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Sometime in the night, Chris wakes to the muffled sound of a baseball game. The sheets beside him are warm, dotted with a few crumbs, and when he breathes in he can smell what must have been maple syrup. He presses his finger to a bit of crumb, then licks it off. Pancakes. Zaizen likes to eat in bed when Chris is asleep; he says it's teenage rebellion on Chris's behalf. Chris doesn't really mind, but he wishes Zaizen would clean up after himself.
From the living room, quiet cheering. Chris recognises the voice of the announcer complimenting the squeeze play. It's a recording of a Koushien game, and— he checks the date on his phone just in case— not one from their generation. Zaizen only really gets in his one of his Moods when it's summer, and that's a while off yet.
He sits up, stretching his shoulder, and turns his head to look at Zaizen's pillow. It's twice the size it was when they'd gone to bed, its paisley pattern having ballooned into something almost grotesque. The pillow shivers in protest when he gets his hand near it. Chris swallows his distaste and grips it firmly, ignoring the way it squirms in his fingers. He gets out of bed and sets it on the windowsill. At the first touch of moonlight, there's a faint wheezing noise, and oily black clouds seep out to fade into nothingness. Chris waits until he's sure everything is gone, then returns the now normally-sized pillow to the bed. The pancake crumbs he brushes off onto the floor to sweep up in the morning.
The floorboards are still cold. Chris slips his feet into his house slippers and pads to the living room. Zaizen is draped across the sofa, phone in hand and not paying attention to the television.
"Good morning," Chris says, pushing Zaizen's legs off the end of the sofa so he can sit down.
"It's night, idiot," Zaizen tells him, swinging his legs back up and settling them in Chris's lap. "I'll make more pancakes after this song." He wiggles his toes meaningfully, and Chris smiles. When it's cold, like today, Zaizen's old injury acts up and the ache spreads from his knee all the way down the rest of his leg. It took a long time for him to admit he likes having Chris massage the tension out, but now it's become just another part of their routine. Chris puts both his hands on Zaizen's feet and is rewarded with a soft sigh.
"I thought Tanba's present seemed to be working," he says, looking sidelong at Zaizen's face. Talking to him when he's absorbed in something is an exercise in futility, but this odd hour before dawn is the only time Chris can broach the topic without running into a wall. Zaizen is frowning at his phone screen, the colours of his rhythm game reflecting off his eyes. As usual, he's playing with the sound off.
"A bit," answers Zaizen after a moment, thumbs still going on his screen. "Don't think it's meant for my kind of problem."
Chris presses his knuckle into the arch of Zaizen's left foot. "It's still bad, then?"
Zaizen doesn't answer immediately. The game on the television is in the top of the ninth inning. Chris watches the shortstop field a grounder and wing it to first, rolling Zaizen's ankle in his hands. They seem so impossibly young. After all these years it doesn't sting anymore to see people stand on the stage neither of them could make it to— not for him, at least. Zaizen holds his hurts much longer. That's why he still watches recordings when the nightmares wake him up. That's why the muscles in his leg are still tensed, as though he wants nothing more than to run from this conversation. Chris grips harder.
"Stop trying to force it," Zaizen says, putting his phone down. "You know your thing doesn't work with my leg."
"I don't have to stop trying." It comes out a great deal sharper than he intended it to be. He looks up at Zaizen, whose jaw is clenched. It's always there, this almost tangible crack. A line between Zaizen who lets go and Chris who never does.
"I'm sorry," Chris murmurs. He spreads his fingers across Zaizen's kneecap, white light glowing through his skin. Another useless effort. Zaizen's injury is made of the same slick blackness that haunts him at night, that Tanba's pillow doesn't seem to have helped with. Chris doesn't know how to fix it.
"Are you," says Zaizen, so tiredly that Chris's hands go still at once. "I know you as well as you know me, Takigawa."
"Not for trying, no," Chris agrees. He lets the glow leach out of him and into the rest of Zaizen's leg, where there isn't the thick film of black clinging to the bones. The muscles loosen, and Zaizen closes his eyes. His hand lies palm up on his thigh, an invitation that Chris gladly takes. He is always touched by how their fingers lace together as if they were made to fit just so. Now, he watches the way Zaizen's eyes can't be at rest behind his eyelids, and sighs. "I'm sorry that it hurts you." That I hurt you, hangs unsaid.
Zaizen's fingers tighten around his. "Meddling bastard," he grumbles, the curse made soft by years of closeness. "See if you get any breakfast."
"I was promised pancakes."
"Said I'd make them, not that they were for you."
Chris crinkles his eyes at Zaizen. "I'll eat them anyway."
A loud cheer from the television makes them both flinch; the game has ended, 4-3 to Komadai Fujimaki. Zaizen jabs at the remote on the coffee table with his toe and manages to flick it off.
"Right," he says then, arching his back in a stretch like a cat, spine clicking as he does, "well, we're out of syrup, so."
"The disappointment will kill me," says Chris. He lets Zaizen clamber off the sofa and wander into the kitchen. He walks without a limp, or really any sign that he isn't perfectly healthy, and it galls Chris to know that perhaps something could have been done had he caught it earlier. There's so much rot still left to heal. How long must it have been festering, before Chris woke up the first time and caught him in the midst of it.
"I can hear you thinking from in here." Zaizen's voice sounds fervently annoyed. Chris supposes he deserves it. "Get off the sofa and make your own damn pancakes."
"Coming," says Chris, and he sets aside his fears to worry at later, when the apartment is empty and Zaizen is not a bright spot of warmth swearing at the pantry.
He's learned, after all, to live in the present.