Work Text:
The knock on Fukutomi's door comes just as he's writing the last sentence of his history homework, thoughts already drifting back to racing, training, mentally counting out how much time he can spend on his bicycle tonight and still get enough rest. He thinks that it must be Shinkai, coming to ask about something; in retrospect, he ought to have realised that Shinkai wouldn't knock so hard.
"Oi, Fuku-chan, are you in there?" Arakita calls, and Fukutomi's chest tightens, his fingers clench around his pen. He stares at his hand, forces himself to relax. Arakita is not dangerous. But he didn't expect this. It's been a week since Arakita was here, although he would usually stop by every couple of days, lie on Fukutomi's floor with a pile of books and complain about how much he hates school. If things were normal.
But it's fine. It's fine, nothing bad is going to happen.
"I'm coming in," Arakita says, pushes the door open harder than is really necessary.
He's still in his jersey, a carrier bag in one hand, scowling at Fukutomi from the doorway. His hair clings to his face. It's probably raining outside.
"I texted you, idiot," he says, kicks the door shut behind him. "Check your phone sometimes."
Fukutomi hasn't been looking at his phone; he's been far too busy, and besides, he can't decide how to reply to the voicemail his father left before dinner about a weekend trip he would like Fukutomi to join him for. He likes training with his family, generally, but right now he might need to do things his own way. The thought makes him feel disloyal. A bad son. His phone is still in his school bag.
Arakita dumps the carrier bag on Fukutomi's desk, pulls out the usual bleach kit Fukutomi uses, a pack of gloves. Fukutomi watches him carefully, waiting for a cue; Arakita folds his arms, stares him down. "I know you're out. I rode through town today."
"Arakita," Fukutomi says, hesitates, feeling the curious weight of what he wants to say. "Would you help me?"
"Why the fuck do you think I'm here?" Arakita says. He doesn't smile. But it's something.
Fukutomi has old t-shirts he uses for this, unevenly stained, heavily worn; Arakita borrows one, turns away to change, shrugging off his jersey and pulling on the t-shirt so quickly that Fukutomi hardly has time to think about the line of his spine, the scrape on his side from where he came off his bike last week, the muscles of his shoulders. On Arakita's wiry body Fukutomi's t-shirt looks huge and shapeless, the neck too wide, showing his collar bones.
Fukutomi sits on the floor, a towel spread out under him, and Arakita kneels in front of him, leans in over him; pulls at Fukutomi's hair, parting it this way and that, tilting Fukutomi's head to see the sides, the back. Fukutomi lets him do what he likes. It feels strange, to be this close and to not feel the usual flood of warmth he gets from Arakita's presence, from the casual touch of Arakita's hand against his as he passes over a water bottle or from Arakita's sharp, quick grin aimed straight at him when something goes well. Right now, all he feels is tension. His own, Arakita's.
"What the hell, Fuku-chan," Arakita says, finally. "Your roots are seriously a mess. You've been slacking off." His mouth is twisted in an approximation of irritation, as it usually is; Fukutomi watches the movement of his lips, the exaggerated shapes he makes around every sound. If he looked up he would see Arakita's eyes, whether he's being watched or if Arakita is completely occupied with his hair. Whether Arakita looks tired, or angry, or disappointed.
"Yes," he says. "I have been."
He doesn't think of himself as an uncertain person, but here he is, with no idea what to expect. He has, after all, made a mistake. Fucked up, Arakita said, face pale, when he heard. That's fucked up, how the fuck could you do that. Arakita doesn't soften things. He shouted a lot, hands fisted in Fukutomi's shirt. When he finally let go, his fingers were trembling. Fukutomi remembers that clearly. He hadn't meant to avoid looking Arakita in the face, but maybe he wasn't strong enough for that either. He isn't as strong as he thought. He is not, he suspects, as strong as Arakita.
Arakita didn't speak to him outside of training for a week, has been uneasy and on edge the whole time since, has worked as hard as ever and vanished quickly at the first opportunity. But here he is now.
Arakita's mouth doesn't relax, but his hands in Fukutomi's hair are careful.
"You'd better not be slacking off with anything else," he says.
Fukutomi closes his eyes. "Of course not."
He's working hard too, harder and harder all the time. He works hard enough to sleep soundly, to sink heavily into bed and be gone before he has time to think back on his day.
He meant to bleach his roots a week and a half ago, but there hasn't been the time. And besides, thinking about it has been making him uneasy.
He can hear the sound of Arakita moving around him in the room, the paper packaging for the bleach powder being torn open; he finally opens his eyes again just as Arakita comes back to kneel beside him.
"I'm going to make a mess," Arakita says, flatly. "Deal with it."
"You won't make a mess, Fukutomi tells him. "You—"
"Are strong!" Arakita says, with a harsh bark of laughter. "Don't fuck with me, asshole. And hold still." But some of the tension goes out of his shoulders anyway.
Arakita is systematic, works in sections, takes care not to yank Fukutomi's hair. People often think Arakita is a careless person—he never wears his uniform properly, his handwriting is almost unreadable, his shoes are perpetually scuffed. All these things are true, but this is still a shallow understanding of him. Fukutomi knows better. Knows exactly how methodical and determined he is when he decides to do something, although he'll do it in his own way. He just doesn't care very much about the peripheral details, all the unnecessary things that people layer onto everything they do because they are expected to.
Even through the awkwardness of the entire situation, it feels good to have Arakita's full focus directed at him like this—here, as well as on the road. It's selfish of him. He doesn't particularly deserve it.
Even so, he'll take it.
"There," Arakita says. He stands up, turns away, leaving Fukutomi sitting on the floor, his scalp prickling where the bleach sticks to it. Fukutomi wonders if he's going to leave again as suddenly as he came, but he just pulls the gloves off his hands, shoves all the rubbish back into the carrier bag he came with and ties it up, movements quick and aggressive; throws it in the general direction of the door and throws himself down on Fukutomi's bed, looking away from Fukutomi, up at the ceiling. "Fixed."
"Thank you," Fukutomi says carefully, unsure whether they're still on the level of discussing hair or not.
"You're not going to fucking do it again," Arakita says. "I'm trusting you, Fuku-chan."
Not hair, then.
He wonders if it's possible to be overwhelmed by other people's certainty. Well, of course it is: it has already happened to him once. It can't happen again. It won't. He can hardly take it as it is. This is enough to have to live with.
Arakita looks over at him. It has grown almost entirely dark outside, and the desk lamp is the only light in the room; it throws strange shadows across Arakita's face, makes his expression hard to see. Fukutomi thinks he must be waiting for something. Confirmation, or disagreement.
"I will work hard," Fukutomi says. "Please support me in the future as well." He wants to say I am strong, but the words stick. He can't quite do it. Not today. But he will. His strength is not just his own, but also his team's; Shinkai's and Arakita's and Toudou's.
Arakita laughs, and this time it isn't harsh. "You're so earnest." He sounds fond, and Fukutomi feels that answering warmth that he's missed curling itself up inside him again, coming home. He can still move forward. They can. Both of them.
"I have to be," he says, and hopes that Arakita understands.