Sawamura’s already wandered off and disappeared around a wall pegged entirely with hooks holding bowed string instruments, and when Kazuya goes to get him, he points at a ukulele and tells him it’s a baby guitar.

“And this one is an 80s kid,” he adds, motioning toward a shocking purple-green bass guitar standing a little off to the corner, “who has a Beatles song for every occasion.”

Kazuya hasn’t slept last night. Kazuya’d severely questioned his own sanity when the prospect of venturing out in broad daylight on a day he isn’t being paid to settles, like the queasy weight of breakfast on an unsettled tummy, as the sun’d come out, thrown what’d happened in the night into sharper perspective – that of reality.

Kazuya’d considered – seriously considered – just rolling into his side and tucking himself under his covers and pretending he’d not noticed the text asking him hey are we still on for today?

Instead, a cool shower and an on-the-go sandwich for breakfast later, Kazuya’s at the music-store, chortling as Sawamura profiles the strings family with much-enthused gusto, encouraging him – actually encouraging him, and not stopping to ask himself why.

“What about this?” He’s got his hand gingerly wrapped around the neck of a banjo.

“Oh, that!” Sawamura says, immediately, with the air of one who’s known the answer to that question since the day he was born. “That’s the uncle who drinks too much at family parties and wears suspenders over an undershirt. And this one – “ he continues, gesturing at a mandolin with aplomb, manner so convincing that if he’d not been talking to a person who’d done their degree in music – and, you know, was an adult with common sense – he may even have them convinced, “ – is having an identity crisis, poor thing. He really wants to be a violin, but his family are like, No, son, you must continue our family legacy of not being played at orchestras!”

And yeah, okay, Kazuya considers himself a difficult person to amuse. Considers himself able to laugh on demand for the sake of propriety or politeness, but not as naturally prone to humour as a giggly Nori after one shot of sake.

But right now, he’s chortling – wheezing, might be a more appropriate verb – and he’s having a little trouble breathing, and he’s too preoccupied to even tell himself that it’s just because he’s tired.

“You have an awful amount of energy for someone who can’t sleep properly,” he brings up, conversationally – they’ve left the store, and are ambling along trying to search for the lifts when Sawamura’d precariously swayed on his feet just before they’d been about to step on an escalator going down.

Sawamura, panda-eyed with his dark circles and pale skin, tries to stifle a grin and fails. “Life’s short,” he sings, and then adds, “And I got so much life, running through my veins, going to a waste ~”

He finishes with a fist curled dramatically, expression of theatrical anguish, and Kazuya bursts out laughing again, and is still buzzing with it by the time they reach home and Sawamura bids him goodbye with an almost comical pout and a crinkled nose, and the self-explanatory intel that he has homework.

Is still internally chuckling over how Sawamura’d classified violins and violas as competitive sisters, compared his height and girth with a cello and proclaimed only octopi could properly play it, and genuinely squeaked when Kazuya'd told him at the woodwind section that the one he’s holding is, in fact, called a piccolo, and no it’s not named after the green guy in Dragon Ball Z.

Kuramochi’d probably like this guy. He tells him as much, when Kuramochi calls him up later under the pretences of asking if he’d heard that new KPop group, but really just wants to check up on him.

“Wow, Miyuki-kun,” he trills, and Kazuya can hear the teasing in it, can almost picture the smarmy smug half-grin, “You’ve finally learnt how to make friends!”

“Shut up,” Kazuya retorts, without heat. He’s in a good mood, good enough that he’s actually decided to get a go on folding his laundry and organising his clothes – his closet’d started looking alarmingly empty lately. “You know you only hung out with me coz I’m so popular.”

Kuramochi snorts – the sound is impressively disdainful, even over a meagre internet connection prone to drop without warning at any moment. “You wish.”

After a while, though, he adds, tone softening to something more thoughtful, “I am surprised though. I mean, for all your ‘popularity’ – “ Kazuya can practically hear the sarcastic air-quotes, “you don’t usually go off on shopping trips with people you’d just met either.”

“Are you jealous, Kuramochi-kun?” Kazuya croons – listens to him snort again, and is thankful that he’s not actually there in front of him. Kuramochi’s almost annoyingly perceptive – he’s been able to see right through Kazuya even when Kazuya’d been at the peak of self-possession.

And right now, Kazuya knows for a fact that he wouldn’t have to break a sweat to see right through this thin veil of denial he’s got on.

To pin the fact that Kazuya is well aware how…unlike him, this is.

Sure, he’s got the art of amenability down, can banter and slip into polite interest effortlessly, remembers names and those little details about the people who own them that makes them think he’s thoughtful and considerate.

That he isn’t fraternising with them at an arm’s length.

For all the people he’d hang out with on campus and off, Kuramochi and Kazuya both know that there’s only a tiny gaggle of people he’d actually allowed into his inner circle – and it’d taken a lot of time before he’d warmed up to them enough to let them sleep over at his dorm or to go kill time around town on weekends when they had nothing to do.

“It gives me something to do,” Kazuya hears himself saying – pretends he’s saying it to Kuramochi rather than himself, “other than moping around at home all day. I remember someone telling me that’s not very healthy.”

“That someone sounds like a smart person,” Kuramochi comments, sagely, well aware that he’s talking about himself, “…so he’s a college kid, huh?” There’s a beat of silence. “Is he cute?”

Kazuya spasms. Stubs his toe at the metallic edge of the fridge as he goes to get a drink and has to bite back a howl of pain that leaves him in more pain because he’s pretty sure his teeth have just drawn blood from his lip.

“Kuramochi,” he says, warningly, but it comes out more whiney than warning – his toe smarts.

Kuramochi’s sniggering, the asshole. “What? I mean, he must be something for the ever aloof Miyuki Kazuya to be entranced by him.”

“I am not – “ he cuts himself off when he realises, self-conscious, that that’d come out way too heatedly to sound entirely convincing, “Anyway, I don’t see why you’re making a big deal out of this. It’s just…nice to know I’m not the only one that’s suffering.”

Or maybe it’s just the way Sawamura interacts with him like he’s known him for ages. Like the way he grabs at his sleeve and excitedly points at a Pororo mascot, or tells him flatly that if he’s going to say he never liked watching the Dragon Ball series, he’s a liar.

Kuramochi makes a noise.

“Or maybe,” he says, and Kazuya’s more suspicious, because despite the levity wisping through the receiver, he actually sounds serious, “You just like him.”

***

Sawamura Eijun: hey do u know how to play the guitar bit in ‘beat it’

Sawamura Eijun: the part van halen played?

Miyuki Kazuya: pfft

Miyuki Kazuya: child’s play

Sawamura Eijun: -_-

Sawamura Eijun: prove it

***

So maybe Kazuya’d exaggerated a little bit.

Van Halen’s guitar solo in Beat It is hands-down one of the most iconic, blood-pumping compositions ever penned in the history of music, regardless of genre, and no this is not just Kazuya’s opinion, thank you very much. He’d be a poor excuse of a guitarist if he didn’t at least attempt to pluck out the timing and sequence of the complex chords making up that piece, and yeah, he had managed it, after relentless practice and endless YouTube tutorials, though of course on an acoustic guitar it doesn’t sound quite as badass as on electric –

The point is, Kazuya’s not a stranger to the twenty-second solo. It’s basically a rite of passage for a guitarist.

But he’s also not touched his guitar in months.

He spends the best part of a week watching Sungha Jung’s guitar covers and poring over his annotated arrangements after work, tentatively getting back into the feel of taut metal wires twanging under his fingertips, before he’s tentatively sure he’s not going to embarrass himself.

(Somewhere in the interim, he also manages to catch a few hours of sleep without sleeping pills.)

“You look quite chipper this morning,” his supervisor comments, Friday morning, one eyebrow raised.

Kazuya merely smiles, and surreptitiously tucks the phone he’d been using to note the tempo of the chords he’s supposed to be playing later out of sight.

One might say he’s taking this a bit too seriously. Kuramochi would say that he’s taking this uncharacteristically seriously.

But Sawamura says, Prove it, and Kazuya has never been one to turn down a challenge.

It’s a question of his self-esteem, after all.

Self-esteem which gets a nice little boost when Sawamura’s eyes open wide, his mouth shaping into a small ‘o’ when Kazuya brings out his guitar – all polished rosewood, paint peeling in places Kazuya’s fingertips have left their impression – and plays him a (slowed-down, but immaculate) rendition of his song request.

“That’s so coooool,” he hushes, expression impressed. Eyes sparkling. The bags under his eyes seem lighter, his movements brisker today, and Kazuya wonders if he’d managed to sneak in a couple of naps in between too.

There’s warmth inside his rib-cage, and he’s not sure whether it’s because of how good the compliment feels, because it’s been so long – so long – since he’d had validation of any kind, and he’d almost started to forget the addictive thrill that’d accompanied the process of learning something tricky and being able to pull it off – have it appreciated, that elusive feeling of fulfilment –  

Or whether it’s because Sawamura looks livelier than ever, alight with glee almost, cross-legged on the floor and gazing at him almost reverently.

He doesn’t think about it, smirks the self-satisfied smirk that typically makes Kuramochi threaten to punch him in the face, and plucks at the strings of his guitar.

Watches as recognition creeps over Sawamura’s features at the opening chords of Cocaine, followed almost immediately afterwards by a shriek of delight.

***

Work is weirdly bearable when he has a phone hidden behind his monitor flashing the chord sequences of Come As You Are, and no, it’s not

(just)

because he enjoys preening at Sawamura’s unabashed fanboying. He’d missed this, missed throwing himself into a new piece he’s determined to commit to mind and muscle memory, that indescribable satisfaction that nestles right into his marrow and warms him inside out when he gets it right. He’d missed just…having fun, playing music, messing around with melodies and trying to see if he can belt out November Rain from memory for the laughs.

He’d missed enjoying it, and he’s a bit stumped that that had even been allowed to happen.

No, it’s not just because he enjoys preening at Sawamura’s unabashed fanboying.

Or because tonight’s forecast promises rain.

***

Kazuya waits for the teeth-clenching clap of thunder before timing his quip. “Sounds like a rain of terror, out there.”

Sawamura rolls his eyes at him. “That was one of your worst ones yet.”

He’s battling a smile, though, and Kazuya can see it even with Sawamura’s back to him as he greets his shoe-rack and shuffles out of his sneakers.

“Yeah, well, even geniuses have off-days,” he comments, languid, following Sawamura toward his living-room. There’s tea steeping on the stove, and an unstable lurch in Sawamura’s step. “Your jacket’s wet again.”

Sawamura looks at his sleeve, blinking at it like he’s just noticed the soggy cuff clinging to his skin. “Oh. Um, could you – “

Kazuya’s already holding out his hand for it. “If you’re going to put your hand out in the rain, you could at least pull your sleeve up first.”

If he’d been intending to guilt Sawamura, it backfires.

The guy giggles.

Giggles.

Like, presses the back of his hand and lets out a fluttery noise, two pink splotches blooming high up his cheeks.

And right, okay, fine, it’s cute. That’s not exactly a weird thing to admit, is it? Kazuya’s not got anything hide, Kazuya isn’t being defensive. He’s just objectively accepting the fact that this bright-eyed, cinnamon-haired, giggly college kid with an impressive knowledge of classic rock and ridiculously dorky smile is cute. Sue him.

(And damn Kuramochi, for putting that word in his head in the first place)

“I like how it feels,” Sawamura chirps, unapologetic, as he follows Kazuya into the kitchen and watches as he pulls off his dry tea-towels off the rack near the stove and clips up Sawamura’s jacket in their place. It’s the white one he’d seen before, with the royal blue trim and the words Seido printed at the back.

“You like feeling all cold and wet?”

“No,” Sawamura denies almost immediately, cheeks puffing up, and it’s probably a little worrisome, how quick this guy is to take offence

(a lot more worrisome that Kazuya somehow enjoys testing it)

“It’s just…nice!”

He’s rubbing his hands up his arms again, and Kazuya pours out the tea.

There’s a throw on the couch when they go to sit there, and Sawamura doesn’t ask any questions Kazuya’s going to have trouble answering.

“Okay,” Kazuya says, sounding as patronising as he can – he watches the belligerent glint in Sawamura’s eye and tries not to mentally compare him to an angry Pomeranian, “how is it nice?”

And that’s a bit of a sweeping question, Kazuya’s aware. Broad and ambiguous.

(Probably the most personal question he’s ever asked Sawamura)

(And of all the things in the world he picks the rain)

But there’s no point pretending he’s not curious. There’s nothing wrong with being curious, is there? There’s nothing wrong trying to see things from other people’s perspectives, tap into their insights and flip the coin for the other side.

It’s probably his fatigue-addled brain, but he can clearly picture Kuramochi smirking knowingly at the back of his mind.

Sawamura’s got his hands wrapped around his tea-cup again, having pushed the throw to the side so he doesn’t end up sitting on it.

“It’s just…” uncertainty flickers over his face a little, tempering out the scowl, “I don’t know how to say it…” He bites at his lip, the action distracting Kazuya more than he’d like to admit. “Like, I feel…when it rains like this – “ he waves an arm, the gesture encompassing what he means – the sibilant sweeps of ice-cold pellets striking cement and sliding off, splattering with an almost rhythmic swell as the deluge grows harsher, “the world kind of…feels smaller? Less…daunting.” The chewing gets more erratic, and Sawamura flits his eyes at Kazuya with an uncharacteristic coyness. “…I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Kazuya says, “It does.”

Because it does.

Because it makes total sense.

Because it puts in words something Kazuya’d never really stopped to think about and is now compelled to.

Because it’s almost poetic. A sentiment that can be made into a song.

Kazuya wonders if Sawamura realises. Gets that he has a way with words, a way of seeing things that’s almost…

(endearing)

charming? That he can get enchanted by something like the feeling of being warm and cosy in the middle of a storm and then make someone else feel it too.

(he probably doesn’t)

(but Kazuya’s making up for it)

“Can you play Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head?” Sawamura asks, abruptly, snapping Kazuya out of his – what? Reverie? His own poetic streak that’s started cropping up at an alarming and unexpected frequency these days?

Kazuya gives his head a little shake, and benevolently reaches for the guitar that now permanently resides at the corner beside the couch, tries not to dwell too much on the way Sawamura almost imperceptibly snuggles into the backrest as he begins to play, eyelids, pale-purple from exhaustion, drooping just so.

And so Kazuya plays. Flows in and out of songs, the rain his background score, switching from the hook of one piece to the chorus of another as it strikes his fancy, and he wonders what keeps Sawamura awake at night.

Wonders what he’s like when he’s playing baseball, how good a pitcher he is.

How much it must take out of him, all that physical exertion probably fuelled just by energy drinks and the steely mindset he’s already exhibited to Kazuya, determined to enjoy anything from a store full of musical instruments he doesn’t know the names of to the fall of rain soaking into fabric no matter how knackered out he’s feeling.

It’s almost…humbling, Kazuya thinks.

That you can be that battered down and yet refuse to fall.

It’s humbling.

And he plays, and he wonders, wrapped up in his thoughts, until he’s interrupted by a hum.

“What?”

“I was asking,” Sawamura mumbles, his words coming a little thick and croaky, rolling into each other. Kazuya doesn’t stare, “what song was that?”

It’s at this point that Kazuya’s fingers falter, the last note coming a beat too late, and Kazuya frowns.

“I was just improvising,” he says, automatically trying to quench the disappointment that sparks between his ribs as the feel of it, the buzzy stream that flows as seamlessly as water starts to ebb out of his fingertips – it’s always like this, he thinks. Fleeting, ephemeral – too insubstantial to hold on to, not enough to make it stay.

He’s taken aback when Sawamura sits up straighter, looking marginally more awake. “Wow,” he goes, with the big eyes and the round mouth, and Kazuya is a little confused, “you just made that up?”

Kazuya shrugs.

“It sounded really nice,” Sawamura says, in that same sleep-roughened voice, and Kazuya

( - thinks about hands scraping skin - )

( - rough with callouses - )

makes a noncommittal noise.

“I’ve already forgotten,” he says, and the dark clouds that belong outside suffuse in, a little – around him, inside of him, bitter and cold. “Was just…freestyling.”

Sawamura sits up completely. “I remember it though!” he says, and slides out of the couch, the throw coming with him, and then he –

Hums.

And it’s not like Kazuya’s not heard him singing before. He sings a lot. And while he’s not tone-deaf, and while he’s not exactly nailing it on the harmonising front either, he’s got an innate grasp of rhythm, despite his semi-annoying tendency to mess up lyrics on purpose and holler I JUST WANNA SLEEP FOREVER, COZ I DON’T WANNA BE LIVING IN PAIN over the music playing at the mall when they’d been there –

And he hums, note for note, and Kazuya almost feels like he’s hearing the tune for the first time.

Except he’s not.

That’s one of his tunes.

One of his incomplete ones, and –

Then some.

“You should totally write it down,” Sawamura prompts, sparkly-eyed and eager and inching closer to Kazuya, and Kazuya is –

Doubtful –

Apprehensive –

Scared –

But there’s a very insistent college kid whining that he’s going to forget the tune himself if Kazuya doesn’t write it down soon, and it’d be such a shame because it’s such a nice tune, and he wants to be able to say that he was literally in the room and witnessed the conception of a chart-topper when Kazuya’s rich and famous, and all in all pesters Kazuya until he’s cowed into pulling out a couple of sheets of blank paper, and Sawamura’s watching, enthralled, like a kid watching his parent do Adult Things, as Kazuya tests out notes and half-notes on his guitar before scribbling them down –

And –

It doesn’t stop –

And –

By the time it runs out, the manic bursts of whatever the hell it is, that thing he’s not felt for so long and didn’t see coming until it had completely possessed him, scorched up his nerve-endings and charred into the crackly messy script of sheet music, he looks up and finds Sawamura asleep.

Still on the floor, head lolling back against the couch cushions, arms tucked under the throw, mouth slightly open and –

Kazuya’d be jealous –

But he isn’t.

Because Sawamura is snoring lightly, almost inaudibly, and his chest heaves just a little, and he still looks haggard, tired as fuck, and somehow, with his mind keying down from the rollercoaster it’d just launched itself through –

Somehow, as he shuffles in to rest his back against the couch, take a break, because this type of thing is exhausting – energising, but exhausting, the most beautiful of contradictions – he needs to fine-tune the bridge, but he’s got the base down, committed to it, and –

His mind slips, and reaffirms that, okay, yeah. Sawamura’s cute.

Non-objectively, too.

He dozes, and only comes to, for a few seconds, when he distantly makes out the noise of his front door opening and shutting.

And then he’s out like a light.

***

“So when are you introducing me to your muse?”

Kazuya grunts into the phone, capable of sensing the cloyingly sweet smile Kuramochi’s wearing through just his crackly voice. “Shut up, will you?”

“Stop calling me if you want me to shut up,” Kuramochi quips back, glib, and right, yes. Kazuya is the one who’d called.

And also the one who’d been maybe less than prudent expounding just how his song’d reached completion.

“Come on, I wanna meet the guy - he must be quite something if you’re writing ballads about him now.”

This gets a scowl out of Kazuya because, “It’s not a ballad. You’ve heard it, I’ve been working on this for months.”

He’s not being selfish, nor ungrateful, he really isn’t. The composition had been skittering around inside of his head, ducking into recesses just outside of his reach whenever he’d tried to bring it out, see it in its entirety. It would be a gross misinterpretation to say that Sawamura’s entry into his life has suddenly made a bard out of him – romantic as it is, life just doesn’t roll that way.

But it wouldn’t be a gross misinterpretation to say that without Sawamura, the song wouldn’t have been completed, either.

That if he hadn’t been in that room, with his crazy accurate memory and flair for picking things up within mere moments of encountering them, Kazuya would most likely still be carrying around half-done sheets of music he finds difficult to look at without that coarse, sickening sensation of inadequacy broiling his insides.

And so, he concedes, because he’d feel dishonest and a little contrite if he didn’t, “He…motivated me though.”

Kuramochi chortles, and Kazuya swears he doesn’t squirm.

“Like I said, quite something.”

“Uh huh.” It’s sardonic. It is.

“So have you shown it your director yet?”

Kazuya rolls his tongue over his teeth. His gaze trails, unseeing, after a car that idles to a slow stop a few paces away from the bus-stop he’s waiting at, leaning against the post closest to the digital timetable informing him his ride is due in another ten minutes.

“…not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because…it’s just one song.”

Kuramochi doesn’t say anything to that, but Kazuya knows that he gets it. One song is a hit-or-miss deal in the industry – it’s not enough to convince a big studio to take you on as a trainee, to invest in your career and pool its resources to build your rep. Getting to see a composition he’s been partial to through to fruition is an incredible feeling – Kazuya’s described it to a probably eye-rolling Kuramochi as reaching nirvana – but the fact remains. It’s not enough.

He has to build a portfolio, show versatility, show that he has the scope to be more than a one-hit wonder. Barrelling off into the unknown without a solid plan of all the checkpoints isn’t his style or his forte.

But with one complete song in his pocket…somehow it doesn’t feel as far away a goal as it used to.

“You know what you should do?”

Kazuya gives his head a small shake. “What?”

“You,” Kuramochi says, with the tone of someone about to impart the world’s most exclusive wisdom, “should take that Sawamura kid on a date.”

Kazuya can’t help it. He groans.

“No, no, seriously, hear me out,” Kuramochi continues, not bothering to hide the obscene amounts of enjoyment he’s getting out of this, “He ‘motivates’ you, right? Let him ‘motivate’ you more. You might actually end up writing a ballad, for real.”

“I’m not writing love songs, Mochi,” Kazuya drops the nickname deliberately, knowing he hates it. It doesn’t deter Kuramochi one bit.

“I’m serious! Look, the both of you are already night owls, right? Take him round town! Oh! Bring him to the open mic!”

If Kuramochi were present, he’d have the dubious honour of witnessing Kazuya’s eyebrow hike so high in disbelief it all but disappears into his hairline. “Are you seriously self-promoting right now?”

“Hey, if conventional methods don’t work out, maybe lyrical rap would,” Kuramochi chatters, cheeky. Kazuya rolls his eyes, “Think about it. Kid sounds like he has good taste.”

Kazuya makes a noncommittal noise, and excuses himself because his bus has arrived.

***

But he’d not exactly discarded the info.

It’s been ages since he’d been to an open mic, and the prospect of getting to just hang out with his college buddies and improv music without the worry of every bar needing to be perfect, every pitch in-tune, sounds like the definition of catharsis.

Stress-relief’s done wonders for his inspiration lately, anyway.

And so has –

Kazuya’s got his phone out, not really thinking about it as he thumbs out of his lockscreen, taps into his messages. Sawamura’s music tastes aren’t exactly cookie-cutter, but he’s not heard the guy sing or express interest in hip-hop or alternative rap either. He’d be surprised by the kind of revolutionary ripples these genres have been sending through the music-scape, where they draw their influences from and in turn, what they’ve started to influence. He might be a little biased, but Kuramochi is the first person he’d think of to recommend someone new to the scene, to get the full package of tongue-in-cheek social commentary in artfully crafted verses and –

And he wants to show Sawamura that.

Wants him to experience it –

Share it.

That’s not just gratitude, anymore, is it?

And he’s there, staring blankly at his messages, the perky little sunflower framed by its blue, blue sky a few icons below the chat bar for Kuramochi and his unnecessarily punk-ass profile photo with the mask and the skulls and all, when –

Déjà vu.

Sawamura Eijun is typing…

Déjà vu, because one minute it’s right there, flashing green, oddly urgent and then –

It’s gone.

Nothing.

Kazuya taps into his chat with Sawamura. He can see the guy is online.

But he doesn’t say anything.

Kazuya waits. Even closes his messages altogether, goes offline, because maybe he’d felt nervous thinking Kazuya’d see his message immediately.

What he’d be trying to say to be nervous about, Kazuya  doesn’t ask himself.

Ten minutes pass.

Fifteen.

He’s sleepless, and time drones on and on like a hamster on a wheel. Going nowhere.

He heaves up and off the bed, and focuses on the padding of his footsteps as he walks out into the courtyard. Eyes cut immediately to the bench opposite his door.

There’s no one here.

He’s not here.

Kazuya’s steps slow as he breaches into the yard, petering out as he brings his phone screen to life again, the light artificial and almost stunningly bright in the surrounding darkness.

Sawamura’s still online.

And he’d wanted to say something to him, and changed his mind.

Again.

Kazuya looks up, because this is the second time.

Looks up, because he’s

(concerned)

curious.

The light at Number 18’s window is on.

And although WebMD won’t tell you this, insomnia makes people reckless.

Chapter Text

Kazuya’d just like to reiterate, that spontaneity isn’t his strong suit.

Really.

Even when it comes to his music – even when it comes to a chord progression or the percussion layer of a hook that comes to him while he’s flossing or ironing his clothes trying not to yank the plug out of the crooked power-socket, or waiting in line to swipe his card at the station – it’s not spontaneous. Not out of nowhere.

There’ll be a spark, sure. But there’ll also be kindling. And Kazuya would sit down, and devote himself to stoking it higher, building the flames, fanning at the embers and poking at the ashes and he’ll keep going until there are flurries and fire.

Spontaneity isn’t his strong suit.

And yet.

And yet, he’d climbed up to the second floor, mind in a state of that pleasant white noise it falls into whenever he drinks a bit too much.

And yet, he’d rung the doorbell, feeling the electric pulse reverberate down his fingertip as he pushed the button.

And yet, he’d stood there, with no explanation for what he’s doing here, when Sawamura’d opened the door.

But, see – this is what insomnia does to people. This is what everything feels like.

Surreal.

Strange.

Dreamlike.

Because, after all, things never make sense in a dream. Anything could happen at any time anywhere and it’d be fine, you wouldn’t question it till you’re awake.

And Kazuya’s not been awake in so, so long.

So Kazuya elects to tune out the faint, shrilly voice bellowing somewhere in the background at him, screaming about how this is all wrong and not trying to point out why, and accepts the chilled glass of barley tea Sawamura’s stumbled round the kitchen to get him.

He knows there’s something wrong.

But –

“Were you studying?” Kazuya asks, tongue arid and uncooperative – he motions at the open laptop across from him at the coffee-table, quelling the unsettled bubbling in his chest, because this coffee table is identical to the one he has downstairs and it’s not his, and somehow, somehow, that’s picking at the edges of his mind.

The reminder that he’s not in his territory.

( - his comfort zone - )

Sawamura folds himself on to the floor, in front of the laptop – he shakes his head. “Not really,” he says, and licks his lips. “I was…just watching match footage.”

Kazuya doesn’t know what to do with that information. It falls inside a void, drifts, anchorless, and Kazuya thinks it’s funny, how little he knows about what Sawamura actually does.

Who he actually is.

How funny it is that he knows Sawamura is a convicted pluviophile, that he’s got a quirky imagination, that he’s got excellent taste in music and razor-sharp memory.

Funny that he can guess, from his mannerisms, that he’s probably told he’s too loud, probably told he talks too much, and he compensates by consciously trying to keep it down but he just can’t.

Funny that he knows all these things, but they’re just…embellishments. Ribbon and wrapping paper.

Funny (except it isn’t) that it’s here – surrounded by Sawamura’s life, by manga he’s left half-open and strewn on every flat surface, by tea-mug stains printed on to the table-top, by a tattered baseball sitting in a leather glove so old Kazuya’s sure it’ll feel fuzzy to the touch – it’s only now, in here, that Kazuya understands that he has no idea what’s underneath it all.

Under all the ribbons and wrapping paper.

What makes him tick.

“I…didn’t see you outside,” Kazuya says – he doesn’t know where he’s going with this. He doesn’t know if he wants to go anywhere.

But that’s okay, right? Things happen in dreams – you free-float, and things just happen.

Sawamura nods again. “I didn’t feel like it today,” he says, and he smiles, but it’s not his usual smile – it’s not the smile that’s like a freaking time-lapse of a sunflower blooming and tipping its head up at the sky. There’s a weird expression on his face, a weird look to his eyes, and Kazuya doesn’t miss it, Kazuya’d noticed as soon as he’d opened the door, that something’s wrong.

Something is off.

Kazuya knows insomnia like it’s his closest friend, his worst enemy. Knows what it looks like in the day and at night, knows about the blank stares and glassy eyes, the sluggish slow movements. Knows about the twitches of hands that have lost their grip on basic, subliminal motor-skills.

This is not just insomnia.

Because Sawamura’s hands are always twitching, but today, they’re not. Today, he’s got them clasped together so tight, his knuckles have gone bone-white. Today, his movements aren’t sluggish but – jerky. Stuttering hitches of his shoulder, sharp and spastic, sloshing a little more barley tea into the glass than he’d intended, setting the bottle down a little too hard.

Today there’s something wrong, today the light in his eyes is overbright and a little feverish, and when he speaks – and see, this is why I know this is why I know it’s all wrong – his voice is quiet.

Like he doesn’t really want to speak at all.

This isn’t insomnia.

He’d asked, at the door coming in, as offhand as someone can be when they’re barging into someone else’s apartment uninvited in the middle of the night, How’re you doing?

Sawamura’d replied, Fine.

And that – that right there, that Fine, that’d been Kazuya’s ticket out. Because Kazuya isn’t good at these things. Kazuya isn’t the type of guy you go to when you’re questioning your place in the universe, when your heart’s been broken, when you can’t sleep at night. Kazuya’s not the guy you can expect to give you more than curt one-sentence condolences if you told him you’d just broken up with your girlfriend, anything more than a terse pat on the back if you got news of a death in the family.

It’s just not his forte, and he’s okay with that, okay with letting people mind their own business so long as they let him mind his.

And that Fine had been his ticket out. His loophole. He could have – would have – taken it at face value and walked out and told himself he’d made sure that Sawamura hasn’t set his flat on fire or passed out from dipping blood sugar or gotten himself stuck in his own bathroom. He’d made sure things were Fine and he could have gone back to his flat and laid in his bed with white noise stuffed up in his ears and traced the marks on his ceiling.

Instead, he’s in here, turning the questions he wants to ask so badly over in his head, wading away the ones he wants to ask himself.

“You have a match or something coming up?” he manages, eventually – croaks.

It’s barely discernible – lost in the restless flurry of movement Sawamura’s body quivers with – but Kazuya catches him wince.

“Sort of,” he says, and see? See that? Quiet. “The winter tournament is coming up soon, and the first qualifier is in a few weeks…”

“So you’re doing your research?” Kazuya probes, and yeah. He’s not usually this inquisitive. He’s not usually proactive, in any relationship. Heck, he’s been to college – he knows how to chill with people he’s probably never going to see again as though they’re the best of buddies. You meet people, sometimes for too short a time to get attached, and then you move on. It’s a part of life.

But this isn’t college. This isn’t a group assignment. This isn’t –

(What is this?)

“Something like that?” Sawamura is saying – his hands are still clasped together, resting at the edge of the table-top. Kazuya thinks he might not be able to pry them apart even if he tried (but why would you try?), “My – the captain gave me a couple of reference videos from other teams to sort of…learn. How to improve my control.”

Kazuya makes a noise. It’s the type of noise that doesn’t really mean anything – it bridges the silence, a gap between two points.

“So that means you’ll be playing? In the qualifiers?” Kazuya’s grasp of baseball isn’t impeccable, but he has a working knowledge of the basics. He knows it’s not uncommon for some players to sit out matches entirely, teams strategizing the best combinations given their opponents, saving their reserves, keeping their wild cards or star players in the dugout for contingencies or just to keep them charged-up for bigger matches.

But what he doesn’t know (what he’s wondered about, not for the first time) is Sawamura’s baseball.

Because one of the first things he’s learnt about Sawamura is that the guy overshares. He talks about anything and everything from his preference for green tea over coffee and Ed Sheeran over Harry Styles, about how the landlord keeps catching him on his way home and roping him in to help water the entire perimeter of plants in the courtyard, how there’s this one lecturer he has who has the incredible ability to make Sawamura space out within seconds of opening his mouth.

He talks, a lot, tries not to but does anyway, so maybe, maybe, Kazuya’s not at fault for being surprised at how little he knows about Sawamura.

Because he gives you the impression that you know a lot.

All the ribbons and wrapping paper.

He gives you the impression that you know a lot, shows you the box with a grand old flourish and from all the different angles, and you don’t think to peek inside.

At what makes Sawamura Eijun tick.

Sawamura Eijun, who reacts to his question – his innocent, unextraordinary question – with a flinch.

“H-hopefully,” he says, and it’s so quiet it’s eerie it’s weird it’s wrong and Kazuya can drop it – Kazuya can let it go, Kazuya can pretend that he’s not picking up the bob to Sawamura’s Adam’s apple or the way he finally unclasps his hands only to grip his kneecaps instead, Kazuya can do them both a – a what? A favour? – and say, Well, nice talking to ya, I think I’m gonna go turn in now…

But.

Spontaneity really, really isn’t his strong suit.

And the two messages he’d never received – and who knows how many he’s never even caught – weigh on his mind.

And maybe it’s because he’s got some half-assed idea of obligation pushing him along, or maybe he’s just coming to terms with the fact that he really enjoys Sawamura’s company and there’s nothing wrong with that, or maybe he’s spent too many nights wondering what goes on in Sawamura Eijun’s head as he tumbles around the courtyard like a drunkard in purgatory.

Maybe he’s going to blame Kuramochi for constantly talking about Kazuya in the third person like he’s a middle-schooler mooning over his neighbour, or the fact that he’s never really thought about what happens to sunflowers when the sun sets.

This has been a long time coming.

“Sawamura…why can’t you sleep at night?”

***

He has anxiety.

Panic disorder, the campus nurse has guessed. Advised him to get properly diagnosed.

He hasn’t.

“It’s because – “ Sawamura says; his words break, because he talks too fast, too swift to draw breath in between, “b-because! I’ve looked into the sort of stuff they prescribe and some of them – some of them can count as performance enhancing drugs and I could get barred, from playing, ever. And some of them are just not safe for athletes to use and I don’t think Coach would even let me – if this gets on to my medical records, I don’t think any pro team is going to scout me.”

The box falls open.

“Does anyone know?” Kazuya inquires, quietly. He pushes his untouched glass of barley tea at Sawamura, but keeps his hand loosely around it – given how Sawamura’s hands are shaking, he doesn’t think the guy can hold it steady even if he were to reach for it. “Anyone in your team?”

Sawamura makes a tiny noise. It sounds like a groan. He’s all movement now. Chest working in quick short heaves to pull air, fingers digging into the material of his pyjama pants. Teeth tearing at his lip. “Harucchi…he’s my best friend. He knows. But I didn’t…I didn’t tell anyone else.”

Kazuya doesn’t have to ask why.

There’s a pause. Kazuya knows all about pauses. Knows the difference a split second’s interval between two music notes can make.

He lets Sawamura jitter, because he needs to, needs to let some of it out, before saying, tone inflectionless, “And what does Harucchi have to say about it?”

For some reason, this makes Sawamura laugh. A bark rather than a giggle, too abrupt, but it’s a laugh and it’s still something.

“Harucchi…Haruichi, Kominato Haruichi, that’s his name – he thinks I need to go see a doctor. That it’s gonna screw me up in the long-run.”

And it’s strange. Honestly.

It’s surreal and strange and dreamlike, because right now, in the presence of his neighbour riding out the shockwaves of an anxiety attack, Kazuya feels like he’s…come full circle. Passed Go, collected two hundred.

This is a song he knows.

“But it might affect your chances of getting scouted,” he hears himself mumble – a statement, not a question.

Sawamura looks up at him with blown-out pupils.

“Yes,” he borderline-exclaims, looks almost a little manic but also kind of relieved – he brings his hands down on the table just shy of slamming them, “Exactly. Exactly.”

There’s an out-of-place crawl in his windpipe, and it’s a while before Kazuya realises he wants to laugh.

Because the irony.

Oh, the irony.

“And it’s not like I don’t know what they’re going to tell me,” Sawamura is telling him, almost rapid-fire now – almost spitting the words out like he’s had enough of holding them in, like he’s repulsed with their taste (like he’s just eager to be rid of them), “I know why it happens. I know why I freak out and I know what I have to do to fix it, except it’s like – do you know that story about Sisyphus?”

Kazuya goes blank for a moment, pinned under the sudden, intense weight of Sawamura’s scrutiny and this random switch in tracks.

“What?”

Sawamura doesn’t seem bothered by his obtuseness. He explains, manner a little brisker than agitated, waving his hands around as though he’s trying to draw a picture, a diagram of what he means, “It’s like…it’s a Greek myth. He’d been exiled to the underworld, and his punishment was to push a boulder up a hill, except he could never get to the top,” Sawamura fixes him with a look, and somehow Kazuya gets it – somehow what he wants to say resonates before Sawamura even finishes his analogy, “It always rolls back down. But he can’t stop. That’s his punishment. He has to keep pushing that rock up and watch it fall down, for eternity.”

“That’s,” Kazuya exhales – his head feels like iron-wool, crinkly and abrasive, and his heartbeats tight, but his voice is almost…amused, as he finishes, “…morbid.”

That gets Sawamura to laugh again.

A rueful, sad kind of chuckle.

Wrong, his mind whispers and he’s too busy to shush it.

“It is,” Sawamura agrees, and sighs too – and somehow, the action appears to suck fifty percent of the tension out of him. His shoulders drop from around his ears, though his hands are still clenched into the material of his pants. “And sometimes, that’s just what it feels like. Because…because I keep trying – “ his voice breaks, and at the same time something inside Kazuya vibrates with something like an aftershock, “but somehow it’s not good enough, and then I think, what if this is the best I can do, and then I think, what if I can’t improve, and I think that I shouldn’t be thinking like this because self-fulfilling prophecy and all that bull-crap and sometimes I can’t help myself and then I’m on the mound and I freak out so much I mess up more and I worry more and it keeps me up at night and I wonder if I’m gonna end up like that Christian Bale character in the movie where he never sleeps and it makes me worry even more and – “

He pushes a hand into his hair, grabs a tuft roughly enough to look like it’d hurt.

And pulls again.

And again.

Kazuya’s starting to get alarmed at the climbing frequency of the yanking when Sawamura finally looks at him – the discontent has pulled his face into a grimace, but his eyes look clearer now. More focused.

And almost –

Apologetic.

“I’m usually good at controlling it,” he says, speech a lot less harried than before – but still quiet. Like he’s admitting something he doesn’t anyone to hear. Like he’s trying to say something like thank you, something like sorry, but doesn’t know which. “I mean, it works both ways, y’know? Bad thoughts make bad things happen, so good thoughts must make good things happen. Harucchi says I overdo it though. So…when I crash, I crash and burn.”

Kazuya’d say Harucchi’s got a sensible head on his shoulders.

But Harucchi’s not the one Sawamura’s confiding all this to, right now.

Harucchi’s not the one he almost – almost – reached out to, when it’d started closing in on him. Becoming too much.

Harucchi’s not the one he’s shooting apologetic looks at. Trying to say something like thank you. Something like sorry.

Kazuya’s not sure how twisted or inappropriate it is to feel kind of content about this.

But then again, Kazuya’s not been very good at justifying any of his actions tonight.

All Kazuya knows is that this doesn’t feel like a dream anymore. Not a nightmare, either.

This feels like cold, hard reality, where he’s sitting on the other side of a person haunted by the fissures of his own mind, and there’s something incredibly intimate, about it – something almost liberating, about being broken, about someone letting you see them break.

And Zono, Kuramochi – even his supervisor, who catches him looking faintly more human and less living-cadaver at work these days – would tell you this isn’t like him. The involvement. The reciprocation. He gets it himself – understands, though that panicky voice hollering at him has piped down now – that he’d not normally get into this. Supposes that maybe it’s because it’s easier to tell relative strangers how broken you are than the people closest to you. Supposes it’s because he hasn’t had catharsis himself in so long. Supposes it’s because Sawamura’s growing to become one of those very, very few people he doesn’t mind having around, doesn't feel that occasional twinge of annoyance at the lack of solitude with.

Supposes there might a ton of excuses he could supply for his motivations, but there’s only one that really counts when he takes in a deep breath, and decides to show Sawamura his own demons – because it’s not like he can comfort him, take away his problems, but he can make him feel less alone.

There’s only one excuse that really counts, as he begins to tell Sawamura that maybe he should give the sleeping pills a shot too, just as long as he doesn’t get too dependent on them –

And that’s because he wants to.

***

Things change.

Things have a way of doing that.

Sawamura calls it the only constant.

Sawamura sends him an entire paragraph of some poem via text, something about While the world’s tide is bearing me along/ Other desires and other hopes beset me with no context to explain if he’s talking about how he’s doing at baseball, how he’s doing with his sleeping situation, or about. Well. Them.

Sawamura texts him a lot.

Like when, the morning after The Change, Kazuya’d found a cardboard box on his doorstep, with two cans of the black coffee he occasionally drinks, and a battered copy of Hell Freezes Over because one of them – he doesn’t remember who – had started sorrowfully singing Hotel California last night and it’d ended in a howling, tone-deaf karaoke session at three in the morning.

There’s no sticky note this time, but a message on his phone reading,

Sorry

And

Thank you

***

Sawamura texts him a lot.

***

Sawamura Eijun: MIYUKI HELP

Sawamura Eijun: THS OJI-SANS TRYIG TO MAKE ME PULL OUT WEEDS

Sawamura Eijun: I HAV E A THEIISIS TMR

Sawamura Eijun: DUE TMR***

Miyuki Kazuya: You’re on your own

Sawamura Eijun: MEANIE!

***

Sawamura Eijun: Hey

Sawamura Eijun: you should listen to this

Sawamura Eijun: Sent an Attachment: “Thousand Eyes”

[Read 3.46 p.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: didn’t know you listen to this kinda thing too

[Read 9.25 p.m.]

Sawamura Eijun: it’s good isn’t it

Miyuki Kazuya: yeah

Miyuki Kazuya: dark

Sawamura Eijun: but good

Miyuki Kazuya: yes fine

Miyuki Kazuya: it’s good

Sawamura Eijun: OSHI

***

Sawamura Eijun: MIYUKI HELP

Sawamura Eijun: I MSSED UP

Sawamura Eijun: THE MANAGRE CALLE D ME IN AN D I THOUGHT IT WA S BC I KEEP DOZING IN CLASS

Sawamura Eijun: ECEPT SHE JUST WANTED TO AKS ME IF MY TRAININS NOT GOINF WELL

Sawamura Eijun: AND NOW SHE KNWS IVE BEEN SLEEPING IN CLASS

Miyuki Kazuya: bahahahahah XD XD XD

Sawamura Eijun: BASTRAD

Miyuki Kazuya: Yes that’s me

Miyuki Kazuya: Miyuki ‘Bastrad’ Kazuya

Sawamura Eiju: BASTARD****

Miyuki Kazuya: XD XD XD XD XD

[Read 12.15 p.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: But you know

Miyuki Kazuya: You should tell her

Miyuki Kazuya: Maybe she can help

[Read 2.32 p.m.]

Sawamura Eijun: if I’m honest?

Sawamura Eijun: I’m scared

[Read 2.33 p.m.]

***

Sawamura Eijun: what do you make music about?

[Read 1.10 a.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: I don’t even know anymore

[Read 2.04 a.m.]

Sawamura Eijun: have you ever made music about

Sawamura Eijun: well, this?

Sawamura Eijun: like that song

Sawamura Eijun: ‘I lie awake and watch it all’

Miyuki Kazuya: That’s not really my style…

Sawamura Eijun: I don’t mean something EXACTLY like that

Sawamura Eijun: just

Sawamura Eijun: something that captures the feeling

Sawamura Eijun: that’s what music is, right

Sawamura Eijun: it’s what feelings sound like

[Read 3.31 a.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: were you a poet in your past life

Sawamura Eijun: HEY

Sawamura Eijun: DON’T MAKE FUN OF ME

Sawamura Eijun: IM TRYING TO INSPIRE YOU

[Read 3.46 a.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: you’re capslocking too loud

Sawamura Eijun: THAT DOESN T VEVN MAKE SENSE

***

Sawamura Eijun: MIYUKI HELP

Miyuki Kazuya: is this just how you greet me now?

Miyuki Kazuya: instead of…idk. Saying hello? Like a normal person?

Sawamura Eijun: nOT MY FAUKT

Sawamura Eijun: AUTOCORRECT SAVED IT LI KE THIS

Miyuki Kazuya: amazing that that’s the only thing autocorrect saved

Sawamura Eijun: ANYWAY

Sawamura Eijun: THE MANHGER

Sawamura Eijun: She S A DEVIL WOMAN

Miyuki Kazuya: With evil on her mind ~

Sawamura Eijun: IM SRS

Sawamura Eijun: SHE S GAVE ME A PERSONALISEID EXERCIS E REGIME

Sawamura Eijun: SH EWANTS M ETO RU NEVERYYY MORNING

Miyuki Kazuya: I don’t even know what language this is anymore

***

Sawamura texts him a lot.

And usually (always) Kazuya’s the one texting back.

But things change.

Things have a way of doing that.

Miyuki Kazuya: so

Miyuki Kazuya: there’s an open mic my friend’s having day after tomorrow

Miyuki Kazuya: wanna go?

***

“I’ve never been to an open mic before,” Sawamura hushes – his version of a hush, at least, which for once is completely justified. The loudspeakers stacked on either side of the makeshift stage is blasting generic dance music loud enough for the floor to quake beneath their feet, the type that makes both Kazuya and Kuramochi, despite their drastically different musical preferences, simultaneously roll their eyes. Kazuya can only assume it’s to attract unsuspecting stragglers round tonight’s location of choice – the carpark underneath the sports equipment store Kuramochi part-times at, which he has no doubt the guy secured in exchange for a crap-ton of overtime.

“You’re in for a treat,” Kazuya says, and he bends closer to Sawamura’s ear to say it, because it’s loud in here okay? He can barely hear himself think, and if the tips of Sawamura’s hair, growing a bit long now and all wayward from the intense wind outside, tickles his nose, what can he do about that?

He’s about to say more, when his soul all but explodes out of his chest when someone claps him on the shoulder from behind. Hard.

That smarmy smirk has barely breached into Kazuya’s vision before he hears the guy drawl, forgoing any pleasantries, “So I’m guessing this is the Sawamura Eijun I’ve been hearing so much about?”

If Kazuya weren’t worried that he has far worse in his arsenal, he’d cringe.

Instead, he plays it off as best he can, elbowing Kuramochi in the gut and relishing in the grunt of pain he lets out –

Resolutely ignoring the sidelong glance he feels Sawamura shoot his way.

“Sawamura, this is Kuramochi Youichi,” he retorts, blandly, not about to give Kuramochi the pleasure of seeing him actually somewhat happy to be here and see him perform – especially not when he’s wearing that impish look on his face that spells all kinds of trouble, “Affectionately known by friends and fans alike as Mochi, because despite his hipster-punk aesthetic, he’s a softie.”

“Oi,” Kuramochi snaps, instantly hostile; Kazuya cuts his eyes in Sawamura’s direction, and finds his facial muscles flickering as he eyes Kuramochi’s acid green mullet, teeth already anchored in his lip, as though he’s not sure if he ought to laugh or not, “I happen to believe in self-expression, okay?” Shifting his attention over to Sawamura – in an exaggeratedly appraising manner that Kazuya doesn’t miss – he adds, “I’m guessing he hasn’t told ya shit about me, has he?”

Sawamura, bless his soul, hasn’t forgotten his manners in spite of looking a little dead on his feet. He’d spent the entire train ride getting here complaining to Kazuya about how he’d spent his afternoon tossing fastballs into a net because his captain refused to catch for him until he got a hundred in. Just thinking about it makes Kazuya’s shoulder blades hurt.

With a half-bow, Sawamura chirps up, instantly bright-eyed, “Nice to meet you Kuramochi-san! I listened to all the videos you put up on YouTube, you’re like Japan’s Epik High!”

Kazuya lets out a tiny groan, rolling his eyes, because okay, generally, that would be overkill, grade A buttkissing, were it not for the fact that Sawamura, with his huge eyes and huge grin, clearly means it, and now that’s going to get to Kuramochi’s head to the point that he’ll have trouble getting through doors for the next two weeks.

But he’s also smiling, because he catches the look of slack surprise taking over Kuramochi’s generally controlled expression for a millisecond before he breaks out into that sharp, lopsided grin of his.

“An Epik High fan, huh?” he comments, and then claps Sawamura on the shoulders – Kazuya has to keep himself from rolling his eyes again, because despite the whole tough guy persona Kuramochi puts on, what with the skull decal at the back of his jacket and the abundance of faux metal studs adorning it, he’s evidently already taken a liking to Sawamura, “And respectful to boot.” He flicks a sly look over his shoulder at Kazuya, ignoring the warning glare he gets in return, “I approve. Good job, Bakayuki.”

Kazuya does not wilt. It’s just. Hot down here. A lot of people, all these soundwaves agitating the air.

He still breathes a tiny sigh of relief when Kuramochi gets called over to the stage.

“Don’t mind him,” Kazuya finds himself muttering, inching back closer to Sawamura – he can’t get himself heard otherwise – “his brain’s a bit addled. All that time listening to himself screaming.”

Sawamura lets out a giggle that sounds like bubbles in soda and Kazuya feels –

Odd.

He’d chalk it up to the 6-pack nuggets he’s scarfed down as an excuse for dinner, but even as they settle, picking seats close to the front but not close enough to sustain permanent ear-drum damage and start to get into the short programs before the headlining acts, the feeling persists.

It’s

Just

Weird.

To be out here.

With Sawamura.

And not weird weird. Not weird in the sense that he has a problem being here with him. He’s the one who’d decided to invite him along. He’s the one who had low-key spent the entire day at work shooting expectant glances at his watch, for once having something he actually, genuinely had been looking forward to outside the monotony of his office-drone routine. It’s not even the first time they’ve been out together, certainly nowhere near the first time they’ve hung out.

But –

It’s the first time it feels like it isn’t just the two of them.

It’s the little lurch his gut gives when he catches Nori’s eye a couple of rows to the side and nearer the front, who wastes no time quirking an eyebrow at him and pointing at Sawamura, his face a question mark.

It’s the way he clicks his teeth shut every time Kuramochi chooses to fire a knowing smile in his direction that has Kazuya keyed up through almost the entirety of the set dreading he’s going to say something extremely compromising into his microphone for everyone to hear, because it’s not like he’s been judicious about discretion so far.

It’s the way he’d always known Sawamura isn’t shy, had known from the moment the guy’d messaged him and openly admitted to getting his number out of the tenants’ group chat and left apology beers on his doorstep, and yet he feels a little disconcerted to see him speeding off to the stage after a set, because that drummer looks like he has ten hands! He’s so fast!

“See something interesting over there?” he hears a familiar voice gripe, all easy humour and light teasing.

Kazuya isn’t going to entertain him by looking at him – he keeps his eyes trained in the general direction of the stage

(where a certain brown haired insomniac is practically bouncing on the balls of his feet rambling a hundred miles per hour to a sheepishly grinning drummer)

as he succinctly advises, “Shut up.”

Kuramochi chortles. “Bruh, you need to up your comeback game. You’re becoming almost no fun to spar with.”

“I’d rather not waste my braincells on comebacks for your playground jokes.”

“Says the guy who’s been making googly eyes at their cute neighbour all night.”

Kazuya’s fists curl. Seriously, why is he letting this get to him? Kuramochi’s just getting a kick out of making Kazuya squirm – Kazuya’s going to return the favour in a heartbeat at the earliest possible opportunity. It’s how they work, how they’ve always worked. It’s not the first time he’s hearing this, either – Kuramochi has been nothing if not relentless, dragging all their phone calls and texts back to this point over the past couple of weeks.

(But it is the first time Kuramochi’s seen Sawamura)

(And he just called him cute)

(And)

It’s making him a bit…conscious.

Because, see – they’ve not been out like this before. In the presence of other people where they’re with other people.

Rather than each other.

Just each other.

It makes him –

“Oi, Miyuki – “

Conscious.

“…you really got it bad, huh?”

It probably says something, that Kazuya doesn’t immediately retaliate to that with another half-hearted Shut up.

Makes him wonder what the answer to that question really is, and if he already knows it.

Makes him wonder just how telling the ebb and fall of that anxious crackle in his tummy is, when he and Sawamura leave and get on the train and sit side by side on their way home.

Because it’s not (technically) wrong to say that he’s grown used to Sawamura’s presence in his life.

It’s not (technically) wrong to say that he enjoys his company.

It’s not wrong to say that they’ve hung out, in the interims between all those text messages Sawamura initiates. That they’ve spent time together, on that bench in the courtyard lit by a single lamp, on the porch with mugs of tea, with his guitar in Kazuya’s living room trying out the unplugged version of Layla and deciding the electric guitar one is more badass.

That they’ve spent time together, telling each other things they probably wouldn’t tell anyone else, about fears that sound stupid in the light of day, fears that sound whiney and infantile if you’re listening too closely.

It’s cathartic, having someone who understands, who just listens and relates and you don’t feel like you’re burdening them in the hunt for answers, and sometimes it helps Kazuya sleep better, and sometimes, Sawamura says, it makes him sleep better, too.

And there’s something intimate about it. Something personal, about being broken and seeing someone break.

There’s something intimate about being there, holding them together even if you didn’t know how to put back the pieces.

But…Kazuya peeks at Sawamura, who’s engrossed in the promotional material Kuramochi’d stuffed into his hands, bold striking graphics on ordinary A4 paper, but printed with the profiles of amateur artists trying to make a name for themselves in the rat-race that is show-biz.

“You had fun, huh?”

Sawamura’s response is immediate. “Oh my gosh, yes,” and Kazuya has to laugh, because he literally vibrates with the enthusiasm of his response, “It was incredible. I wouldn’t even believe they were doing that without any, like, studio equipment and effects if I didn’t see them live – and that acapella group? The one with the beatboxing? How does he make those noises with his MOUTH? And Kuramochi-san – does he breathe?”

Kazuya’s still sniggering, harder now, shoulders moving to the rhythm – it floats out of him, weightless. Effortless.

That tight, tense feeling squiggling around inside his ribs, feeling a little too close to nerves, has eased up a little.

“I didn’t know you were into rap,” he admits, after a while – privately tells himself that’s his own fault, because Sawamura’s shown a surprising versatility with his music choices.

Sawamura crinkles his nose. Under the stark blue-white of the train’s functional lighting, his dark circles gleam darker.

So do his freckles.

So many freckles.

(Kazuya thinks)

(Maybe he’s)

(maybe, since that first day)

“I don’t like all kinds of rap?” Sawamura ventures an explanation, “But like, stuff like Kuramochi-san, and like Epik High, any of the Cypher songs or Kendrick Lamar or like, Linkin Park? That stuff can be so…so – “ Sawamura waves the leaflets around as if he can shake the words he’s looking for loose out of there, “Poignant. Thought-provoking.” He finishes with an emphatic, “Poetic.”

And Kazuya breathes out another laugh, because of course.

“Linkin Park, huh?” he teases, instead, settling himself more comfortably into the plastic seat – pivoting, just slightly, so he can look at Sawamura as he talks to him, “Don’t tell me you went through an emo phase too.”

Predictably, Sawamura’s lower lip juts out, the vee of a frown prominent on his forehead.

“Everyone has a phase where Linkin Park feels like the soundtrack to their life, okay,” he tells Kazuya, haughty, and just. When he’s peeved like this, cheeks puffing up and dusted with red and (Kazuya fights the word trying to wiggle to the forefront of his mind. Four across, synonym for ‘adorable’. Kuramochi’s word of the month), “Especially these days. I mean, I don’t think I even understood their music much growing up, I just had a big crush on Mike Shinoda and – what?”

Kazuya doesn’t realise he’s making a noise until he’d made that noise, and it’s too late to take it back.

He wings it. “You had a crush on Mike Shinoda? Why?”

(Keyword: had)

(“Had”)

(you really got it bad, huh)

(He’s got something really bad.)

(He’s just wondering what it is. Misplaced sense of gratitude? Hunger for companionship? Empathy?)

(it’s not and I know it’s not and)

“Well, because! He writes a lot of their lyrics, you know,” Sawamura’s saying, heatedly – he’s being defensive and looks like he’s struggling not to be, “And their lyrics are so good. Like Lost in the Echo literally gave me chills. And I read that he was a literature student. If I wasn’t playing baseball, I’d probably have done a degree in literature.”

And this, this doesn’t come as a surprise to Kazuya. Kazuya’s already managed to put together Sawamura’s literary streak from the number of times his statuses change to a verse from a novel or a poem here and there, to reflect his mood, his mindset.

He remembers the quote Sawamura’d sent him. Right after that night.

After The Change.

He’d Googled it, read the whole stanza.

“Sweet Love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee,

While the world's tide is bearing me along;

Other desires and other hopes beset me,

Hopes which obscure, but cannot do thee wrong!”

He’d Googled it. Read the whole stanza. Thinks about it, sometimes, when he doesn’t feel that oh-too-familiar dread surface like some monstrous sea creature come to capsize him, pull him under still, suffocating water, because he’ll be at work looking at the audio software, and a layer won’t sit right, or a note won’t stand out the way he wants it to. Sweet love of youth, forgive, if I forget thee.

Except he’s not forgetting, is he? It’s still there. Saved on his computer, scribbled into his music sheets.

Not there, not there just yet, but he can see, vaguely, where it’s going.

He can tell that eventually, it’ll get there.

But this?

This he doesn’t know. This he can’t explain. This he keeps blaming on muddled minds and sleepless nights and the fact that there’s something intimate about being there, broken and trying to hold someone else together.

And something more intimate still, realising you want to be able to do more.

Want to be able to make it…better.

It’s way too much and way too deep and way too complicated for his brain to comprehend, jangled as it’s been all night by blaring loudspeakers, sounds that feel like they’re creeping in your body through the ground and physically jostling your insides.

It’s way too much for him to deal with, right now, less than three hours sleep to his name and a stomach dangerously close to growling, and he banters, instead, “So, basically, you were crushing on him because he’s a fellow nerd?”

“No,” Sawamura actually looks affronted by this suggestion, “He’s also half Japanese!”

It’s so unexpected, Kazuya snorts.

“It’s not funny,” Sawamura insists, and now he’s flailing, now his righteous defensiveness is falling away to reveal that classic embarrassment anyone would know when confronting their childhood crush in the sober light of adulthood, “It’s! I mean! I stood a fifty percent chance!”

It takes him a while to be able to speak, he’s chortling so much. “So basically, you’re into musicians who are at least fifty percent Japanese,”

And then before he can even stop himself

Or think

“so I guess I stand a pretty good chance, too.”

You really got it bad, huh

The answer’s been there all along.

And now that it’s out, Kazuya would panic, but doesn’t.

That might be because he’s a little shellshocked at what he’s just said.

But that might also be because Sawamura’d looked at him – looked at him – and abruptly blushed wine-red.

All the way up this ears, even.

Kazuya would panic, but he doesn’t, because he’s only got enough grasp of reality left to take in the way Sawamura’s features morph from shock to understanding to acute embarrassment in a span of milliseconds, the way he splutters before he tears his eyes away and –

Tucks his face into the crook of his arm.

“What was that?” Kazuya intones when he hears Sawamura mumble something, with a remarkable degree of self-possession for someone who’s spent several weeks trying to categorise just what, exactly, Number 18 is to him only to blurt out what Kuramochi’d been telling him all along – he leans in closer to Sawamura, and not because he’s trying to get himself heard.

“I’m trying,” Sawamura garbles out – he sounds almost angry, but Kazuya can still see the red peeking out of his collar, the corner of his trembling mouth, and Kazuya would panic, but he doesn’t, because Sawamura’s face shows what he’s thinking even before his mouth decides to say it out loud, “to say something smooth, but I can’t think of anything!”

Kazuya laughs until it physically hurts.

Chapter Text

It’s not that Kazuya has a less than illustrious dating history, but it’d be a misconception to say said history is a mile long.

He’s been to mixers, flirted casually here and there, gone out on what might be broadly labelled as ‘dates’, but as far as he’s concerned, for all practical intents and purposes, he’d been far too busy trying to prove a point, to himself, to his peers, to the world, to have attached much importance to that category of young adult life. Meeting the grade requirements to keep his scholarship intact, carving out a résumé bulletproof enough to land him an internship and then a job at a studio likely to jumpstart his career – he’d had a bird’s eye view of where he wanted to be well before he’d enrolled in university, and that view didn’t leave much space for planning out or accommodating relationships.

Kuramochi’d often scoff at him, with mingling pity and consternation, because this isn’t the type of thing you PLAN for, idiot.

And clearly, Kuramochi’s wrong, because Kazuya’d brought Sawamura home after the open mic, walked him up to the door of flat number 18, and they’d shared goodbyes weighed down with unsaid things, and now he lies awake at night not knowing what to do next, his blood buzzing with adrenaline, his lungs shallow and struggling, and a kind of bubbly-warmth in his chest that’s like the foam atop a mug of coffee, that always leaves you a little disappointed when it melts.

In the dim grey-blue dark of his bedroom, his glasses still on his face and his fingers clasped around his phone, he thinks he doesn’t want it to melt. He doesn’t want it to disappear.

The realisation makes his stomach leap-frog, and almost on instinct, he slides his phone unlocked.

Almost on instinct, finds his fingers tapping a well-practiced way into his chat-box, deftly thumbing into the profile of the sunflower sitting high and bright at the top of his messages.

He’d changed his status.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow”

It’s almost on instinct that Kazuya Googles it, and finds that it’s a quote from Romeo and Juliet.

And if that isn’t the cheesiest thing Sawamura Eijun could have done, Kazuya doesn’t know what is, and he sniggers, disbelieving, because being poetic is one thing and being a sap a whole other ball-game, and he relishes in the buzzy warmth frothing over inside his chest, and thinks, maybe, just maybe, this really isn’t the kind of thing you can plan ahead for.

That Kuramochi might have been right.

(He’ll never tell him that because he’ll never live it down)

***

Kazuya sleeps.

***

In a way, nothing big really changes.

All the little things do.

Sawamura still shows up on his doorstep the next time it rains, but he shows up uninvited. Shows up with his jacket clutched in his hands, but with beads of rainwater clinging to the skin of one forearm.

Shows up with a sunny smile and starry eyes, but instead of them padding over to the kitchen to hang up Sawamura’s clothes to dry, they pad over to the living-room and share a blanket as they sit on the floor, and Kazuya says something like “Oh hail, no,” right after he’s about to let Sawamura in, and Sawamura rolls his eyes but giggles.

Sawamura still texts him at work, but instead of words he sends pictures – a blurry selfie of himself with the omnipresent Harucchi he knows all about and has yet to meet, a cat staring judgmentally straight into the camera lens and perched improbably atop a wire fence, a picture of his palm, caked with reddish dust, callouses standing out in sharp relief, making Kazuya wince because some of those look fresh, and hey you better get some antiseptic on that or something and what no this is NOTHING this is normal and that does not look normal in any way, go to the nurse and a yes mummy ~ :P that he doesn’t respond to.

Sawamura still wanders around at night, too.

Except now, Kazuya goes out to find him.

Sits with him on the bench.

Watches the lamp-light play off his face in ways he’d never noticed before. Finds himself leaning in to find his freckles, and leaning in even further to find his lips.

They can’t sleep and Sawamura struggles with his baseball and Kazuya struggles with work, and none of the big things change, but all the little things do.

***

Sawamura says something about how the snowball effect and the butterfly effect and the ripple effect are all one and the same, small things becoming something bigger,

(inquisitive texts at 3.33 a.m. turning into cuddles in late autumn afternoons)

and when Kazuya thinks Sawamura always has the words for everything, even he doesn’t know how accurate that deduction is until later.

“What did you make music about, when you were in college?” Sawamura asks one day, out of the blue. Kazuya doesn’t flinch, because this is the same guy who’d texted him earlier that day asking if people on land have a name for seahorses would mermaids have a name for land-horses? He just regards him over the rim of his instant ramen cup.

“Usually whatever the assignment demanded.”

Sawamura doesn’t appear satisfied with that response. He lifts his head up from where it’d been lolling against the seat-cushion of his couch, purses his lips. “That’s not what I meeean,” he whines, and because Kazuya is Kazuya, there’s a half-hearted attempt not to let this get to him, pull out a smile, think cute – but then again all of that works as well as trying to brush dust on to a dust-pan with one clean sweep, so he settles for a smirk and a raised eyebrow. “They don’t tell you specifically what to do, right? I mean they give you an assignment but what you make for the assignment is up to you?”

He’s right, of course, but one doesn’t generally complete college to look back at the deadlines that’d made them challenge the laws of the space-time continuum all that readily.

His silence makes Sawamura’s pout grow more pronounced.

“Isn’t there anything you composed that you’re, like, super proud of?” he badgers, persistent, and it might have been irritating if Sawamura were not doing that thing were his cheeks start to puff up again, and now it’s just funny (and – might as well, why bother trying – cute) “Something you put in your portfolio and stuff?”

Portfolio’s the catalyst here, winding Kazuya back to the time he’d spent rendering multiple backup copies in MP3, compressing them into ZIP folders, transferring them into Read-Only discs to attach to print-outs of his application, and crap, was that only a few months ago…?

Sawamura’s watching him expectantly.

“There was one assignment where we were told to make a soundtrack for a television show,” he says, and he’s a little surprised at how quickly the nostalgia takes over, diffusing into the air, memory booting back from wherever it’d been stored to recall the briefing, the mingling excitement and apprehension which’d taken over the room as their lecturer had broken down the requirements, because this is new, this is thrilling but also can we really do this? “we could pick what kind of show, genre and everything.”

Sawamura’s sitting up already, legs folded up, hands folded over his kneecaps. “Like OSTs?”

“Sort of like that,” Kazuya says, and finds himself searching for the words to explain it. “Some people did medleys, like, a mix of music for rom-coms or actions movies, some people went old-school and did music like they’d have in really old shows like Knight Rider or the A-Team…”

“What did you do?” Sawamura breathes out almost impatiently, and Kazuya looks at his round, intrigued eyes and laughs.

“Show tunes,” he says, and it’s crazy, but it’s like he can feel that flutter again – that giddy juxtaposition of dread and exhilaration that comes with a challenge, when you don’t quite yet know how you’re going to do it, but you do know that you want to, that you’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure you do. It’d been one of the most brutal assignments Kazuya’s ever had to do, a herculean task he’d signed up for and been too stubborn to let up on, all those hours spent renting out archaic video-tapes of stage musicals and sitcoms for research, working out a vague script inside of his head for an early 2000s comedy show that would shoot in front of a live-audience, composing snippets for gags, suspense, even a handful of lilting emotional melodies, and Kuramochi’d squirmed because dude, this is such a risk, show tunes on TV? but Kazuya’d done it anyway, and come out of it over-caffeinated and with a personal endorsement from his lecturer that he’d do great sound engineering for broadcast.

“Woooow,” Sawamura exhales, and his knees have fallen to the sides, so he’s sitting cross-legged now, palms braced on his calves and torso leaning forward, until his chest’s almost even with the table he’d been sitting across from – he’s wide-eyed, staring at Kazuya with literal wonder in his eyes, and Kazuya realises with a retrospective jolt that he may just have rambled all of that out

(the awe gleaming in Sawamura’s eyes, the soft round ‘o’ of his mouth, make it difficult to feel self-conscious), and

“that is so cool.”

And Kazuya, well. Kazuya shrugs, no big deal, I mean, looking back it was a one-man campaign and probably amateur as fuck but then again Kazuya’s also weak to the tickling warmth having his accomplishments recognised brings, spiking his blood and cranking up a euphoric high, and he’s never been the humble type to begin with, and so he just lets himself bask in the glow of Sawamura’s candid admiration.

It’s a while later that Sawamura, who’d rather transparently spent the intervening moments digesting what he’d learnt, asks, “Did you ever consider it? Going into broadcasting?”

It’s not exactly a loaded question – it’s the type he can answer with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ – but it’s been many days, many weeks, since he’d forayed into Sawamura’s apartment in the middle of his anxiety attack, a long, long time since those afternoons at work he’d spent Googling ‘panic disorder’ and reading up about symptoms and causes and treatment and medication –

A lot of time that he’s had to think about Sawamura and to come to terms with the fact that he cares, and that he cares enough to not want to be on the outside.

He wants to be let in, and that means Sawamura’s entitled to ask the same, and it should be a whole lot more terrifying than it actually is.

“I thought about it, on and off, for a while,” is what he confesses, low and serious, and Sawamura reacts, Sawamura adjusts, the curiosity morphing into something else, into receptiveness, “but never really seriously? I always knew specifically what I wanted to be doing, as a job. Career, whatever.”

Sawamura nods, dwells on this a while.

Kazuya feels strangely…important.

Strangely…cared for, and

Oh

It’s the same

We’re the same

“Then…” Sawamura starts again, and there’s more hesitation now, teeth showing as they dig into his lip and what looks like nerves pinching his brow just a little; he’s doing that thing where he’s spoken before he’d intended to, and is now torn between shutting up and ploughing ahead.

Predictably, he decides to plough ahead.

“Then…what did you make music about, back then?”

And this time it is a loaded question, and Sawamura gets it too, because Sawamura is eyeing him with something close to apprehension, something close to wariness, like he’s trying to be careful, isn’t sure how much he’s entitled to ask and how much he’s entitled to say, but then

But then

Kazuya gets it, because Kazuya’d spent so much time trying to imagine being in Sawamura’s shoes, physically exhausting himself day after day after day only to come home to a bed he won’t be able to fall asleep in – Kazuya’s spent many hours at work where he’d have things to do if he bothered to look and wouldn’t if he didn’t scrolling through accounts and blog posts about how people live with panic disorder because even though Sawamura confides in him, sometimes, Sawamura also tries to it play it down, Sawamura also tries not to let it worry him, tries to smile to get Kazuya to smile too, and Kazuya gets it.

Gets that it’s daunting, terrifying, to wrench open a part of yourself you’ve kept concealed so long, voluntarily leave yourself vulnerable, because to let someone know you’re weak is accept that you’re weak too, but then

But then

Kazuya wants to be let in (Kazuya wants to let him in)

And all the little things are changing, so the big things can change too.

“The first song I wrote,” he says, and watches Sawamura tense up, his gaze sharpen, like he’s expecting a lightning strike, expecting a shooting star to splice across the sky, and if he blinks he’ll miss it, “…it was about leaving home. How that…felt.”

Sawamura nods at him, encouraging – his hair flaps from the vigour of the movement, fringe messily falling into his forehead.

(Kazuya wants to - )

“How did it feel?” Sawamura asks him, quiet, still timid, still meek, feeling his way around, cautious but.

But

Gentle.

Kazuya heaves in a breath. This isn’t something they’ve spoken about before. But they have to at some point, and why delay the inevitable?

(Why resist the urge - )

(To - )

(Share)

“Liberating,” he sighs, the tightness in his chest elastic and blunt, “…terrifying.”

Sawamura’s been inching around the table, but subtlety is not his forte, so he gives up, gets to his feet and cuts the distance between them in quick strides. He sits down right beside Kazuya, their thighs touching, and intones, questioning, “Terrifying…?”

Kazuya lets out a laugh. This is something he’s spoken about to Kuramochi before, and granted, the first time had been because he’d been drunk out of his mind and feeling incredibly sorry for himself, but it’s not like he’s not opened up about this before.

But this still feels –

Significant.

“My dad…didn’t want me to take the scholarship. He thought a career in show business or the music industry didn’t amount to much. Wanted me to be an engineer, like he always wanted to be.”

And, yeah, there it is, smack on cue.

The bitterness (the guilt)

Sawamura makes a tiny noise, and the corners of his lips have pulled down. “But you got a good opportunity with a really big studio!”

Kazuya shakes his head. Dry smiles, dry tongue. Dry, dry eyes. “That doesn’t really mean anything if I’m paper-pushing.”

“That’s not all you’re doing,” Sawamura disagrees immediately, and damn, this guy – this guy and the words he says, his tendency to say the thing Kazuya needs to hear, wants to hear. He thinks it’s almost unfair, that he doesn’t get to label it as empty consolations – that he knows Sawamura means it, sincere and genuine, because then it makes his heart hurt and sing and burrows him in a bit deeper into Kazuya’s system. “You are making music, you’re making your dream come true.”

“That’s…debateable.”

Sawamura pulls back a bit, frowns at him, critical. “Did he say something like that to you?”

“Not really,” Kazuya shrugs again, and it almost comes off as nonchalant, because he’s spent so much time convincing himself that it doesn’t matter that it’s almost second nature, now, “we don’t talk much.”

(I don’t talk much)

(I don’t talk to him)

(I don’t - )

There’s rough warmth, the static-like burn of coarse carpet, and Kazuya glances down, and oh, it’s his hand

“Miyuki,” he says, and he says it with so much…so much what? Feeling? So much understanding? Compassion? So much magnetism, that Kazuya gets drawn in immediately. Is helpless to resist, “Who did you make music for back then?”

Now this is an answer he knows.

This is an answer he’s given dozens of times, to Kuramochi, to his lecturers, during his interview for mandatory internship and again during the shortlisting procedure for work, confident and staccato and sure.

This is the answer he’s given himself, in his head, every time the fear of failure’s threatened to push him off the edge.

“Me.”

Sawamura doesn’t look surprised by his answer. Looks like he was expecting it.

“And who do you make music for now?”

“Me,” Kazuya says.

Except

That’s

Not true, is it?

Starry brown eyes are looking up at him, boring into his soul.

“You know, I didn’t really want to come to Tokyo,” Sawamura says, conversationally, and then Kazuya’s blinking, Kazuya’s brain is stuttering, trying to kickstart again, because the non-sequitur has caught him off-guard, knocked him off-kilter. “I was…happy, where I was, in my hometown. When they came over to scout people, I’d pretty much already decided that I didn’t want to leave – I mean, I’ve grown up there, you know? My teammates were my childhood friends, they’re family, and I played baseball with them because I loved them, and I loved baseball. We weren’t very good, but I thought if we tried hard enough, we could be.”

Sawamura flicks his eyes at Kazuya – he’s a little pink, but his voice is steady, and so is the hand clasped over Kazuya’s.

“I guess I was being delusional,” he continues, the twist of his mouth definitely the most self-deprecating Kazuya’s ever seen before, “I mean, we were in middle-school, playing baseball was probably nothing more than an extra-curricular activity for most of my friends…I was the only one, I think, that seriously, seriously wanted us to win and qualify for cups and tournaments. So I was being stubborn and I was talking to my mum about it and my granddad overheard, and he literally just marched into the room and slapped me in the face.”

Kazuya emits an inadvertent strangled noise. “What?!”

Sawamura lets out a giggle, which, in Kazuya’s humble opinion, is a completely disproportionate reaction to the scene he’s actually describing. “Yup. He literally smacked me across the face, and then yelled at me to not be an idiot, told me flat out that if I didn’t go I’d regret it for the rest of my life. We fought about it, a lot,” the emphasis is weighty and turbulent, and Kazuya tries to imagine it, imagine Sawamura losing his cool and shouting and arguing with the same family he dutifully calls up every evening, effervescent as he speaks to them, fizzling out when he has to hang up, “but…eventually, they talked me into coming. My friends, too. And honestly?” he looks up at Kazuya, big eyes soulful and saying things Kazuya can already hear before his mouth spells them out, “It’s the best decision I’ve ever made. Because it’s a decision I’d made for me. I hadn’t even decided if I wanted to go pro until then, hadn’t really thought about being in a powerhouse school or wanting to make a living out of it, and…if I hadn’t come here, I may never have realised. That this is what I want to do, this is what makes me happy.”

He draws to a close, and the air wavers, like his words have left it singed. Charged.

Kazuya’s already concluded that Sawamura’s eloquent, but an impassioned Sawamura is…

Captivating.

When he lets out a tiny chuckle, the private kind, Kazuya’s hand twitches under his.

“The captain back then, the guy who taught me how to actually pitch, rather than hurl baseballs straight down the middle, he always said that pitchers are the most selfish players,” Sawamura smiles a bit at him, but the smile’s kind of faraway, like it’s more personal, more for himself – a memory he’s revisiting, a different time Kazuya’s never been in, will never get to be in, “we hog the limelight, we control the momentum of matches, the mood of the team. Flashy and loud and selfish.” His eyes are distant, and Kazuya flips his hand, thoughtlessly – links their hands together, “And I suppose it’s true. Because I played for me. I wanted to be better, stronger, irreplaceable – for me.”

Kazuya’s no fool. He senses where this is going. Catches the past tense, the nostalgia we only have for things that are gone.

“What happened?” he asks, anyway, because this is something Sawamura wants to tell him.

(because this is something he needs to hear)

“I wonder,” Sawamura huffs out a breath, and it seems to sap the life out of him, the feisty zeal with which he’d been speaking, walking Kazuya through the journey that’d brought him here. “I guess…by the time I was in third-year, it started to become…more. Bigger. Just my own gratification wasn’t enough, you know? They made me ace, but at the back of my head I knew it wasn’t because of my capabilities, it’s because I was all they had. I…wanted to earn that position. Wanted to deserve it. Wanted to take the team to nationals, wanted to get scouted, wanted to play for the strongest college baseball teams, wanted to be good enough for…for my catcher, my coach, my family, the reporters…everyone, except, eventually, for myself. And well…you saw how that turned out.”

Sawamura gives him a smile, a forlorn little thing that makes Kazuya want to kiss it away, but he’s breathless and still, at the cusp of something else – another Change, with a capital ‘C’.

The snowballs, the butterflies, the ripples, magnifying, multiplying, growing gargantuan and shaping the cosmos, because Sawamura’s already recovering, the light in his eye going from bleak to brisk, and he’s tipping his head at Kazuya, seeing right through him, and asking,

“So…who do you make music for now, Miyuki?”

He doesn’t know.

What he does know is that it isn’t for himself.

And maybe he’s known for a long time, known all along, and it’s just easier to tell himself that it’s because he can’t sleep, that this is some twisted self-fulfilling prophecy, that this is karma, actuating the ramifications of all the wilful decisions he’d taken, as a rebellious, ambitious teenager who’d looked past his father’s fears for him, his concern that his son is going down a line he won’t be able to sustain, and just choosing to see a man who’d had no respect or understanding for his dreams because he wanted him to fulfil his –

Maybe it’s all these things and more, but they’re a hell of a lot more difficult to reason away or silence when someone else is asking the question he’s been asking himself all along.

***

Neither of them sleep that night, either, but Sawamura insists he root out his old hard-drive, and play him samples of his college-day compositions, and Kazuya cringes at how sloppy some of them sound, in hindsight, through the funnel of experience and time, but Sawamura’s not deterred – he demands backstories, profiles of muses, and on one occasion what season and time of day it was when he’d composed a jingle for a hypothetical insurance company, and Kazuya –

Thinks –

***

Sawamura Eijun: write a song about the rain

Sawamura Eijun: the kind of song you’d want to hear, if you’re in a car and you’re driving nowhere

Sawamura Eijun: and it starts raining

Sawamura Eijun: you know that feeling?

Sawamura Eijun: when time doesn’t feel like it’s real

Sawamura Eijun: and you don’t have rush to keep up anymore?

[Read 2.31 p.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: yeah

[Read 4.34 p.m.]

***

Sawamura Eijun: MIYUKI HELP

Sawamura Eijun: I thoiought she aw kidding but hse serious

Miyuki Kazuya: …what?

Sawamura Eijun: Shes serous

Sawamura Eijun: Serious******

Miyuki Kazuya: WHO are you talking about?

Sawamura Eijun: the managaerrrr

Sawamura Eijun: she serioiuskly wants me to gp runnjn EVEYR MORNING

Sawamura Eijun: EVRY MORNIG

Miyuki Kazuya: good luck

Sawamura Eijun: I hate you >:(

Miyuki Kazuya: <3  ;)

***

Sawamura Eijun: OH MY GOD THIS OLD GEEZER IS MAKINB RKE UP ALL THESE LEAVES

[Read 6.12 p.m.]

Sawamura Eijun: I KNOW YOURE READING HTIS

[Read 6.53 p.m.]

Sawamura Eijun: I hate you

***

Sawamura Eijun: Miyuki?

Sawamura Eijun: I’m sorry I don’ tknow if you’re asleeo but

Sawamura Eijun: it’s just that my match is tmrw

Sawamura Eijun: the qualifier for thw winter cup

Sawamura Eijun: I’m closing

Sawamura Eijun: I’m a littl e but

Sawamura Eijun: little bit*

Sawamura Eijun: nervous

Sawamura Eijun is typing…

Miyuki Kazuya: I’m coming up

Miyuki Kazuya: wait for me

Sawamura Eijun is typing

Sawamura Eijun: please

***

Sawamura’s ansty and agitated when he gets there, feverish eyes and feverish hands, and there’s nothing Kazuya can tell him that he doesn’t already know – play for yourself, play to have fun, do your best, you’ve practiced, you’ve tried your best, it’ll be fine –

But he tells him these things anyway, repeats them, quakes through his panic attack with him, arm around his shoulders, mouth murmuring a stream of nonsense by his ear, and Kazuya’d never thought he possessed this much patience, didn’t think he was patient at all – but then again this isn’t the kind of patience that tests him when he’s waiting for his YouTube video to buffer, makes him itch to yank the microwave door open before the recommended three minutes to warm his pre-cooked convenience store dinner.

This kind of patience, that’s full of so much willingness it doesn’t feel like waiting at all.

And what was it Sawamura’d told him about music?

Oh, that’s right

‘it’s what feelings sound like’

***

Miyuki Kazuya: Sent an Attachment: “AUD008”

[Read 3.08 p.m.]

Kuramochi Youichi: wow

Kuramochi Youichi: this yours?

Miyuki Kazuya: yeah

Kuramochi Youichi: holy shit

Kuramochi Youichi: this is totally

Kuramochi Youichi: please tell me you’ve shown this to your supervisor

Miyuki Kazuya: not yet

Miyuki Kazuya: I just fine tuned it last night

Kuramochi Youichi: dude

Kuramochi Youichi: WHAT. ARE. YOU. WAITING. FOR.

***

Kuramochi Youichi: btw

Kuramochi Youichi: I gotta ask

Kuramochi Youichi: was that a lullaby?

[Read 10.07 p.m.]

Miyuki Kazuya: it’s a song about the rain

Chapter Text

Kazuya considers himself a realist, but there’s no sense in denying that the jump from college life to working life had unsettled him.

Unnerved him.

University had had structure. It’s a thing he thought he detested, the restrictions, the checklist of requirements they were forced to meet, to quantify something as unquantifiable as music, as art. To have a scale against which they had to measure their success rather than all the room the universe had to offer to let their expression grow and evolve.

Looking back, Kazuya thinks that’s what made the system work.

University had had structure. A checklist. An obstacle course, a maze, this system of checkpoints, and Sawamura’d been right – they told you what to do, but not how to do it. They told you how to do it but didn’t hold your hand. They gave you the ingredients but not the recipe. They gave you a goal, and how you got there was your own prerogative.

He tries to explain this to Sawamura, articulate hazy concepts, as they toss a baseball to each other in the courtyard as the evening deepens around them.

Sawamura, as Kazuya had an inkling he would, gets it.

“There’s always a benchmark you have to meet, and people who make you try to meet them. But when you’re at work, it’s every man for himself instead.”

“Right,” Kazuya says, fumbling as the beaten, greying leather of the baseball makes contact with his mitt-clad hand – the weather’s taken a turn for winter now, the courtyard carpeted with leaves shed by the truckload that neither the landlord nor his unofficial helper Sawamura can keep up with, “exactly.”

Maybe it’s his somewhat enthused response, or his evident dearth of hand-eye coordination, but it makes Sawamura smile.

“Then,” he says, deftly scooping the ball out of the air as Kazuya tosses it back – his movements are smooth and crisp, and Kazuya doesn’t have to be a professional baseball player to tell they speak of a long-honed control he’s only barely getting a glimpse of, right now, “you should just do it for yourself.”

The ball zips through the air, not too hard and not too fast, but marks a definitive trajectory straight into Kazuya’s cupped hands. He gives a dry laugh before he throws it back.

“I thought I was.”

Sawamura catches it with his right this time, switching seamlessly over to the left and flicking it up into the air, one-handed. “You know what I mean. The way you made the rain song.”

The rain song.

Kuramochi’d called it a lullaby.

Kazuya, when he’d decided he’d tweaked it enough and needed to commit to it by at least giving it a name, had hesitated just slightly before typing into the title bar, Eijun’s Song.

Because ‘Sawamura’ had just not sat right.

Had just not felt…intimate enough.

He lets it rest on his tongue, trying to adjust to its weight, its contours, and almost misses the ball that ultimately lands with a thud in the landing-pad of his palms.

Sawamura laughs, a brash sound the wavelength of which is probably one step above what average people use to speak, and Kazuya finds himself grinning back, because he doesn’t try to keep the sound down. It rings out, clear and resonating, in the still, late autumn air.

“You should show it to your director,” is what Sawamura says, after a silent series of volleys – Sawamura’s doing most of the work, as he’d promised when he’d asked if Kazuya wanted to play catch with him. Although maybe coerced would have been a more accurate word, because he’d shown up at his doorstep with a ready-made pout and a pitcher’s glove, and an uncanny readiness with which he deflected each of Kazuya’s protests.

And then he’d said, in a quiet voice, like he’s imparting a secret he’d rather not have imparted, It helps with the nerves, and well, Kazuya apparently has as much willpower to refuse Sawamura as watery jelly. The kind that never sets right.

Addressing Sawamura’s suggestion – one he’s already been hearing in multiple, less polite variations from Kuramochi – he says, “I will.”

“When?”

“When…” Kazuya hesitates. Decides it’s easier to be honest, “I’m ready.”

Sawamura tips his head, doesn’t throw the baseball back, both hands curled around it.

“When’ll you be ready?” he asks, with all the blunt straightforwardness Kazuya’s come to expect from him, at this point.

The sun’s disappeared behind the awnings of their slanted tin roofs, indigo staining the sky, stippled with wispy strands of clouds. The lamp isn’t on yet, the landlord not yet out on his evening stroll, but Kazuya can picture the frown creasing Sawamura’s forehead even without its aid.

“When…I have a few more pieces ready.”

“But you do have some ready.”

Kazuya shakes his head. “Some of those are less than a minute long.”

“So?” Sawamura challenges, and he chucks the ball back, unexpectedly – it thumps into Kazuya’s hand with impact that makes his bones vibrate; that was definitely a lot harder than anything Sawamura’s thrown at him all evening, “they’re good. Kuramochi-san says so too.”

Kazuya doesn’t know whether to comment on the fact that his boyfriend had just attempted to take off his fingers or the fact that he may or may not be secretly colluding with his best friend.

He forgoes both, clasping the ball in his hand and saying, reasonably (not defensively not at all no), “I am gonna show them. It’s not like I won’t. I just – “

Sawamura is watching him, arms crossed, head tilted to the side, a silent signal that their game of catch has unofficially wrapped up.

“ – want to be sure,” Kazuya finishes lamely, his brain choosing this very moment to switch to hibernation mode.

Sawamura sighs a sigh Kazuya can’t hear but can see, the rise and fall of sturdy shoulders, the silhouette of arms falling to the side. Then he’s walking towards him, and the next thing he knows, Kazuya has a close-up of Sawamura, standing right inside his space.

“Tell me something,” he hums, in his genuine indoor voice; at this distance, Kazuya can decide to map the constellations Sawamura’s freckles sketch over his face. And with the scent of green apple shampoo in his nose and a nervous tattoo at the base of his throat making it difficult to hear himself think, this sounds like a pretty attractive course of action he’d like to devote himself to, if he’s honest.

But Sawamura’s talking to him, and Sawamura’s pretty hard to ignore when he’s talking.

“Wh -?”

“Do you like the songs?”

At this much proximity, Kazuya has to pretty much crane his face down to keep looking at Sawamura, and doesn’t want to think about the double-chin he’s probably giving himself in the process.

He waits just a beat before giving his answer, decisive, “Yeah.”

Sawamura nods up at him, satisfied. The waning remnants of dusk catch his eyes and make them glitter.

“Then you’re already sure,” he says, and he takes a step back, but only to press a fist into Kazuya’s chest, just shy of where an impromptu drum-solo has kicked off without warning. “As sure as you can be. Your studio’s filled with hundreds of people, Miyuki, you can’t satisfy all of them. And you shouldn’t be trying to. I think you make the best music when you’re making it for yourself.”

Later, Kazuya can’t deny that he goes back to his flat somewhat touched – which is a strange emotion for him, because he’s the arrogant smartass who’s believed any praise he ever gets is strictly earned – and that little step closer to actually transferring the audio files gradually building into double rows in the folder marked ORIGINALS in his laptop to a USB…

But something still feels missing. Something that feels like that jarring sense of wrongness when the next note you’re expecting in a song never comes, or when you’re listening to a mash-up and the chorus of one is spliced together with the chorus of another.

And it gnaws at him, the way your sixth sense does, without any helpful clue of what that something might be.

***

It’s actually Kuramochi who helps him figure it out.

“So do you think you’ll have an album ready by February?”

“…what?”

“Coz Valentine’s Day is a good time to release your 100 Love Songs about My College Student Boyfriend.”

“Very funny,” Kazuya deadpans, annoyance levelling up a notch because he barely got himself heard over Kuramochi’s cackling. “Also, they’re not love songs.”

“So you keep telling me,” Kuramochi crows, and Kazuya has to wonder, for the umpteenth time, why he entertains this – nay, why he asks for it, because by virtue of having called himself, he’s pretty much signed up for this. “It doesn’t have to be a ballad to be a love song.”

Kazuya disagrees. Out of the handful of audio files he’s sent Kuramochi for his feedback – because Kuramochi is one of the few people he trusts to actually give him the critique he’s entitled to – there’s one 80s-inspired synth number, there’s a carefree guitar solo that Sawamura says reminds him of a roadtrip in a convertible with the roof down and chino shorts, and there’s a trippy two minute piece inspired by Yellow Submarine that has previously prompted Kuramochi to ask if he’s doing drugs or something.

The only piece that remotely resembles a ballad would be – well. Eijun’s Song.

It’s Sawamura’s song about the rain, and Kuramochi’s self-titled lullaby, and to Kazuya, it’s Eijun’s Song.

Not because it’s about him, but because he’s the reason Kazuya wrote it.

Kazuya tells Kuramochi as much, and all he gets for his trouble is an almost derisive snort.

“I don’t know about you, Miyuki-kun, but in the industry I work in, we call that kind of thing our ‘inspiration’.”

Except that’s not right. That doesn’t sit well, that’s a poorly contrived scale that doesn’t quite hit all the right notes because –

Because –

He’s not making music for Sawamura, but Sawamura’s the reason he makes music.

But how does he explain something like this? Something so abstract? He doesn’t have Sawamura’s talent with words, he can’t take a Feeling or an Idea or a Concept and magically conjure up a line from a play or a stanza from a poem that captures it, can’t spin it into his own the way Sawamura does until Kazuya’s the one quoting him.

Kazuya doesn’t have the words for it.

But Kuramochi, apparently, has the answer.

“Write a song about it, then,” he says, and his tone makes clear that he’s only half kidding.

And –

Ah.

***

Winter arrives suddenly, with a powdery sprinkling of snow one morning that makes the courtyard an instant death-trap and automatically out-of-bounds to one very peeved insomniac.

One very peeved, increasingly stir-crazy insomniac.

The stinging cold and the mini-blizzards of snow effectively put an end to Sawamura’s morning runs – some of which Kazuya has actually, at great personal risk, accompanied him to just to make sure he doesn’t do something stupid, like drop dead from over-exhaustion.

“He’s going to be a literal pain once it’s properly winter,” Kominato Haruichi, whom he’d finally managed to meet for Christmas lunch, had warned him, “he’s already hyperactive, and if he doesn’t get to burn off all that excess energy somehow, he’ll basically be a ticking time-bomb.”

It’d been a grim omen, but Kazuya’d heard enough and seen enough of the all but petite, shrewd-eyed pink-head to know that he’s going to be right.

Sawamura gets restless.

Trapped indoors, hemmed inside confined spaces and closed windows, it’s like that restlessness magnifies.

He tries not to let it show, because of course he does. He spends more of the time he’s actually at home, practice and matches eating up most of his schedule, in his own flat, doing what Kazuya can only imagine. The handful of times he’s given up and gone to investigate, he’s found some kind of evolved version of the jittery Sawamura he’d met the very first time he’d visited Number 18. Ashen face, wide, blank-burning eyes, blanched lips. Hands that never stop moving, touching and tugging everything.

It gets worse as the winter tournament approaches.

“I really think I should take him for medical help,” Kazuya confides, and should be alarmed that he barely cares about the desperate crawl his voice takes on, “I’ve not seen him like this before.”

Kuramochi sits across from him, expression for once utterly solemn. Pensive.

“Can’t you persuade him? Like, just to go see a doctor, at the very least? He doesn’t have to go through with the treatment or whatever until after his cup.”

Kazuya shakes his head. His stomach feels like undercooked spaghetti, thick and crumbly. Sawamura’d not texted him even once today, and his quarter-finals are coming up in a day and a half, and Kazuya’s so strung up someone could probably strum him for a tune. “At this point, he’s so keyed up I think if I mention doctors it’d just make it worse.”

Unseeing, he keeps his eyes trained on the way Kuramochi twirls the fork round his half-demolished cake slice. Crumbs fly off, spattering against the sides of the plate, during a particularly violent twirl.

Kazuya weirdly relates.

“Then there’s nothing else for it, is there,” is what Kuramochi says, gruff and grim and with the voice of one who has resigned himself to the inevitable and the inevitable is not something he likes very much. “One way or another, he’s going to have to make it through this tournament – and after that, you’re going to have to haul his butt to a therapy session whether he likes it or not. This kind of thing shouldn't be left to fester.”

It’s a conclusion Kazuya’s flirted with numerous times over the past couple of weeks, picking it up and setting it down like that one homework piece he’d get when he still had band class back in middle school that he just knew in his bones he wouldn’t enjoy learning.

Hearing Kuramochi saying it just drives it home.

“Yeah,” he says, not exactly disheartened (because what was I expecting), but not exactly peachy, either. He’s not looking forward to it, and this is an oversimplification. What little appetite he’s had is threatening to take a hike, of the semi-permanent variety, because all he can think about are the nights Sawamura adamantly refuses to answer his texts or let him into his apartment, pretending he’s asleep, pretending he doesn’t hear the incessant dings of his phone or the doorbell, because I don’t want you to worry, Miyuki, I’m FINE, everything is fine, I’m just tired is all – and all those nights he does let him in, does let him try and talk him down from panic attacks ravaging him at a distressingly increasing frequency these days, that leave Kazuya haggard and haunted by the next morning, the aftershocks of too-short breaths and helpless tremors still skittering down his skin, and –

“You’re in it deep, aren’t you.”

Kazuya looks up from where he’d been gazing down into the bottomless black of his double espresso, and is a little startled to find Kuramochi studying him with something close to fascination.

“You’ve been saying that for months,” Kazuya tries for light and airy, can’t tell how much success he’s having, “shouldn’t you know the answer by now?”

It’s not a denial, nor a protest, and somehow Kazuya skips deciding whether he’d wanted it to be either.

Something resembling a smile – not a smirk or that sharp sideways grin – flits across Kuramochi’s face.

(it’s not a denial, nor a protest)

(it’s an answer)

(and Kuramochi knows it)

“You can’t blame me for being surprised,” Kuramochi says, with a great deal more sobriety than Kazuya’s come to expect whenever it comes to any discussion touching Sawamura, “you’ve – and don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this in a bad way – but you’ve always been kinda…self-involved, I guess I want to say.”

Kazuya doesn’t take it in a bad way. Couldn’t if he’d tried because it’s true, isn’t it? He’s always been self-involved, always felt righteously selfish, because his eyes were fixed on the prize and he might have taken detours and made the occasional U-turn, idled at a rest-stop along the way, but –

His focus had never shifted from the endgame.

His focus had never shifted from himself.

But then, Kuramochi’s also the person who used to tell him that this isn’t the type of thing you PLAN for, idiot.

Kuramochi’s the person who told him, Write a song about it, then

Kazuya remembers, back when Sawamura Eijun used to be faceless Number 18, how he’d lie awake into the night bogged down by the shards of his sanity and scraps of awareness, and wonder, about him. About what made him tick, what made him push through the days as they came, and even worse, the nights.

The ones that stretched on forever and never ended, a looping nightmare because you didn’t get to wake from them.

Sawamura’d sent him a poem about that once. “I wake and feel the fell of dark.” The phrase had struck some kind of chord inside of him, the kind of terror that’s like hitting your elbow and feeling the teeth-clenching pain rebound up your entire arm, because that’s exactly it, isn’t it? A waking nightmare, there even when the sun is out and everything is bright and lit and alive, and you’re still carrying a never-ending night inside of your head because you never get to re-set.

Kazuya remembers thinking about Number 18, remembers thinking about sentiments that could be turned into songs.

And now that his turn’s here, he’s at a loss. Has been at a loss ever since the idea’d been presented to him.

Because how does one make a song out of this? How does one compress all of this into a sheet’s worth of clefs and sharps and flats and bars, how does one make an overture out of something so vast and depthless and completely, totally immeasurable?

Because, see, Kuramochi’s right – this isn’t something you plan for. This is messy, this is tough and unyielding, this is unpredictable, this is staring at the ceiling in the middle of the night counting each slow-painful twinge of your heart because Sawamura’s online but he’s not answering your texts and there’s a wall of silence outside, everything wiped out and white, like one of those aliens from Sawamura’s manga came down and swallowed the world when they weren’t looking. This is the slow guilt-ridden realisation that they’d not gone on one single official date, and the weirdly placating counter-realisation that they’d had so many unofficial dates they’d all be impossible to count.

This is messy, this is tough and unyielding, and probably neither of them know what they’re doing at the best of times, but...

But Sawamura would say something like, it’s like caramel that’s been in the fridge too long

But Sawamura would say something like, it hurts your teeth and gets stuck everywhere

Sawamura would say, but then it melts

And it’s so sweet.

So, so sweet.

So very worth it.

How do you make a song out of that, when dozens of musicians, writers, artists in hundreds of languages in thousands of years haven’t been able to agree on a single, solid definition of what this is?

(At the back of Kazuya’s head there’s a voice that sounds like Kuramochi’s, telling him what Kuramochi’s probably thinking, judging by that amused look on his face)

(There’s a word for that)

***

This isn’t the type of thing you PLAN for, idiot, Kuramochi’d said, and Kuramochi has set an annoying precedent of being right, so far, because Kazuya’d been turning over how, exactly, he should check up on Sawamura the night before the quarter-finals, when Sawamura himself appears at his door.

“I’m sorry,” he begins, as he always begins, unimpeded by Kazuya’s jokey attempts to wean him off of it, “but…could I…um.” A pause, before he abruptly jumps two pitches higher. “I have a ton of favours to ask you.”

By a ton of favours, Sawamura means two.

The first is a sleeping pill.

“I just…there’s two matches tomorrow and I’m going to need my energy – I mean, of course, assuming we win the first one, otherwise I guess it’s okay, it’s not like I’m gonna play all nine innings but, I think, if I’m rested I’ll feel better, but I just tried, like, warm milk and playing instrumental music and nothing’s working and I think if I keep going like this I’m gonna – “

And then it just happens.

It just slips out.

“Eijun.”

He can literally hear Sawamura – Eijun’s – teeth click shut. Panic-widened eyes fix him in their huge stare, orbs reflecting something…new.

“First of all, it’s not just your responsibility to win, it’s the whole team’s, so you need to stop equating every win and every loss to your capabilities, or you’ll have a heart attack before you’re twenty five,” Kazuya scolds – yes, actually scolds, sounding rather disturbingly like Zono when he’d unleash a nagging tirade back in college, usually upon Kazuya’s unresponsive ears. “If you win, it’s because of the whole team, and if you lose, it’s also because of the whole team. Got that?”

Sawamura just stares at him. Gawps, more precisely.

Kazuya snaps a finger in front of his face. “Oi, Eijun?”

He comes back with spastically fluttering lashes and an endearing pink flush tinting his cheeks. “Y-yes.”

“Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Sawamura answers, albeit with less certainty, but Kazuya’s going to take it – he intends to drive the point home anyway.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re going to play all nine innings or not. It doesn’t matter if you’re the ace or not, it doesn’t matter if you get fouls or pitches, just…” Kazuya runs a hand through his hair, searching for words, because this sort of stuff is more up Sawamura’s alley than his but here he stands, trying, because of frozen caramel and a four-letter word that would neatly parcel up everything he is feeling and everything he wants to convey, because, as always, Kuramochi is right – he’s in so, so deep he can’t see an exit anymore (and maybe doesn’t want to) “just do your best, okay? I’ve seen you play, I know how hard it is to get a baseball to move slow and still hit the target and you never missed when we played catch, Eijun. I was literally just standing there, nothing else. You can do this, so just do your best. That’s all you need to do. That’s what you owe yourself, to play the way you want to play. You taught me that, right?”

Eijun’s face has gone slack, but he slow-blinks at Kazuya, the way a cat does, as though he’s trying to bring him back into focus.

Kazuya, self-conscious, very aware that this is the first time he’s raised his voice around Sawamura for anything other than playful bullying, tacks on, “What else?”

It appears to wake Sawamura up. “Huh?”

“You said you were gonna ask a ton of favours – what else?”

He realises a beat late that he’s probably striking something of a hostile pose, and uncrosses his arms – takes a step forward and reaches for Eijun’s hand, for good measure.

“O-oh, um. I – “ Eijun looks like he’s still trying to return to the present.

Kazuya decides to use his newly acquired special move. “What is it, Eijun? You can tell me.”

Holding his hand, Kazuya can feel the quiver that runs through Eijun, almost imperceptible, at the sound of his own first name. It pumps an unhealthy wallop of adrenaline into Kazuya’s bloodstream, which he tries to ignore, given that his boyfriend is in his pre-panic attack stage and Kazuya hasn’t had any experience trying to foil those before.

“U-um, I was gonna ask…since I have to leave pretty early in the morning and I don’t know how the pills work, I was gonna ask…” Sawamura’s voice drops, not the stage whisper volume but something closer to an actual mousey squeak and Kazuya decides he’s being shy again, and damnit (cute), “i-if I could sleep here. So you could wake me?”

***

Kazuya’s done his research and Kazuya gets his heaviest blanket, and one of his heavier jackets too, because he’s read that the weight can be comforting for someone experiencing anxiety and Eijun had been right all those months ago, when he’d guessed it would be freezing in his apartment in winter, and he’s never tucked a person into bed in his life, but he’s experienced an insurmountable number of firsts with Eijun already and he just adds it to the burgeoning list.

Eijun peeks up at him with coppery eyes already growing cloudy.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, when Kazuya seats himself at the edge of his bed, and finds his hand drifting of its own volition up the nest of soft brown poking out from under the covers.

It changes direction midway, taps Eijun on the nose just hard enough to make him blink in surprise. “Don’t be,” he says, and it’s just two words, two syllables, but they come out heavy, like anchors he’s had to crank a mile of chain-links to lower.

Everything feels heavy, actually, especially all the anatomy in his chest region, as though they’re being squeezed into non-existence in zero air pressure, but Kazuya forgoes worrying about all that for now, deliberating only a little before he pushes his fingers into Eijun’s hair. It’s trial and error, mostly, but Kazuya’s got a little mental repertoire of things he’s found help soothe Eijun when he’s restive – this is one of the most effective.

Almost instantaneously, Eijun’s eyelids droop, like the weight of those thick long lashes have increased exponentially.

“Miyuki,” he hums – voice drifting in and out, sluggish.

Kazuya leans in. “Yeah?”

A brief flash of sparkly-brown appears. “Can I call you Kazuya now?”

It’s a simple enough question (an Eijun enough question), objectively –

But it still twists through Kazuya, still rattles everything up inside of him, jangling him up and making thin needles shoot up his sinuses, even as he lets out a breathless chuckle.

He has to clear his throat a bit before he says, quietly, “Yeah.”

But then, it doesn’t feel nearly enough, or nearly appropriate, so he adds in a soft, lingering kiss to his forehead too.

Eijun hums, and Kazuya sits there until his breathing evens out and the minuscule frowns stitched into his forehead smooth over.

And then he goes, carrying all that messy, unyielding, unpredictable frozen caramel feeling inside his ribs, so much he feels it pushing out till he thinks he’ll implode, feels like he needs an outlet before he self-destructs from it, and because he doesn’t have Eijun’s words, he writes a song about it instead.

***

The next day, when Kazuya can do nothing except wait for Eijun’s first match to finish before he gets any news about how things went down – he’s counting on Harucchi for the proper scoop – he goes to the director and asks him for a little of his time.

He hands out the most recent song first, the one he’d stayed up into the night completing, the one that’d been born to the background music of sleepy sighs and minute shifts of bedsheets, and when the director looks at him, with so much surprise Kazuya ought to be affronted but for some reason isn’t, and asks him if he’d gotten his heart broken or something, Kazuya laughs.

Because he supposes, in a way he has.

***

Kominato Haruichi: we won :)

Kominato Haruichi: Eijun-kun did great, he closed for us both matches

Kominato Haruichi: fumbled a bit the first match but I think the win relaxed him for the second

Miyuki Kazuya: oh thank God

Miyuki Kazuya: how is he is he okay

Kominato Haruichi: well, he’s making cat-faces

Kominato Haruichi: so, yeah, he’s okay

***

Sawamura Eijun: WE WON

Sawamura Eijun: MIYUKI WE WON

Miyuki Kazuya: I don’t want to say I told you so

Miyuki Kazuya: But I told you so :P ;)

Miyuki Kazuya: EI-JUN.

Sawamura Eijun: yeah yeah

Sawamura Eijun: KA-ZU-YA

Chapter Text

Eijun tells him, one random day as they walk down a random street, talking about random things, that life is a fickle scriptwriter.

“Just making up subplots and abandoning them, putting in new characters and taking them away, misdirecting the crap out of the mains,” he chimes, around kitten licks at the whipped cream topping crepes he’d bought on a whim from a street-side vendor – he’d smiled cheerily at him, bowed a little in thanks, and had flounced off with a bounce to his steps when the vendor had given him a broad, crinkly-eyed smile and extra rainbow sprinkles ‘on the house’.

Occupied with his own, rainbow-sprinkle free crêpes, Kazuya doesn’t answer. He does turn the statement over in his head though, the crunch crunch crunch of his boots over crispy-thin layers of fast melting ice like the faint crackle of phone calls from far away.

He decides that, like most things, Eijun has just made a sweepingly profound statement about something much too big to be contained in words, but he’d managed it anyway.

Because, really, that’s what life is, isn’t it? A fickle scriptwriter. Not the type that sticks to the whole rising action climax falling action resolution formula Kazuya’s had to dabble in on those occasions his sound engineering course ran over into broadcast territory. Nothing is clean, there’s nothing formulaic about it, a dozen different plotlines happening at once, some of which will inevitably be left dangling, incomplete, and discarded in favour of another as the fancy strikes.

That’s probably why, even though Eijun’s team had made the quarter-finals, they’d lost at the semi-finals the very next day.

That’s probably why, even though Kazuya’d finally – finally – earned a place inside the recording studio, it isn’t as a producer, or even a producer’s assistant.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Eijun’d told him, endearingly sincere, doing the thing he does where he braces both his hands on Kazuya’s knees and leans into his space, and Kazuya’d thought it ironic, because it’s the same thing he’d been telling Eijun, the day he’d come home to find him hunched and still and cold, a patch of soggy wood cleared out on the bench he’d been barred from sitting at till winter passed.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Kazuya’d told him then, after working himself down from the frenzy of confused, chiding concern that’d made him grab Eijun under the armpits and bodily haul him to his apartment. Harucchi had already sent him a short, succinct message just barely laced with disappointment that they’d lost, and that Eijun was handling it better than expected, but it’d been far more unsettling to catch Eijun sitting there with his drooping frame, lifelessly still, than it would have been to catch him revving up for an anxiety attack. “You closed out those two matches, they trusted you to close out those two matches. Those were team wins. And this was a team loss. You guys got to the freaking semi-finals, that’s a pretty big deal.”

Eijun’d nodded, agreed with him even, but there’s little Kazuya could do to take away the sting of it, especially when it’d come so close to the finish line; Eijun isn’t the type to leash in his emotions, and it only made sense that if he went over-the-moon, tap-dancing-in-the-snow, dance-party-at-midnight-to-Final-Countdown type happy at winning, he’d be the exact opposite with defeat.

Glancing askance a little, watching Eijun nibbling at the honey-drizzled dough of his crêpe as they aimlessly wander, he’s glad that at least he’d not gone full catatonic.

A sad, miserable, silent Eijun is like a sunflower at night, and Kazuya doesn’t know of anything else so fundamentally wrong.

“What are you thinking about?” Eijun hums, after a while. Kazuya looks to find him licking off the slick shine of honey on his lips and unexpectedly trips over his own shoe.

Life’s a fickle scriptwriter, and it’s not like those cleanly laid out slice of life anime Eijun watches, where every problem, every moment, no matter how far down the line, has a resolution. Life’s a fickle scriptwriter, and there’s just too many things that happen at once without any rhyme or rhythm, and all you can do is cope, as best as you can.

“You,” he answers, shamelessly – partly because he’s being honest, and partly because he’d discovered that Eijun is surprisingly susceptible to cheesy one-liners, and Kazuya is surprisingly talented at dishing them out.

The pink flush that plunges straight past Eijun’s muffler is completely worth it.

***

There’s probably no such thing as the Right Time to stage an intervention.

It also doesn’t help that Kazuya’s not been looking forward to this at all.

There are sentiments that can be made into song, and Eijun may or may not have turned Kazuya into a ballad writer after all, but it doesn’t change the fact that Kazuya isn’t good at dealing with feelings. Not his own, and certainly not someone else’s. Despite what Kuramochi says – What do you call all your emotional support sessions then? Dates?! – and despite what Eijun himself says with his increasingly more verbal Thank yous and Sorrys, he doesn’t think he’s actually really done anything.

It’s chance that he’d shared experiences that let the two of them relate, to feel less lonely and understand where the other came from, and it’s chance that Kazuya’d stumbled into what Eijun fights in the dark.

Eijun’d say something about prevention and cure, but Kazuya only thinks that actually trying to help Eijun – actually trying to fix him, heal the broken bits and reverse the damage – falls laughably far out of his department.

But the thing is

Kazuya is going to try.

And he’s thinking about frozen caramel and the bone-deep, bile-churning reluctance that ticks and slow-counts in reverse, like a time-bomb, as he waits for his alarm to ring and resigns himself to another night lost when he takes the leap.

“Eijun…the next set of proper matches is in summer, right?”

Brown eyes look at him, flanked with red. Kazuya doesn’t know if they’re from crying or sleeplessness, or maybe both, and it mangles up his insides.

“Yeah…there’ll probably be a couple of scrimmages, but the next major tournament is in the summer.”

Nodding, Kazuya licks chapped lips. “Then…I think this is a good time, to go see a doctor.”

***

It doesn’t happen during that conversation, or even the half a dozen ones which follow.

“It’s a process,” Kuramochi tells him, with the certainty he himself does not have and desperately needs. “Keep at it, bro.”

And so he keeps at it.

It’s made both easier and difficult by the fact that Eijun concedes to his points, understands they are valid – but it all comes back to the same thing.

“What if they say I’m unfit to play?” Eijun blurts out one day, when their conversation had been inching dangerously close to the classification of an argument. Eijun’s volume is a couple of decibels higher than his indoor voice, and Kazuya – more anti-confrontational than anyone would believe a wise-guy like him can be – has to manually disengage all the support systems that try to automatically distance him from the situation. “What if the team finds out, or the journalists, and – what if they think…they think I need help?”

There’s nothing wrong with needing help, Kazuya wants to say back, to argue, but it’s pointless because he knows that Eijun knows this. They’ve discussed, many times before, handling the subject of rehabilitation with clinical dissociation, as though they’re the doctors, not the patients

(because it hits too close to home)

And they’ve both concluded, many times before, that it’s not the concept of rehabilitation that’s the problem, because the lord knows, things you can’t see, things that are simultaneously bigger than you are, consuming you heart and soul but at the same only existing, intangible, in your head – how do you cure things like that? What pills and injections and Band-Aids can blur out the pain when your scars are invisible?

It’s not the concept that’s the problem, it’s the stigma around it, and –

It’s just not fair.

To have to be so afraid, at the idea of healing.

It’s just not fair, and Kazuya thinks he’s never felt (never allowed himself to feel) this injustice so keenly.

“That’s not going to happen, Eijun,” he insists, straining to keep himself sedate, level-headed, when it’s only too easy to give in to the tension nipping through the air and respond in kind. “You’re holding up so well already, they’ll probably just ask you to meditate regularly or something – ”

“How do you know?” Eijun cuts in. He doesn’t look up from where he’s stooped by his closet, a pile of sweaters he’s going to pack into a suitcase for storage by his knees – spring is here, and with it is a balmy heat unnatural for this early in the year – but Kazuya can see his hands. He’s been trying to fold that same cardigan for the past three minutes. “How can you tell that, I – “

“Eijun.”

He watches the muscles of Eijun’s shoulder’s tense up, fingers lost clutching the woolly fabric in his hands.

Sighing, pushing a hand through his hair and encountering a faint sheen of sweat that shouldn’t be there in March – My room’s directly under the sun, it heats up like an oven, Eijun’d said, at a time when Kazuya could honestly not have fathomed he’d get to experience this phenomenon first hand – Kazuya walks over to where Eijun is crouched. “Look at me?”

There’s a split second where Kazuya thinks Eijun won’t, in a show of defiance, a fit of pique, but he knows better. Eijun isn’t angry –

He’s afraid.

And that detail puts everything into perspective.

Kneeling down beside him, walking his knees up until they bump to the side of Eijun’s thigh, he says, “You know this could get worse if we don’t do something about it,” he’s very careful about using ‘we’ whenever these discussions crop up – consoling people doesn’t come easy to him, so he’d turned to the Internet for pointers (and maybe it now comes to him a lot easier than he’d imagined it would, but he doesn’t have time to dwell on that), “You know that if it does, it’s going to be much harder to handle, right? So…even if it is just to get diagnosed, I think we should go. At least we’ll know what we’re dealing with.”

Eijun’s slouched up over his pile of probably-forgotten clothes, and he’s still not looking at Kazuya, and that stings, but Kazuya also understands. Kazuya relates, and that’s how he helps. That is how he can help.

Through trembling lips, Eijun asks, in a tight hushed voice coiled with tension, “But…what if we don’t know how to deal with it?”

Kazuya ventures out an arm, is heartened when Eijun doesn’t try to move away or stiffen when his fingers make contact with a tautly-drawn shoulder. Gripping there, he says, squeezing every bit of reassurance he can into his words, “We will. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out. We can tell them you’re an athlete, and they can tailor your prescriptions to meds that won’t get in the way of your training, and once you start getting better, maybe you won’t even need them anymore by the time the summer tournament rolls around…”

Technically, all he’s saying is superfluous. All he’s saying is stuff Eijun has probably, already, told himself. But Kuramochi tells him, Keep at it, bro, and repeats to him the things that Kazuya knows he must do, instructs him on the paces Kazuya has to put himself through, and maybe it’s superfluous, maybe it’s not, but sometimes it helps to have someone else echo the things you repeat round and round to yourself without conviction – it gives them a little more credence, a little more weight.

So he talks on, reassures, puts his arm more securely around Eijun’s shoulders and instinctively lets his fingertips find the knots furled tight in his muscles, gently coaxes them loose.

“I’m sor – ” Eijun starts to croak, and Kazuya beats him to it.

“Don’t be.”

***

“What do you think?”

It’s cold in the recording studio, and Kazuya would shoot Kuramochi a text complaining about this degree of arctic cool being the opposite to conducive for creativity, and Eijun a text with a snow-pun – winter’s slipped by and he’s yet to get a good one in, though he personally thinks the time he’d snuggled up to his boyfriend waggling his eyebrows saying I think we could help keep each other warm, if you catch my drift? deserves at least an honourable mention.

He does neither of these things, however, and focuses on keeping his expression politely impassive, blinking up from where he’d been checking the pitch of the audio layer they’d just recorded.

“About the song?” he asks, noncommittally, because now that he’s actually in here, sat at a proper, genuine mixing table he’d dreamed and dreamed of being able to fiddle with since high-school, he doesn’t want to jeopardise this opportunity.

Even if it means curbing the irrational, thoroughly mindless urge to lock himself up in here, the recording booth separated by a clear glass window beyond the mixing table empty, and devote the good part of a day tweaking all the dials and pushing every button, just for the heck of it.

The director under whose wing Kazuya has been placed of late, a tall guy with tan skin, the kind of looks that made one double-take in the street and wonder if he were maybe a veteran actor in war movies, and the somewhat strange fixation to wearing sunglasses indoors, smirks at him.

“About that,” he says, simply, waving a hand at the clear window – the recording booth, unlike most of Kazuya’s mad-scientist-in-recording-studio fantasies, is not empty; the microphone is being hogged by a guy who looks about Eijun’s age, blonde hair, blue eyes and the kind of infuriatingly cocky smile that would definitely make Kuramochi want to stick his foot out to trip him.

Kazuya, assuming Kataoka-san is referring to the sound sample they just collected and not their current artist’s insufferable personality, hedges just a bit before deciding to be honest. Kataoka Tesshin doesn’t sound like the kind of man to appreciate ingratiating yes-men, anyway. “It’s okay, but I think…the vocals in the bridge are too pitchy?” The number’s one of those emotional tracks about the bittersweet-ness of love, a sharp-progressing medley of abrupt high and low pitches and something about a door that opens both ways – Kazuya can’t tell, because the words dissolve into high-pitched mumbles by the time it gets to the hook, and he doesn’t have a copy of the lyrics.

He doesn’t realise he’s holding his breath until Kataoka-san graces him with a small, approving smile. “Agreed,” he says, with a curt nod, and crosses his arms back over after signalling at an almost insolently bored-looking Narumiya Mei –  From the top.

The blond flat out scowls, and Kazuya allows himself a moment’s smugness, because okay, so, maybe, honesty still does have its worth in this industry.

***

It doesn’t happen during this conversation, or the half a dozen that follow, but as Kuramochi’d said, it’s a process, and Kazuya’s a little relieved when it becomes a Group Effort.

“This can’t go on, Eijun-kun,” Harucchi tells him, over lunch at a tiny downtown ramen place where the conversation is as thick as the hazy, spice-scented smoke that hangs in the air. Even through it, the sharp bent of the pink-head’s eye is unwavering, softened only by the concern-heavy jut of his lower lip, “…we hate seeing you like this.”

Eijun winces, brows pulling in together in contrition, and is told to shut up – not unkindly – by his harmless looking best friend when he tries to apologise.

Kazuya, too, starts resorting to more personal persuasion – though his tactics lack finesse.

“You’ve not told you family about this yet, right? About your anxiety?” he insinuates, thinking he ought to be concerned how much easier it is to wield this little inference he’s made for himself than putting into words the way he hurts when Eijun hurts

(all those frozen caramel feelings that drip and stick and make everything irksome and sweet)

Eijun winces, and yes, Kazuya is the one causing the anguish he sees in his face, but this is how Kazuya operates best.

Blunt and straightforward without being blunt or straightforward at all.

“How long are you going to avoid going home because your mum is going to be scared to send you back, Eijun?” he pushes – pressures, actually, stretches elastic until it twangs and could snap. “How long are you going to stay away from Nagano even though you get so homesick?”

The elastic slips out of his fingers and contracts like whiplash, and Eijun curls into himself, and Kazuya’s heart fades out mid-beat at how suddenly small he looks.

“I don’t know,” he hears him whimper, from where his face is tucked into his knees – hushed and broken and piercingly hopeless, “I don’t know.”

Blunt and straightforward without being blunt or straightforward at all, Kazuya nurses the raw smarting throb pulsing in his throat, and cradles him into his arms, because he doesn’t know either, and that’s not good enough.

“Kazuya…” the murmur vibrates against his skin, where Eijun’s face is tucked near his nape. “I’m sorry.”

Kazuya swallows, hard, around the place his windpipe has evidently knotted up into itself. “Me too,” he mumbles, and pushes his mouth into Eijun’s hair.

***

“Kazuya…have you told your dad yet? That you’re going to co-produce the next album?”

It’d been relatively silent, Eijun attempting to get through some homework, Kazuya idly stretched back over the couch with YouTube on autoplay, earbuds tucked in. He still hears Eijun loud and clear, though.

“I’m not co-producing the album,” he corrects, tip-toeing around the question almost reflexively, “I’m just co-producing one song. That has, like, two other producers.”

Eijun’s brow is pinched. “So? It’s still something, it’s still a big deal!” he disputes, crossing his arms with a huff and more closely resembling a child’s temper tantrum than an adult trying to be taken seriously.

“And…” he fixes Kazuya with a look that quells the tiny amused smile that’d been picking at the edge of his lips at the image, “you’re dodging the question.”

“I’m not,” he denies, heedless to the fact that his denial is more of a confirmation than a confirmation could be.

Eijun fixes him with a pointed look, going so far as to fold down the top of the laptop he’d been working away at for emphasis, and Kazuya manages to hold the stare for all of seven seconds.

“It’s not a big enough deal for me to call him…” is what he mumbles, swinging his legs down from the couch, trying to get his body into a more imposing posture than half-reclining on a couch tangled in his own headphone’s wires.

Eijun clicks his tongue, a sharp, disbelieving noise. “Not a big enough deal?” he repeats, with the high stridence of one overcome with scepticism, “Your name is going to be in the credits of one of the tracks on Side A of one of the most anticipated albums of the season. How is that not a big enough deal?”

It’s distinctly disconcerting, experiencing both the warm eddies of flattery and the distress of being neatly caught under the beam of a high-powered interrogation room lightbulb.

Kazuya’s brain spazzes, jerking over speed-bumps.

Eijun takes advantage of this to creep closer.

Settling down cross-legged in front of him, he tips his head back to look Kazuya full in the face – his fringe fans back, leaving his forehead bare, the light slipping into the corners of his slightly-sunken eyes, the creases of his laugh-lines.

He places his hands, palms down, on Kazuya’s knees, the way he does, and leans a little into Kazuya’s space.

“He’d want to know, Kazuya,” Eijun hums, a low rumble that impossibly still manages to sound sweet.

He sounds so sure, Kazuya feels it hook into his stomach, tug him down. “I don’t know about that. He wasn’t keen on me going down this career path, remember?”

Eijun’s face says he begs to differ well before he spells it out. “Yes, but isn’t that what a lot of parents would do? Worry about whether or not their kid can make it out there, in the big bad world?” He’s shuffled forward now, raised himself just enough to fold his arms over Kazuya’s knees, and he rests his cheek on his makeshift pillow, peeking up at him with glittering eyes and a cryptic smile that’s not really cryptic, nor a smile. “…sometimes, we do the same for them, right?”

Sometimes, we do the same for them.

Kazuya’s fingers find home in Eijun’s spangled nest of hair, working out the tangles almost out of habit. Eijun lets out a noise faintly reminiscent of a content purr, tucks his face into the crook of his arms and sighs.

“He’s probably worried, about how you’re doing, if you’re happy,” Eijun continues, slurred murmurs spoken into the sleeve of his cotton shirt; Kazuya wonders if he’s angled his face away on purpose, to make this a bit easier on Kazuya, whose hand moves of its own accord, fluffing Eijun’s hair up until it looks like he’s got a bad case of static-head. “It’s…not like you’re trying to prove a point, Kazuya. Just let him know you’re doing well, and he’ll be happy about it. Happy for you.”

Life’s a fickle scriptwriter, and it’s not like those cleanly laid out slice of life anime Eijun watches, where every problem, every moment, has a resolution. Life’s a fickle scriptwriter, and there’s just too many things that happen at once without any rhyme or rhythm, and all you can do is cope, as best as you can.

“I’ll…tell him,” Kazuya says, and it sounds wavering and uncertain and unconvincing even to his own ears, “Just. Not yet.”

“Then when?”

Kazuya sighs out, a tremble of breath that stirs Eijun’s hair a little. He pats it back down, resumes brushing it, barely noticing how therapeutic the act has grown for him, too. “When I’m ready.”

When I’m sure this isn’t a fluke

When I know it’s enough

When he’ll be proud of me

“When will you be ready?” Eijun challenges, and Kazuya exhales the sharp gust of a laugh, because this is a song I know, and he’s taken back to an almost-winter evening in the courtyard, where they’d been playing catch and Eijun had been pulling down all the unnecessary Do Not Cross tapes he’d sanctioned himself off with, one by one.

“I don’t know,” he admits, quiet, his hand stilling in their ministrations when Eijun lifts his head back up to look him in the eye. Starry and sweet.

Eijun regards him for a moment, heavy, purplish lids drooping and lifting as though it costs effort, and for a moment Kazuya’s not sure if he’s even seeing him, if he’s just slipped into that grey-space an insomniac knows only too well, before his mouth parts around words that ring with portentous weight.

“Don’t keep him waiting.”

***

It’s doesn’t happen during that conversation, or the one after it, or the one after, but they’re getting close, and it’s a process, and Kazuya’d not realised it was a process for the both of them.

“I…,” Kazuya murmurs, the hesitance catching in his voice, standing out, the single lit window in a courtyard walled in by dark ones. He’d slipped into one of his lighter jackets and forayed outside on a hunch, and sure enough, there Eijun’d been – vaguely lit by a lamp that seemed to be nearing the end of its tether, deepening the inky blackness of shadows more that illuminating anything else.

Eijun, who’d simply shimmied to the side to make space for him on the bench and said nothing else, tips his head at him.

“It was a long time,” he starts again, gravelly, wishing he could be more artful, wishing there was some kind of formula that lets you translate a handful of tangled-up emotions into concise, intelligible sentences, “A long, long time, before I gave in and looked up over-the-counter sleeping pills.”

Eijun says nothing. His head dips low, faint dark-tinged gold catching the wispy strands of his fringe. They’ve had the discussion about the sleeping pills before – about their pros and cons and about the placebo effect and about dependency and overdosing, but

Never this.

“It felt like…giving in, you know? Felt like losing. Like, in the end, I didn’t have everything in control. Like it was all pointless anyway. Like…” he struggles, both with the words, and with the tightness closing down on his windpipe, throttling him almost tenderly. “Like jumping into the dark without knowing if I’d ever land. Without knowing if I could…go back.”

Unease gnaws inside the walls of his tummy, and his hand seeks Eijun’s out, unseeing.

When Eijun’s fingers wind, without missing a beat, around his, the gnawing subsides a little.

The scratchiness is his throat persists though.

“But, in the end,” he croaks, lining up the thoughts and letting them find their way out, absently rubbing his thumb over Eijun’s wrist, feeling the pulse there, “it was a compromise, wasn’t it? In the end, I was still too afraid to go have a professional spell out in black-and-white why the hell I can’t sleep at night even if I’m bone-fucking-tired, and settled for harmless enough sleeping pills that do nothing except make it a little more bearable.”

And then you came along, he almost wants to say – feels the delirious little giggle fizzle out behind his teeth at how fucking cheesy it sounds, like it’s a line plucked out of a Disney movie handcrafted specifically for teenage girls.

What he says, though, is, “I...don’t blame you for not wanting to go, Eijun. If I did, I’d be a hypocrite.” The hand clasping Eijun’s is sweaty, because it’s way too early to be this hot and damn it, it’s the global warming, Kuramochi’d opined during their last phone call, and frankly, it’s gross, but he doesn’t let go – neither does Eijun. “But…that doesn’t change the fact that I still want you to go through with it.”

There’s an interlude, and then Eijun says what they both already know.

“I’m scared, Kazuya.”

The grip on his hand is white-knuckled, the voice speaking to him quiet and tremulous…and defeated.

Sunflowers at night, Kazuya thinks, and thinks also that he’s an idiot to try and erase a concept this real and concrete just because he doesn’t like it. You don’t get to pick and choose, you don’t get to separate the bad from the good, you don’t get to hold on to the Sawamura Eijun who alternates between Eye of the Tiger and Chariots of Fire when he goes jogging so I can pretend it’s a movie scene!, and cross out the Sawamura Eijun who sits outside at 3.33 a.m., unafraid of ghosts and demons because he’s familiar with so many of his own.

I’m scared, Kazuya, Sawamura Eijun of the starry eyes and sunny smiles admits, and they’re one and the same and Kazuya’s in so, so deep.

“I know,” Kazuya says, and it’s coarse and it’s brittle, but Kazuya is past pretences now,

(Maybe it’s the darkness helping)

(Maybe it’s the fact that it’s easier to be vulnerable when you’re not the only one being vulnerable)

“but I still wish you’d go. Whether they prescribe you meds, or therapy sessions, or even rehab. Whether it means you have to put your pro-career on hold or end up being more stressed trying to juggle treatment and practice. Whatever it is, however hard it is, just. As long as…as long as it makes you better.”

(Collective pronouns be damned)

(Kazuya knows he can’t help)

(Kazuya knows he isn’t enough)

(But)

But

Kazuya could wax poetic about frozen caramel feelings all he damn well pleases, but the crux of the matter is, he loves Eijun.

He’s in love with him.

And if he can’t be the one stitching Eijun together and putting on his bandages, at least he wants to be the one who gets to sit there and hold his hand through it.

***

Eijun’s stubborn about it, makes the call to fix an appointment himself, although he leaves the room to do it. Kazuya supposes it’s a concession he’s making, with himself, to feel more in control of a situation he doesn’t really think he’s in control of.

Kazuya’s fine with that.

He’s less fine with Eijun going for the first consultation alone.

“Oh my God, can you stop being the overly attached boyfriend now, please?” Kuramochi chides, and there’s no trace of humour or mischief-laced teasing in there. Somehow, that just makes it worse. “He’s not going to want to unload all his deepest, darkest emotions with you there in front of him.”

“I know that,” Kazuya retorts, easily convincing himself that he did not, in fact, just whine.

It’s a little less easy to convince himself that he doesn’t feel a little bit wounded, though.

Kuramochi must pick up on that, because he harrumphs, “You’re not MOPING, now, are you?”

Kazuya takes a break from prowling the short length of his hall like a fidgety, caged animal to disclaim, “I’m not. I’m just. I’m worried.”

This time Kuramochi sounds a little gentler when he speaks. Not even patronising. Kazuya half-wishes he would be patronising, because then he could funnel a bit of his aggravation at him, instead. “I get that you’re worried. It’s UNDERSTANDABLE that you’re worried. But you also understand that this is something easier done when a stranger is involved, right?”

Of course he understands. Kazuya’d spent numerous phone-calls giving Kuramochi the same rationale, fielding all his (infuriatingly accurate) guesswork that Kazuya may or not be harbouring a crush on his neighbour in the early days of his and Number 18’s acquaintance.

He also understands that now Eijun’s no longer Number 18, and they’re no longer acquaintances, and that’s flipped the equation a little bit – made them both a little more prone to refraining from letting show how…damaged, they really are. The flaws, the shortcomings

(all those reasons Eijun might think he isn’t worth it)

(all the reasons that keep him apologising)

that same excruciating feeling of inadequacy, of insecurity, of wanting not to be a burden and wanting not to inflict your hurt on your loved ones – everything that had kept Eijun from telling his mum in spite of all the times she worriedly comments that he sounds tired, are you sleeping well, are you eating well, Eijun, when are you going to come home?; that he’s not, actually, perfectly OKAY, Mum, don’t worry!

He knows all this, and thinks Life has as much a twisted preference for irony as it is fickle and prone to whimsy, and sometimes it just gets overwhelming, and so he badgers and rants at Kuramochi some more, if only for catharsis, and Kuramochi, despite his general air of can you please stop acting like a needy child Miyuki Kazuya, humours him.

***

Eijun doesn’t text when he’s done with his session, as he’d promised he would.

He just shows up at his apartment two seconds from Kazuya working himself into a stress-induced seizure.

Miraculously (and against himself) Kazuya forgives him almost as soon as Eijun steps through the door and into his personal space, tucking himself into all those grooves he fits so well into.

“You said you’d call me.” He’s not whining (yes, he is).

“Sorry,” Eijun mumbles into his shirt. His breath is moist and warm through the fabric, and Kazuya jolts only a little before he walks them backward, still linked together in an awkward hug, using the tips of his toes to swing the door shut. “I was just so…I don’t know. I felt kind of muddled and just wanted to get straight home.”

Unsure of what to make of this, Kazuya ventures, almost timid, “…how did it go?”

Eijun doesn’t say anything immediately, but his body language is neither the fervent stream of movement it is when he’s anxious, nor the rigid tension of wound-up springs when he’s resisting something he finds unpleasant. He just seems…weary, the kind of loose-limbed exhaustion you’d expect from someone who’s had a long, taxing day.

It allows Kazuya to breathe just a little easier, though he doesn’t relax completely until Eijun admits, tipping his chin forward so his head hinges back, eyes peeking up at him, “It went...okay, I think.”

Brown eyes flanked with red, and Kazuya knows this time that he’d cried, and he’s entirely conflicted by how this makes him feel. Gingerly he reaches for the raw-red patches under Eijun’s eyes, and lets out a watery sounding laugh when Eijun crinkles his nose up at him in distaste.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Eijun appears to contemplate for a second, and Kazuya sees what he means – he looks tired, too, more than a little dazed, freckles standing out in that unhealthy way they do when he’s gone too long without rest, skin sallow and lined. But then he nods, and smiles a small smile, and pulls Kazuya to the couch where he huddles close to his side.

***

Two ‘little talks’ twice a week, and a handful of pills Eijun comes bearing three sheets of prescription notes for, tucked into a little cardboard folder bearing the medical centre’s emblems and Eijun’s details on a paper stick-on.

“I have to take them at the prescribed times, a couple of times a day,” Eijun says, pulling at the hem of his shirt – it’s a nervous tick, Kazuya’s discovered, a thing he does to keep his hands busy. “And not just when I’m about to have or am having a panic attack.”

Just in case, Kazuya, with more than a healthy dose of scepticism for industrially produced drugs, powers up his laptop and conducts a little swift research on the list of barely legible, unnecessary complicated names scrawled in Eijun’s file – the trade names, active ingredients, dosages.

“You didn’t get any of them yet?”

A pause. “No.”

Kazuya’s about to look at him, thinks twice about it – keeps his gaze trained on a blank white space on his laptop screen, and asks as evenly as he can, “Will you?”

Another pause.

A sigh.

The feel of arms twining around his shoulders from behind, Eijun barely leaning his weight on his back from where he’s sitting on the couch. “I guess I have nothing to lose by trying, right?”

***

Later, Eijun’ll talk about the first step being the hardest, and Kazuya will think of sentiments that can be made into songs.

***

About three weeks and two days after Eijun starts visiting his doctor – Rei-chan, he’s started calling her affectionately, and Kazuya has to occasionally remind himself that Eijun calls everyone affectionately, including Kuramochi, at this point, who’d so seamlessly become Mochi-san the guy himself doesn’t recall when he’d approved being addressed thus – Eijun falls asleep all by himself for a total of seven hours, give or take the half a minute where he’d just sat up, stared around him trance-like and a little wild-eyed, and collapsed straight back down.

Kazuya knows, because Eijun’d been in his flat killing time while Kazuya worked on extending his ode to Yellow Submarine, and one minute he’d been chattering about how Eleanor Rigby used to scare him when he was a kid, and the next he’d been knocked fresh out cold on the couch, snoring lightly. The next morning, he’d heaved himself upright from the depths of couch cushions Kazuya’d not had the heart to try and retrieve him from when he’d been sleeping so soundly, and just sat there with crazy bed-head and a blank expression, one that Kazuya learns over the course of the next couple of days is simply the routine occurrence of Eijun buffering himself back into the real-world after a good night’s snooze.

(It quickly becomes Kazuya’s favourite sight in the world)

***

About four weeks and two days after Eijun starts visiting his doctor, he meekly inquires if Kazuya’d like to sit in on one of his sessions, because Rei-chan is walking him through Involvement and asked if there’s anyone she could speak to who helps him handle his anxiety, and it’s not Kazuya’s fault the visitor’s settee in her office is so cramped that he has to keep his arm stretched out against the backrest, behind Eijun, the entire time.

(neither him, nor ‘Rei-chan’, judging by that knowing smile and shrewd people-reading eyes, believes that)

(but)

(You know what? Who cares.)

Kazuya openly holds Eijun’s hand all the way back home, and Eijun swings their linked fingers between them, fervidly making his case for why Gloom, that drooly mushroom Pokémon Eijun doubles back to catch right outside the clinic, is, indeed, very cute, Kazuya, don’t discriminate.

As they wait for their bus, and Kazuya’s checking his phone for messages, he feels a tug at his hand.

“Hmm?”

Eijun does that thing he does, where his chin is tipped low, and he’s squinting up at him through his eyelashes.

Timid.

Shy –

(Damn)

cute

“I’m…” he takes in a slow, audible breath, and immediately belts it out in a garbled slew of words, “Thank you, for coming. And for just. Being with me. I troubled you a great deal and I was difficult and stubborn and I’m – I’m sorr – “

Kazuya cuts him off with a boop to the nose, harder than necessary.

Thinks, what the hell, and mellows it down with a tiny kiss to his forehead.

“I’m not,” he says – partly because he’s being honest, and partly because he’d discovered that Eijun is surprisingly susceptible to cheesy one-liners, and Kazuya is surprisingly talented at dishing them out.

And so he keeps dishing them out, in lieu of the three words that would convey the same sentiment just as well, and relishes in the way it makes Eijun blush.

***

About eight weeks and two days after Eijun starts visiting his doctor, he explodes into Kazuya’s flat using the spare key he’d given him for the very first time.

“The qualifiers,” he squeaks, pitchy and a little nasal, eyes wide and panicky – he barely appears to register that Kazuya’d been in the process of salvaging the rice he’d attempted to cook, which has, yet again, taken on the appearance of lumpy porridge instead. “The first match – they’re. I’m. Kazuya, I’m opening.”

It’s a lot to process in one go, the impossible to nail ratio of water to rice baffling Kazuya as it has been baffling him since he’d let Eijun talk him into maintaining a healthier diet than his standard instant ramen and canned coffee meal plan – what we eat contributes to how well we can sleep too, Rei-chan said so! – and slowing down his reaction time.

“That’s…a good thing, right?” he hazards, a little dubious, because he’s been given to believe that the choice of pitcher to kick off the first inning is critical to gameplay strategy, by the very person standing there looking at him as though he’s just received a missive about the end of the world rescheduled to tomorrow.

“It…” Eijun looks conflicted, wringing his hands, lower lip already bitten raw. Kazuya leaves what’s inevitably going to become another night’s savoury porridge dinner to shift around the counter and toward him, reaching and gently prying those hands apart, almost out of habit. “It is. It…the coach said he’s counting on me.”

“Mmhmm,” Kazuya hums, running a quick, subtle appraisal – Eijun’s flushed, crimson cheeked, and even though his hands fidget in his grasp, they don’t shake. “I bet he is. Otherwise he wouldn’t make you start, right? He wants someone who can get them an early lead.”

Eijun lets out an entirely anguished groan.

Kazuya isn’t fazed. “Aren’t you happy?” he probes, tipping his head in imitation of the way Eijun tips his when he infallibly pierces straight through Kazuya’s inhibitions, in that unerring way that he does. He raises an eyebrow for effect.

“I am,” Eijun whimpers, the complete antithesis of what happiness should sound like, “but…I also lowkey kind of want to faint and fall off the edge of the world.”

Kazuya can’t help it. He snorts.

The affronted look Eijun shoots him makes it worse.

“It’s not my fault,” he whinges, trying to snag his hands free from Kazuya’s indignantly; Kazuya just tightens his hold. “I’ve never started on this team before! I’m nervous!”

And Kazuya can’t help but laugh again, because Eijun’s mouth has puckered into a mutinous frown, the pink high up his cheekbones ripening and reaching lower, firecracker eyes narrowed at him, and he relishes getting to say, “That’s how you’re supposed to feel, Ei-chan ~ ”

Eijun just slits his eyes at him, baleful, but there’s a light in those eyes, and it’s not the fever-bright one that used to greet him in the middle of nights neither of them could sleep, nights spent picking apart the strings of fraying sanity

(idle hands, devil’s workshop)

And

“Oh God,” Eijun groans suddenly, and bumps his head into Kazuya’s chest, buzzing under his grip, “I’m gonna have to go jogging in the mornings again.”

“Count me out.”

“I hate you.”

***

Life, Kazuya thinks, doesn’t deal wins in a straight row.

That would be luck, and cynics like him don’t believe in luck. Don’t believe in attributing what they accomplish to some third-party, magnanimous force in the universe they couldn’t even conclusively prove exists.

Life doesn’t deal wins in a straight row, and that’s why, even though Eijun’s doctor appointments have gone from twice in a week to once in two weeks to once in a month, he still has to go.

That’s why, even though Eijun opens for the qualifier matches and is slated to open and maybe close for the quarter-finals, he doesn’t get to play all nine innings – especially not as ace.

That’s why, even though Kazuya gets roped into producing his very own song for the album poised to launch early next year, it’s a single about five tracks down on Side A, and the collaborating artist is Narumiya Of Course It Would Be Him Mei.

Either Kataoka Tesshin isn’t as perceptive as Kazuya’d assumed him to be, or the guy’s a full-on sadist.

“Karma is real,” he grumbles to Kuramochi, who’s too preoccupied with Kazuya’s record deal opportunity to have time for mediocrities like the conceited little pretty boy who is entirely too full of himself to let this work out without Kazuya having to entertain lurid plots of murder in his head to cope.

“Stop bitching and count your blessings,” Kuramochi snaps at him, flicking his straw in his direction – sprays of his drink, the bright dishwasher liquid green mocktail Kazuya suspects he ordered just because of the colour, splat into his white shirt-sleeve.

Kazuya glares, Kuramochi grins wolfishly, and they wring out the usual conversation shortlists they reserve for lunch – Kazuya’s overly cold studio, Kuramochi’s upcoming mixtape, the sketchy rumour that Jun-san has a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Who knows.

“Speaking of boyfriends,” Kuramochi segues neatly into the next lane, as though he’d not been building up towards this from the beginning. “How’s it going with yours?”

“Better,” Kazuya spears pan-grilled broccoli with the tines of his fork, forgoing his usual fat-loaded menu preferences for something that fits the meal plan he and Eijun (mostly Eijun) had decided to stick to until New Year’s. Maybe it’s a question of acquired taste, or maybe it’s because between the two of them their cooking skills are at best abysmal and at worst unpalatable, but he quite likes this. Maybe they can have a date night pan-grilling veggies, it shouldn’t be too tough, right? “Much better.”

He could go into detail, about how the outbursts of wracking anxiety have gone from every other night to every other week, and never of the degree of intensity Kazuya’s sometimes seen them – he could go into detail, about how Eijun comes home so wrung out from practice and all the extra hours he puts into the bull-pen pitching his arm off that there are days he just collapses into Kazuya’s couch or his bed and is out cold in seconds.

He could go into detail about how the bags around Eijun’s eyes have faded just enough to not make him look so sickly and tired anymore, how his complexion glows the way it does when he laughs or when Panic! At the Disco come on the radio, except almost all the time now; how he’s grown past the inhibitions that’d keep him from discussing his consultations, how he’d bring them up, now and again, with the luxury and security of hindsight, with both Kazuya and, tentatively, his family.

He could go into detail about how he thinks things like this never completely leave, that splash of mud on your shirt you could scrub and scrub for hours and days and which would still leave behind the vaguest shadows of its presence –

But Eijun is healing, and it’s the most glorious thing.

He could talk about all that, decides there’s no way he possesses the eloquence or the overt sentimentality to be able to relay all that without embarrassing himself, and chooses to nod in the face of Kuramochi’s questioning stare.

Kuramochi, as it were, is appeased. He takes a moment to chomp on his slow-cooked ribs – he’d gone all out today, in the name of celebration (but mostly because Kazuya’s paying) – before casually informing him, “You look better too.”

He immediately feels impelled to slather this thoughtful remark with, “Y’know. Less dead and prone to go on a homicidal killing spree.”

“I might still go on a homicidal killing spree,” Kazuya reminds him, though he can’t help the twist of his lip around which he says it – Kuramochi has a weird way of showing he cares, and Kazuya has a weird way of acknowledging it, but that’s not to say he doesn’t appreciate the concern.

“Doesn’t count as a killing spree if it’s one person,” Kuramochi points out, sagely, and ignores the waitress who gives them an odd look in passing – he slurps some more of his toxic-looking, artificially coloured poison, and then, “But…I’m glad.”

Kazuya snorts. “That I might go on a killing spree?”

“No, you ass-hat,” the eye-roll he gets is quite impressive, considering Kuramochi is also simultaneously flushing, the fluster bugging out the effect of his smooth, careless drawl, “that. You know. You don’t look like you’re gonna fall out of the next train home and get yourself flattened.”

Kazuya grimaces. “Thank you for that mental image.”

“You know what I mean.”

“They’d trace it back to you – all those threatening texts about punching my face in – ”

“That’s why I said I’m glad, idiot, it’s in my own best interest.”

“’course it is.”

“It is.”

***

A few evenings on marks the first summer storm of the season.

“What are you doing?” Eijun meanders over, and Kazuya lets out a grunt when the southpaw decides to drape his weight over his back without warning.

“Tryna work on that song.”

“Oh,” Eijun hums – Kazuya feels the single syllable travel through him, courtesy of the currently very distracting fact that Eijun’s front is plush against his back, and Eijun’d decided to accost him right after a shower, which meant that factoring in the cocktail of steam and damp pressure and body heat and apple-scented shampoo, and Kazuya is suddenly experiencing sensory overload, “The one for the Annoying Guy?”

That’s how Eijun’s resorted to referring to Narumiya Mei now, and even through his currently beclouded brainwaves, he’s stupidly gratified that Sawamura Eijun, who has quite an impressive bank of musical trivia, has no clue who the rising heartthrob of screaming pre-teens is.

“The one for the Annoying Guy,” he parrots, conflicted when Eijun peels himself away again, presumably to let Kazuya work (do I want to work right now can I work right now the bathroom probably smells like apple shampoo - )

“Put a jacket on, you’ll get cold,” he ends up advising, as Eijun crosses into his line of sight – he’s wearing a set out of the changes of clothes he’s started leaving at Kazuya’s place, a short-sleeved shirt that leaves the stark line separating his deepening tan from the paler skin untouched by the sun.

Eijun hums and wanders off in the direction where the washing machine is rattling, among its contents the jacket Eijun’d previously been wearing when he’d decided the summer’s first rain warranted him totally getting soaked to the skin under it.

Kazuya’d said something about, I guess this makes you a Storm Trooper, and had been rewarded with an Eijun with hair plastered to his forehead and the back of his neck and clothes plastered to his skin, somewhat resembling a drowned puppy, breaking out into a hysterical fit that makes him lean on the doorjamb to support buckling knees over a joke that definitely wasn’t that funny.

Kazuya only grows aware of the grin pulling at his mouth when Eijun has to repeat himself, a tad louder from the kitchen, to get himself heard.

“I said, what’s this song about?”

“Oh…well, the director wants something slightly more…mature,” Narumiya’s appeal amongst the younger female market, while a lucrative crowd, missed the mark a little (a lot) from what the studio were going for, “something that sounds mature, at least, but will probably be lumped with innocuous enough lyrics to not be censored or get all PG13.” Kataoka Tesshin might know a thing or two about good music, but the guy was still a businessman, through and through.

Kazuya is, strangely, not put off as he once used to be by the blatant monetizing concerns that went into putting out music.

“Something…sensual?” Eijun guesses, thoughtful, as he ambles back into the room. He pushes a mug of tea toward Kazuya, and then wraps both his hands around his own mug. He’d foregone a jacket and brought out the throw they’d frequently snuggled under last year, before the season had changed. “Do you have anything in mind?”

Pulling a face, Kazuya half-shrugs. “In the process of getting there, I guess.” And then, “Wanna help me brainstorm?”

Eijun, all soft and fuzzy and snug and all-round distracting, lights up and shifts closer.

“It doesn’t matter what the lyrics say, if the tune manages to capture the…I don’t know, that…bewitching feeling,” Eijun is saying, using both his hands to full effect. His expressions are animated, and he glows, radiates the kind of light that makes Kazuya think of lost boats and siren songs. “Like…you know that one Enigma song? Sadeness?”

Kazuya nods.

“Like that,” Eijun breathes, emphatic. “I swear I still don’t have any clue what the song is even saying…is it French?” he tacks on doubtfully, then shakes his head, deciding that’s not pertinent right now, “Anyway…I have no idea what it’s about, but when I first heard it, it was like…” More spastic hand movements, more animated expressions, “like I got goosebumps all over. Like, say what you will about song structure, but it just…it completely caught me off guard and gave me the chills.”

Unsurprising, Kazuya thinks, considering the song in question’d revolved around exploring the sexuality of one Marquis de Sade, and pretty bold when you look at the choir-inspired chants incorporated as the predominant tempo – but that’s not what has Kazuya preoccupied.

It’s the idea of Eijun talking about.

Well.

Eijun being turned on.

By music.

“Desert Rose by Sting was also like that for me,” Eijun is continuing, unawares to the bizarre guilt-spiked adrenaline rush he’s induced in Kazuya; the throw’s fallen off his shoulders, unable to keep up with his enthused gestures, and Kazuya is not staring at his tan lines (Kazuya is the worst kind of liar because he lies to himself) “and…that one song by Roxette? Actually, the 90s were probably a pretty good time for these kinda…sultry beats, y’know? Maybe you could do something 90s’ pop-inspired, people would probably not even care about the lyrics once the tune sticks.”

“Mmhmm. Eijun, come here a second.”

Eijun, who’d been getting into it with gusto, looks a bit confused but obliges. He shuffles forward on his knees, fingers knotted into the hem of the throw and –

Kazuya wastes no time in yanking it away.

“Wait, wh – ?” Eijun’s voice is a yelp, understandable because Kazuya’d just wrapped his hands around his waist and tugged him cleanly into his lap. The apple-scented steam and damp body-heat are both back, sedating Kazuya as effectively as any anaesthetic could, “K – Kazuya.” He squirms, whether trying to shift into or out of the hands sneaking under his shirt still up for debate. “Aren’t you supposed to be working?”

“I am working,” Kazuya deadpans, a lot more evenly than he feels – in fact, he’s pretty sure his blood pressure has spiked to singularly hazardous levels, yet he can’t be bothered to care. “I’m looking for inspiration.”

He gets a withering glare at this – it goes mostly over his head, so he zooms in to peck at moist red lips anyway.

“Kazuya, seriously,” Eijun squawks, scandalised, but he giggles when Kazuya nips at his earlobe when he ducks his mouth out of reach, and all that does is make Kazuya think stupid thoughts, like how he ought to look into getting the royalties for Eijun’s giggles, get it all copyrighted and hold on to the rights for the rest of his – “You’re slacking! Don’t be irresponsible!”

Almost unbeknownst to himself, he pulls an expression uncannily resembling Eijun’s best puppy-dog pout. “It’s not like I have to be working,” he wheedles, skittering fingertips in between the dips of Eijun’s ribs and biting his lip when it makes Eijun squeeze his eyes shut, chest starting to heave, “I can do it later, too.”

And as much as he’s got not-so-ulterior-motives on the line, this isn’t a lie.

Later, Kazuya’ll think about breathless giggles and sun-kissed skin and put together a song in his head he’ll ultimately decide to keep to himself, because no way is Narumiya Mei getting anywhere near it.

Later, Kazuya’ll snuggle into the concave of Eijun’s sleeping back the way he has been for the past couple of months, sometimes sleep drifting out of reach for hours before swooping in on him unexpected, sometimes luring him in almost at once because he’s so spent divvying time between work and Eijun.

Later, Eijun may or may not start awake in the middle of the night in the throes of one of those rare, far-between bouts of nerves, fidgeting with the covers and his hair and Kazuya’s shirt as he frets about upcoming matches and near futures before he wears himself back down to sleep.

Later, Kazuya will look at his phone and find a text message from his dad, and hope that eventually, their interactions will get less stilted and awkward, and the lightening weight on his conscience will lift entirely.

“Later?” Eijun echoes, misty-eyed and pretty, sunshine on a rainy day.

“Later,” Kazuya hums back, because now he can, because he’s learning, day by day, to live in the moment without feeling as though he's losing out on something, and he may not yet be an expert, but as he leans in and lets the sun encompass him, he thinks this, right here, is living.