Work Text:
Kakeru equates Haiji to the sun one day.
He whispers it between the wisps of steam that thread themselves into his eyelashes, mug of tea clasped tightly between two hands. The admission comes in a quiet rush of air—suddenly—and despite the profoundness of Kakeru’s poetic analogy, Haiji finds that he can’t seem to tear his eyes from Kakeru’s knuckles, of all places—littered with small, healing cuts from where the winter air bites into his hands as he runs because no matter how much Haiji nags, Kakeru always forgets to put on gloves before practice.
You’re wrong, is what he wants to say, chin perched on his palm as he wordlessly traces a light finger over the scabs on Kakeru’s hands one, by one, by one.
He wants to ask why, because sure—sunlight is warm on your skin and it’s nurturing and people equate sunshine with cheerfulness , but truthfully, Haiji is none of those things. The residents at Aotake like to call him an ogre , but if they think he’s tenacious now there is no doubt they would have cowered in his wake back in the day.
Not the sun, but a flaming asteroid that hurtled itself through the cosmos, faster and faster, futilely chasing empty infinities until it inevitably burned up into nothingness from the curse of its own speed.
His knee throbs dully under the table as if he needs the reminder of how it was the sun that melted Icarus’ wings of wax until he fell, plummeting into the icy waters below. It goes without saying that Icarus never flew again — though Haiji wonders, if given the chance, how much Icarus would have fought to don his wings even one last time. To taste the sky that he loved so much just once more . If he had known that flight would have been his last, would he still have risked everything for that single moment of hubris masked as greatness?
There’s a reason why Haiji presses forward so persistently—it’s because if he ever slows down, if he ever stops, he’s afraid that he will choke on the gravity of his ambitions and once again sink to the bottom of the sea. Like Icarus, like Bellerophon, like Arachne, like—
“Haiji-san?” Kakeru’s voice cuts into his thoughts, steel blue eyes dark with concern.
Sometime between then and now Kakeru had turned his hand palm-side up, so that Haiji’s now idle fingertip rests just on the tip of his fate line.
“Geez,” Haiji lilts with a small chuckle, replacing his finger with his hand, and Kakeru laces their fingers together so naturally it feels almost like instinct. “What’s with you so suddenly?”
“I just wanted to say it.” The way a faint blush starts to dust the bridge of Kakeru’s nose warms Haiji’s chest and he moves to crawl into Kakeru’s arms. There was a time when they had been awkward with this, two separate units with gangly limbs and pointy elbows that poked and jabbed each other no matter how methodical they tried to be.
But now—Haiji goes and Kakeru envelopes him, warm , and there is nowhere else in the world Haiji has ever felt safer. He turns so that his back is curved flush against Kakeru’s chest, feels Kakeru’s heartbeat strong against his skin with just two thin layers of cotton separating them.
All this time he has chased silence, chased infinity , and up until recently he could only ever find it in the moments where his footsteps pounded against the ground so hard he could feel it in his teeth. But in the past few months he has come to discover that small infinities exist everywhere you care to look—within the warmth of meticulously made rose petal tea served at quaint little cafes, on the dust motes glimmering in sunlight between the shelves of a forgotten library, at the highest point of a lover’s fate line, and within the arms of a soft spoken boy who can grow blinding, awe-inspiring wings despite never truly leaving the ground.
“Why do you think so?” Haiji asks finally, closing his eyes and leaning further into Kakeru’s embrace. “Because I’m cheerful? Or because I’m good at taking care of people?”
A silence falls between them as Haiji stretches his bad leg, rotating his ankle in both directions as he waits with bated breath for Kakeru to answer. It’s not that he’s putting much weight on what Kakeru is about to say, but for some reason this feels profound—two lovers on the brink of understanding each other just a fraction better than they had previously, and this matters. It’s rare, after all, for Kakeru to voice something so outright and also be willing to explain the thought behind it after the fact.
I want to become a better speaker , he had said, during his welcoming all that time ago—just before their first track meet, and just after Haiji had fallen in love on first sight with the way he so desperately chases freedom all while being completely blind to the fact that he is the world itself, and to chase freedom when he is the very embodiment of what he seeks is—
So Kakeru-like , isn’t it?
To get so wrapped up in the intricate details that he misses the big picture altogether—Haiji is distinctly aware of the smile spreading across his own lips as the thought comes to mind, his eyes going half-lidded with the way he revels in the feeling of Kakeru’s palms sliding slowly across the expanse of his chest.
After all, Kakeru’s eyes are the twilight sky and his voice is birdsong and his knuckles are mountains littered with depthless chasms from where they split apart with their own grandeur. The spots dotting the bridge of his nose are nothing less than stars streaking their way across the swathe of the milky way during a clear summer’s night.
The stars are beautiful tonight , Haiji had told him that night during the training camp—he wonders if Kakeru had noticed that he hadn’t really been looking at the sky at all.
He rarely looks elsewhere, these days. It’s a truth Haiji realized and accepted as easily as he remembers idly accepting anything in his life.
“Because you light the way,” Kakeru murmurs finally, breath puffing warm against the side of Haiji’s neck as his fingertips nervously twist at the hem of his sleeve. “Because no matter how deep within the darkness I think I am, your light finds a way to reach me.”
Haiji stills in Kakeru’s arms, eyes going wide.
“And it’s not just me,” Kakeru continues. “We’re all here today because of you, because you brought us all together. I was so lost before I met you, Haiji-san. You took a ragtag bunch of amateurs and gave us an actual chance at running in the Hakone Ekiden. It’s nothing short of a miracle.”
”O-okay, wait, Kakeru—” Haiji laughs sheepishly, shrinking down in Kakeru’s lap to cover his burning face with his arms. “That’s enough, I got it, so—”
He doesn’t know what to do in the face of such beaming compliments, especially from Kakeru, and especially when he doesn’t deserve any of it. The members achieved everything through their own efforts and strength—he is simply the fool with hubris as his hamartia, the mortal who plummeted to the sea on flimsy, broken wings that never stood a chance of holding him up in the first place. It was only through sheer dumb luck that he happened upon not only the best team members he could ever have dreamed of gathering, but also the entire cosmos encapsulated within the soul of the most beautiful person Haiji has ever had the privilege of laying eyes on.
“You don’t know just how kind you are—or just how many times you’ve saved me,” Kakeru says, arms tightening infinitesimally, and Haiji can’t help but scrub at his eyes when he realizes that he never did hit the concrete water because he leapt on faith or perhaps hubris and somehow he had fallen right into Kakeru’s arms instead.
The world, after all. The cosmos, after all.
Faith—destiny—sheer dumb luck—aren’t they all just simple words describing the same thing, anyway?
“Well if I’m the sun, then you’re the wind,” Haiji chuckles, eyes watery, heart bared, smile bright.
And the sun and the moon and the stars and the mountains and the twilight sky and —
“You know, people say ‘run like the wind’, right? I feel like I could chase you forever and never really catch up.”
Haiji can feel Kakeru’s frown without even seeing it.
“I don’t want you to think I’m distant, Haiji-san,” he says, disapproving.
Distant . There could be nothing further from the truth—the wind is always present, pushing you forward as you run, further and faster than you could ever hope to achieve on your own. And yet, though it’s right there and all around you in every moment, it will always be impossible to ever truly contain it between human hands.
The sun and the wind—two devastating forces of nature that have the power to incinerate everything in its wake and erode entire mountains to pebbles. Eventually the sun will burn out and collapse in on itself as all stars do, the Earth will fall to ruin and the wind will inevitably stop blowing—at least, on this tiny little planet they call home.
But in spite of it all, at this point in time when the sun and the wind meet, two devastating forces of nature can combine to create a warm breeze.
“Silly.” Haiji smiles, tipping his head back into the crook of Kakeru’s neck, and Kakeru is leaning in before Haiji even has to think of it. “Even if you think you’re running alone, there is always a gust of wind somewhere.”
The sun and the wind meet, lips soft, and if there were any single word to describe the galaxy contained within Haiji’s chest it might be fate , or destiny, and yes, maybe even luck . He is sure that somewhere in the world, a warm breeze blows.
And so, Icarus flew. Even if just once more.