Work Text:
This is what kakeru remembers:
It had been both nerve wracking and not at all- he had started to worry, just a bit, what that said about him, but the fraction of doubt caught in his throat was soon overtaken by “Wait! Thief!” and the familial sensation of his legs moving on their own, and then he was running, fleet-footed, flitting under yellow street-lights, thud, thud, thud , taking him somewhere fast and far and unsure.
And then, a voice, ringing with fullness, “Hey !” - his stomach dropping with it, full of mantras of fear, “You like running?”
He sees the eyes before he sees the entire face - big and bright and brown, like a beacon, a flame with something skittish, pupils blown wide in the harsh come-and-go blips of light.
“I said, do you like running?”
He, whoever he is, has a breath-caught smile, a grin - Kakeru’s stomach burns, blooms with it, fear dissolving into something he can’t name.
The stranger’s bike screeches to a halt, Kakeru slows to a slack scrape of his shoes against pavement.
He finds out his name is Haiji , and that’s when it starts.
Kakeru had hurt, an old pain marred new through dreams and nightmares and memories - he could still hear Sasaki’s voice in his head sometimes, hear the soft slip of it fall from his lips, “Kurahara’s going around beating people up, fucking psycho”, as if he had sutured the words into his skull, sewed them shut tight.
But Haiji had pulled him apart from the beginning, string-by-string of it, deconstructing him in the soft, subtle way only Haiji could - and Kakeru had tried not to feel bare-faced, embarrassed, but he was, had clung to the strain as long as he could, shaking with each experimental pluck of it.
Haiji had pulled him raw until it was just all that was underneath - just him, Kakeru, without all of the string and the chains, a long sung song shushed soft.
And in the quiet, Kakeru had found his voice.
Their hands are linked, Kakeru’s head spins with something he can't name, gazes kept for only seconds.
“Haiji,” he says, unsure of the reason why.
“Kakeru,” he hears back, Kakeru’s head dancing dizzy with the sound, sinking in it, a ship at sea.
and then, that same breath-caught smile.
Sea-salt spray of sumida - Kakeru catches it on his tongue when he leans forward, his lips against Haiji’s, feeling his smile pull underneath, hearing their footsteps in tandem, together.
and Kakeru thinks he's lying to himself, pretending - he knows what it is, the feeling wobbling in his chest, feeling fresh-washed and folly with it.
He knows what it is, knows it's more than enough.