Chapter Text
🚀
You must survive. Between the collision and the aftermath; the seeking to destroy and the need to withstand that destruction. You must thrive.
Your body has these phantom aches. It’s been years since he’s been gone, you were the one who drove him away – it was necessary. But back then all your fantasies were of romance, and now all of your fantasies revolve around touch. Often with a smidgeon of romance.
His lips on yours, cool wetness grazing your seams. You come apart. Chests flush together, pulled tightly against each other. Taut muscle on taut muscle. Meat slabs together. He hates it when you call it that.
Your arms around his midriff, face warm against his open skin. Nosing along his collarbones, and all you can feel is him. And all you can smell is his mint-and-lemon soap. Your heart’s giddy and in pain. A curious combination – you want to pull away forever and hide, and pull him in tighter at the same time, never to let go. You feel like dying; it’s death, this closeness. To be this close and to be breathing. This moment, his scent, the sounds of your too-loud breaths. The light outside dimming, land engulfing the mango that sends its sunbeams filtering through the zelkova outside this room, through the window. You and him are curiously dappled sunlight, and it is this moment that makes you want to die.
Suffocating. The need to kiss him resurfaces, you’re on your very tiptoes reaching upward, seeking greater heights. He’s on the bed and you’re crouching on the floor. He grazes your corners with a bare wetness, a kiss that’s not a kiss, a dash of reassurance that comes before pulling away. Warmth, pressure, quick and there, and then it’s gone before you know it. Before you’ve opened your eyes. Before you know he’s going to speak, a tone that will sound apologetic. Before breaking into words, pulling you out of this, whatever this was. Before the end of this – and it’s death, all over again. There are so many forms of death.
Yes, there are so many forms of death , you think, aboard the Lazarus 1; waiting to be propelled off to uncharted realms. Slingshotted against gravity. Reaching velocities that will help you escape the memory of black-tipped heaven, silver-haired light.
Atsumu, he mumbles against the receiver, Omimi on the other end giving him a moment-by-moment update. He’s at the launch site, he doesn’t hear these words. Or maybe he pretends not to, for the sake of an old friend. There are so many ways to live.
🚀
Miya Atsumu thinks Kita is a god.
Or – scratch that – god-like. He’s sure Kita knows he thinks that. He’s sure kita thinks nothing of it, is probably a little irritated by it.
Aboard the Lazarus 1, as Miya Atsumu watches the majority of his American crewmates sink into cryosleep, a he watches their blue planet saunter lazily, microscopically by, in the distance of velvety space; he remembers this feeling with startling clarity. The feeling of being in the presence of immaculate white. (Tinged with black). It’s this part, this bit, which triggers the memory.
Kageyama Tobio is on his rounds, followed by CASE, one of those American military AIs they’ve developed recently. The robot is trying to make Kageyama laugh, a feat Atsumu reckons will make space carry sound, if made possible. Suddenly, without preemption, he’s watching Kita Shinsuke instead. Talking and bantering with CASE, getting the AI to constantly lower his humour setting. Atsumu had always thought this peculiarity of his former captain to be one of his most endearing, the way he indulges you, before taking you down one or two a peg.
The white light of the ship that encases him makes him more otherworldly than he has any right to be, and Atsumu tries to plead with his mind, stop this. He’s plunged into the memory anyway.
When he was 11, their mother (“ Mamma Miya,” Aran had joked much, much later in time, with only Osamu guffawing and Atsumu irritated that he didn’t get the joke) had taken them fishing just for the weekend to a river camp a couple of hours from Kobe. It had been a rare occasion, for exhaustion and being bereft of time was characteristic of their parental figure. Atsumu hung his head out of the Volvo along with Tombo, their golden retriever, wind splashing their faces. Greens and browns blurred together; it had rained the previous day so all the colours were fresher than usual, a stillness deeper than the pond on their grandmother’s backyard. A stillness that grabbed Atsumu. Where exactly does it hurt? It asked. And then salved it over. When they would reach the river, the rushing blue and white would be such a contrast from the fresh of the green and the smell of petrichor emanating from the earth – that Atsumu would cry out in joy, only giving Osamu another chance to call him a retard and their mother a chance to be cross with them for learning such words at such a young age.
The rushing river reminds the Atsumu of now of an old friend, Hinata Shouyo. He’s with Aran aboard Lazarus 2, both missions having been launched one after another. A bitter thought occurs to him, but he waves it away.
Hinata, that rushing comet, a blazing buffoon. Kageyama would definitely talk more with CASE (who, Atsumu’s sure would probably have a Humane setting as well that makes it constantly seek out the less-talkative members of crew) if Hinata were here. Heck, Atsumu’s sure he himself would be distracted, would be shed of this feeling.
When he’d been accepted for the mission he hadn’t been sure why. Lazarus 1 already had Kageyama for a pilot, who’d left JAXA and gone over to NASA as soon as his time at college was over. Atsumu, preferring being closer to his folks more, had stayed on, until they themselves had called for him. When he was told there would be two missions, he understood, was happy, even. To be with Shouyo and Iwaizumi was heaven, he would even warm up to that stoic Ushiwaka. But then he’d been put with Kageyama, and that prickly bastard Kiyoomi. There are two others – Americans he doesn’t want to interact much with.
There’s no one he wants to talk to here. His brain is probably going crazy, showing him Kita-san walking around instead of that sullen faced Tobio-kun. Kita would ask, “Are you lonely, ‘tsumu?”
He’s seized with something akin to wistfulness. All of a sudden, his heart is heavier than the gravity in the room, and he needs space to breathe. Ironic, really, needing space where he’s at, where he’s headed. He tries to escape.
"Where are ya goin', 'tsumu?" Atsumu can’t believe this. His head’s turned rotten, just like Osamu said it was going to one day. “Yer gonna get Alzheimer’s before you even grow old,” he’d said, with their mother hurling a geta in his general direction. Kita-san is not just walking around in Tobio-kun’s place, he’s addressing Atsumu as well. His small face is neutral in that infuriating way of his, his wide eyes showing no emotion, not even curiosity, though the question was posed with it. the question almost a command, saying tell me.
Atsumu doesn’t react. He’s not sure if this is a dream or a hallucination. Maybe his loneliness setting is turned up all the way and the knob can’t go any further, maybe that’s why he’s seeing what he does. He makes a mental note to ask CASE how he changes settings.
This Kita maintains eye contact for just the perfect amount of time for Atsumu to start wondering if he's been rude again, just like the innumerable other times he’d been scolded in school. He wonders if he's overdone it again, he thinks he’s going to be pulverized, Kita-san is going to start shooting lazer beams from his eyes now just like Rin had told him back when they’d first met Kita-san, he was right oh my god of course Kita is a robot, how is he even here, and is Atsumu astral-projecting? What can he do to survive, holy fuck- ; when suddenly Kita just casually strides aside, eyes still on him. Nervously glancing to the other side for no reason besides having something to do with his eyes, he walks off, decidedly not looking at the narrow orange slits following him, but feeling them on him all the same. Not thinking about something is the same as thinking about it. What was that about?
The western gods are interfering nuisances, as he'd learned from Sakusa, that bastard's literary degree serving him this long voyage. Especially the Greek ones. They would get in the way of mortals, squabble amongst themselves, bestow arbitrary favours on anyone of their choosing. Cause wars. He would never think of Kita as someone as annoying as a Greek god. Although , Sakusa had told him with a smirk that he had had no business donning, comparing a man to a greek god is a telltale sign you think he's hot. Atsumu had tried to kick him for that, but the taller man had simply left.
He's always thought of Kita as cut from the perfect cloth that makes heaven. Atsumu would never have to spread heaven's embroidered cloth beneath Kita's feet; he was unreachable no matter what he did. His high school captain would always be swathed in heaven. He knew Kita disliked these associations, but Atsumu, like someone on a leash, was tied to this inner worship. He’d seen Kita perform his routines with a dedication his own zeal to never look back rivaled. His love was spelt out in the quotidian: in the quiet gestures of the everyday variety.
Atsumu thinks about this. He’s always thought about this. Kita-san is not a god, and yet the implication that he’s not human has been made by more people than just Rintarou saying, “I want to catch him talking to a bird or something.” Humans are always slipping up, imperfect through the cracks. If clownery makes one human, he reckons he has plenty to classify him as human. A perpetual clown, always falling. He sighs, rubbing his face as he enters his room, the diurnal rhythm simulator already encasing his room in the hazy, red glow of the setting sun. Hopes he'll be able to nap. Even clowns need their rest, his clown face beset with eyebags so ugly he’s glad for the umpteenth time Kita isn’t around to see him.
There are no gaps Kita will ever leave, yet why is he appearing before him? It’s Atsumu’s fault for going senile with boredom, isn’t it? Is there a boredom setting? He doesn’t know. He wants to get this , all of this, over with already. Kita can’t ever slip up anyway. Some think that is boring. And sure, Atsumu muses, collapsing on his bed with its strange lumps his body is yet to bulldoze over, it feels borin' to think about it like that. That's why everyone should think of him as a god. He smirks to himself. There’s enough distance between them for him to be able to think like this.
But is there? A god is a creator of worlds. Destroyer of destinies. When he'd step on court he'd ensure that the despair made by his motley crew of wily, foxy demons would linger. No one can change the world by themselves, but kita still does it, one step at a time. The god of small things.
And he's here now. Atsumu doesn’t know how, but he’s here, he can feel it. Knows he’ll be haunting him. Atsumu can't face him. He's cast from the same cloth that heaven consists of, he is blue and dim and dark, his hair is silver light. Atsumu blames Sakusa's fuckin' literary knowledge for the way he's thinking. He doesn't want to think like this. He turns over and tries to sleep.
The only person he's managed to ensure does not loathe him here is Sakusa, although he might as well. Hinata, that comforting comet, is somewhere in the distance of this space they are traversing. He can't gauge this distance, though he thought he had a handle on the approximate distance from Kita-san every moment of every day, as he’d kept asking CASE their displacement from Earth. Not thinkin' about something is the same as thinkin' about it, this, in Osamu's condescending voice floats in his head. Heaven's light confound him. Atsumu is poor; he can't have Kita-san tread on his dreams. Thankfully, for all the godliness he ascribes kita, the man has never shown up in Atsumu's dreams. Showing up as a hallucination or whatever that was is surely not worse, right?
The memory of his childhood made him miss Shoyo. Light-bearer. Dazzling comet. But what he dares not admit to himself is the smell of the earth, the effect of the rain that fell. Admit it, and he fails, flails, falls. Like a clown, to this gravity. Unfortunately it’s not even performative.
🚀
Kita Shinsuke is not a god.
Kita Shinsuke is mortal, with a cage he can't thoroughly discipline, with conditions he understands he can't always control. He's a mortal who feels the same way you or I do, the same way anyone would when faced with the difficulty of deciding which brand of tofu burger patties to buy at the supermarket, or which dish wash soap is best. If he tells you its Frosch you'd believe him, but he doesn't like the dependence, he'd rather you choose on your own. He doesn’t have all the answers.
Nothing Kita does merits this odd title his teammates in school had bestowed upon him, a title that he can’t help but sometimes carry, like right now, as he rolls out the futon in the washitsu of his ancestral home. It’s been a long day at the fields, Atsumichi-san kept spieling on nitrogenous fertilizers to counter the bacteria that plague their rice, and as much as Kita wants to be polite to his fellow farmers in these times – difficult as they are – he doesn’t want his life being made difficult either. He told Atsumichi-san using fertilizers only increased the chances of causing bacterial interference in the future, quietening the man at once. They had attended university together, studying alongside each other in the Kobe agricultural department, but sometimes it seemed to Kita the man hadn’t learnt anything from his time there. It was in moments like these – Kita muses, settling into his futon – that he missed his teammates even more, monsters that they were.
He’s left the shoji overlooking the backyard open. Just a sliver, enough for a breeze to come through. The passing years are increasingly making the summers hotter, the winters colder. Just a year ago, he’d been nursing his grandmother here. She’d ask to sleep in the washitsu every day, he’d oblige with no comment. There had been little sleep for him then, but the memory of a thin, veined hand brushing his hair as he laid down beside his sleeping grandmother brings him to sleep these days.
Now he looks through the shoji, out at the rectangle of sky, salt-sprinkled, wondering what answers they hold. What answers the monsters that his teammates still are will bring for them. When he eventually drifts off, it’s at the tail-end of a memory of a bratty boy with an equally bratty mouth he loved to shut up. Who says you don’t need memories?
When Kita Shinsuke was younger, he had a much older woman for a friend, his grandmother's neighbour. She let him play in her garden with her shitzu and gave him watermelon to eat in the summer, for it was mostly summer when they met. She was strange, allowing a stranger boy to be with her. None of the other women in the village looked like she did. Soft, brown curly hair till her shoulders and round, green eyes. His grandmother told him – insisted – she was Japanese, but he'd seen many strangers and even villagers he knew attempt to speak to her in a different language, one he would learn to later recognize in elementary school, a language which these people never could go beyond a few broken phrases.
It was that woman who'd told him of the huelessness of the world. She’d said, unprompted but having Kita’s attention just the same: "Once I left Tokyo nothing was the same anymore. Something broke. Everything was just shapes. You and I are just shapes, Kita-kun." She’d wink at Kita, and he, drenched in juice of the watermelon, would flush and look away. “Coming here helps me. I think coming here reminds me that we are just people, ordinary, with nothing to do beyond the basics. If you do the basics well it makes everything else better, doesn’t it? You should know, diligent as you are helping your grandma.”
Kita loved this moment. He’d not say anything to her, but she’d speak enough for the both of them. Sitting in her backyard porch holding a slice of melon, looking over the garden where Nana was gnawing on a bone. Sticky juice all over his knees despite how careful he tried to be, because he was still young, still guileless. The strange woman building a world of no colour, a world Kita didn’t understand. He didn't understand, he thought he never would, and that made it all the more fascinating.
And then this, this part -
"I never went back to college, but I had always liked my mother's farm, so back here I came. She told me something I'd never forget. I thought the one who sapped my world of colour all of a sudden was probably some sort of Kami-sama, some sort of someone. Maybe the boy who’d broken my heart," here an indulgent smile, as if tasting her daydreams, "My mother told me, No matter the gods, it's us who build shrines and put our faith in them. We find shapes for them, even if the gods take the colours away. "
He relished in these words. Relished in the echoing of this something which he felt to be special. It all came down to the same thing, for him. When he was even younger, when his grandmother had tried to tell him that the gods were watching, and when he with diffidence had continued to scrub down the kitchen floor for no other reason besides Kita Yumie’s smile. Kita Yumie’s hands, patting his head. It was her smile that held all the answers. Her approval, that made a difference, gods or no gods.
In the presence of this strange, kind woman who allowed a young boy to play with her dog and talked to him with the same respect his grandmother did, Kita knew she understood. She’d said it herself. The ordinary affairs make or break it all. He didn't have to ask if the world regained its hues for her, and he never did. He knew the answer was not that simple. Magic, after all, is available only to those who keep their eyes open. And the older you got the worse the acquired myopia seemed to get.
There was a time magic was Kita Yumie’s smile and her hands, and a time a bratty mouth with a bratty expression had gotten closest to the same. Who says you don’t need memories? That, and his sole self, were all he had, giving his world its shape.
🚀
He’s upset. He hates his bed and he hates this ship and this stupid fuckin’ mission, and Omi-kun used the ship-wide intercom to tell him off for skimping on cleaning duty - and he’s upset.
He hates Omi-kun for this, even though he knows it's not his fault. Sakusa had cornered him in the kitchen earlier - as far as a germaphobe can corner someone, that is, by fixing him with a glare twenty feet away - and jerked his face in the general direction of Tobio-kun’s retreating back. He sighs and rolls over in bed. He doesn't care. He doesn’t want to deal with this. Why can’t that American dude get off his high horse and talk to Tobio-kun instead? Adriah or whatever his name is. Omi-omi can eat shit. He doesn’t want to do anything, talk to anyone, just drift around in semi-sleep until his body feels less achey and slightly more what the body of a man on an interstellar mission should feel like. He turns again on his lousy lumpy mattress, feeling sorry for himself, feeling Osamu laugh at him even with all this distance between them. He’s seething, can’t place a finger on why, it’s the principle of the entire thing to incite his anger anyway. He’s sure sleep won’t be visiting him this time either. He’s sure he’s not going to be drifting anywhere, just him and his crew drifting perpetually, lousily, through this endless void.
Till we reach the wormhole. He sighed, spreading his arms above him, pushing against the metal wall his bed was placed adjacent to. The thought that there was five feet of this, this cage, and immediate death made his skin crawl. Disintegration in a place no one would ever remember him again, because everyone else would be dead if this mission was jeopardised. Them and the entire lot back home. Osamu had said he'd haunt 'Tsumu in the afterlife if he let this fail. What Atsumu had failed to mention through the headlock he'd been placed in, momentarily forgetting, were his own doubts of the mission ever succeeding.
He sighs, hands curling over his chest and under his head. It's hopeless to attempt to sleep, so he calls out the command for the diurnal rhythms simulator to shut off, immediately encasing his room in a hazy white that keeps gradually turning on and off, presumably to save energy. Not all rooms on ship have windows, he knows Sakusa has his room equipped with a wall-to-floor diurnal rhythms simulator that simultaneously casts a endless footage of Shinjuku. What business does someone like Sakusa have being immersed in a simulated environment of endless crowds - Atsumu doesn’t ask. But maybe he doesn’t do it to sleep. Atsumu has never heard a sound come from Sakusa’s room when it’s his turn to rest.
Atsumu had staked out their craft several times before launch to claim rights to this room. He hadn't known about the mattress before taking it on, but it had hardly mattered then. With the largest personal window on the spacecraft, and the furthest distance from everyone else aboard with the exception of Sakusa, it was perfect for him. And Omi-omi could handle Atsumu, couldn’t he?
He still feels lingering resentment towards the man, which really just is resentment towards himself, so he runs the manual docking procedure they'll need once they reach the wormhole over and over again in his head. He’s not sure what a wormhole is supposed to look like, and he feels stupid asking. Wouldn’t know who to ask anyway, he sighs. The prickly bastard is good company, but not for talking . He pushes this thought aside, focussing on the adjustments he'll have to make to burning fuel and their approach velocity. There can be no margin for error. It frustrates him that unlike in the aviation academy where he could have his way wily nily with the simulator, with the drones, there are no do-overs here. There's only one chance, and then it’s game over, a pixelated ship crashing with no one around to bear testament to the same because sound does not travel in space. The routine calms him down. He wonders if this is one of the reasons why Kita-san is so perfect in what he does, because routines are so calming. Gasps, thumps himself hard on the chest. What is wrong with you? Stop thinking of him.
“Yer room is real pretty, Atsumu.”
Oh god. This can’t be happening. “Kita-san…” he hates how breathless he sounds.
Kita stands beside his bed, black tips and all. He’s staring at Atsumu’s window looking awe-struck, a child handed a constellation of stars. An apparition that can’t be shaken off.
“Why do you keep appearing here? Are ya seriously god?”
Kita sits down carefully on the edge of the bed in lieu of answering, testing it. Atsumu can’t help his amusement through his fear. “It sucks, I know. It’s probably the worst mattress on board.”
Kita-san isn’t as amused. “How do you get your rest? I’m sure a cosmonaut’s gotta be well-rested.”
“The same way I got my rest on Earth, Kita-san.” He smiles and he knows the older man can see it doesn’t reach his eyes. He finds he doesn’t care. “In fits and starts.”
Kita’s brow furrows, and Atsumu wants to kick himself for wanting to smooth it away. Instead, he sighs and sits up carefully, taking care not to graze the apparition at all. He knows that despite how he feels insane all the time, this isn’t insanity. This frame in front of him, as real as the void outside. With the bones he has kissed, the flesh he has felt.
“I don’t know why I keep showin’ up here either,” he answers a million years later.
Of course Atsumu believes him. This is Kita-san, this is his voice, always gently admonishing Atsumu even when admitting an uncertainty. Yet it doesn’t prevent the way his stomach clenches up.
To his chagrin Kita senses this immediately and reaches out, but the hand stalls midair as Atsumu flinches away from the motion. This moment suddenly an aberration.
Atsumu is almost guilty at making a god look apprehensive. Atsumu eschews the power he’s always known to be handed unconditionally. He’s graceless, faithless. The only faith he ever had was in this ghost in front of him. The only grace, what he was given.
“Why can’t ya just be a ghost?” Why do you feel so real?
“Trust me, ‘Tsumu, it’s gonna be real hell on the farm if I end up dyin’ and becomin’ a ghost. My colleagues think fertilizers are the way to prevent bacterial growth,” he snorts. It’s so unbecoming of him Atsumu giggles. Kita’s eyes soften. “It’s dyin’ that scares you, though.”
Atsumu hates being seen but who is he kidding? This is Kita-san. “Yes, but it doesn’t scare you.”
“It scares me. I’m afraid for a lot of things that’ll not be done the proper way if I just stop existin’.”
He looks out, face morphing into a gleeful boy’s again. Not this angular, lean and muscular being.
“Ya can just have ‘Samu look after your farm for you. You did set him up with a life outside Kobe.”
His back is turned to Kita, he doesn’t want to see his face. But the accusatory tone makes him sound like a petulant child.
“That bother you? After all this time?”
“Can you just please disappear or whatever it is yer doin’? I don’t wanna talk about this.”
A beat, then two. He counts the seconds till he’ll turn around and whatever this version of Kita is will disappear. He almost yelps when he feels the tell-tale sign of Kita’s hands, though they are almost identical to Yumie-san’s. The trick is to feel the calluses.
The apparition is touching him. Touching me. What should he feel? Should he be angry, Kita adding another anxiety to his over-growing list? Should he cry of gladness, this warmth grounding him in the feeling of home he hasn’t felt in a long, long time? Looking at the apparition and thinking it’s Kita-san is as different from the confirmation that the apparition is, well, Kita-san in flesh , as Venus and Earth are. Atsumu is shivering in fear. Atsumu is drowning in relief.
It speaks. “I’m sorry for not tellin’ you about it. Ya weren’t talkin’ to me,” it’s voice falters, “and I thought I’d gone and mess up something. I thought I was doin’ everything proper and right, but I still messed it up. Thought I should not talk to ya for a while, so you didn’t get to know. I’m sorry.”
And this, this doesn’t sit right with Atsumu. He wants to turn around and protest, but the hand stroking his back stills on his shoulder. It asks for his patience.
“I don’t know how this works, or when I come here, or if I’ll keep comin’ here like this. But I think you should try speaking to the folk here. It’s easier knowin’ yer not the only one going out of yer mind.”
“You should try talkin’ to Omi-kun,” Atsumu begins, but his heart stills as Kita starts laughing. He will die because the real apparition of Kita-san laughed with his full belly and Atsumu’s poor heart went into catatonics.
“I think words aren’t the way he comforts people.”
“But that implies he’s comforted people.”
“Hasn’t he?” The amusement in the voice makes Atsumu blush. He will never turn around.
“Tobio-kun, then,” he mutters. Hears humming.
“Be nice to folk here, ‘Tsumu. None of ‘em knew what they signed up for. And maybe if ya manage to talk, yer list will shrink.”
His heart thumps too loud. “You know about the list?”
“How many things are on it now?” The apparition - no, Kita-san - asks in lieu of answering.
“Surprisingly, only 7.”
“Then let me shrink it by one. Do you know the statistic of dyin’ in space?”
“Gee, it never occurred to me to look that up in all my years of trainin’.”
His shoulder is shoved lightly. Laughter falls like gentle rain around them.
“One in twenty are good enough odds, don’tcha think?”
“Maybe for you , but one in twenty is crazier to consider when you think about how no one’s gone into this wormhole before.”
“Then consider it a order from me. Didn’t you all used to call me a god back in school?”
Atsumu hears Didn’t you believe it? Didn’t you once call me your personal god? Swallows thickly. “Yes.”
“I decree you shall not die.”
“Don’t think that’s how it works though.”
“It should, because I’ve decreed it.”
He groans into his stupid mattress. “‘Samu would say this is my influence”
“Well,” the hand lifts, Atsumu turns around and Kita-san is smiling. Lambent in this light, lambent on his own. “He’d be right.”
Atsumu lets this moment stretch like taffy, sickeningly sweet. He doesn’t question it when the hand returns and scratches at his scalp, he closes his eyes and puts his head down to let it happen.
When sleep finally comes, and he finally drifts off to god knows where, he’s glad Kita-san is the one who enables this to happen in peace. It’d be a good way to go, he thinks, if he was here when it happens. Not that I want it to happen.
It won’t happen, Kita’s voice is the final thing he hears, ship sauntering in the folds of this endless void. I’ll be here. You have to live.
🚀