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It’s been three years.
“I’m gonna ask him out,” Osamu had said with conviction, with his craft in his hands, with the stars in his eyes.
What a wonder, Rintarou had thought. What an absolute wonder, those starstruck eyes, and within a tangible distance, too. A wonder not so outlandish or far-fetched, because it sat right there, within arms reach. Starstruck eyes, luminous and stunning
But starstruck eyes, that were trained distantly upon the horizon. That drifted nowhere near Rintarou’s presence. That fixed themselves upon someone else. Upon Akaashi Keiji, probably, even though he was nowhere to be found near the two of them, in the comfort of the deep coffee colored booths of Onigiri Miya.
Rintarou guessed, that the mere thought of Keiji was enough.
What do your eyes look like when you think about me? — is the question he doesn’t ask. He had lost the right to the answer as soon as the words had left Osamu’s lips. He’ll never know, but that’s okay. There’ll be a whole slew of other things he’ll never know now, too. The question seems fairly trivial, compared to perhaps what Osamu’s hand would feel like in his, or maybe what his lips would feel like captured in a fleeting kiss. All the intricacies that come with romantic intimacy, so many little things he’ll simply never know.
“Rin?”
Rintarou has a thought here, a little selfish, a little rotten. It comes like heavy clouds to the front of his mind and rains words onto his tongue that he only just manages to contain.
Don’t call me that.
For ‘Rin’, is a token of their companionship. A nickname earned with trust and time, from their days together.
It will only ever be used as such, a symbol of friendship. And Rintarou decides he really, really, doesn’t need to be reminded.
“Good luck,” he says, instead.
Osamu smiles, soft. Rintarou realizes that he has taken this as a symbol of his acceptance. Not that he doesn’t approve, of course. But—
Three years later, watching them sway under rose-tinted lights in a tender embrace with even more tender smiles.
He can’t help but wonder.
-
(What does it feel like to be l*ved like that?)
-
He wakes up with Motoya in his arms.
Rintarou lets the events of the night (or rather, the morning) wash in like the tide. For the first time, since Motoya had said Let’s get out of here with complete determination, does he let himself ask:
Why?
(He ever so carefully pries himself away. The couch leaves no room for mistakes and he'd rather not send Motoya tumbling to the ground accidentally. His phone tells him it’s 3 in the afternoon. His face in the reflection tells him he was too careless. His pride tells him Motoya did it all out of pity. His heart tells him he’s overstayed his welcome.
His Uber tells him to have a good afternoon. No, I won’t, he thinks.
You too, he says anyways.)
-
Rintarou’s grandmother had once called him ‘unfit for human consumption.’
Though, even in middle school he could understand her irritation, having to put a pause on her day to come pick his beaten and bruised figure up from school with a notice that he’s been suspended for a week.
“What have you done?” She had asked, exasperated, scrutinizing him through the rearview mirror with narrowed eyes.
As it turns out, being a boy and having a crush on another boy is reason enough for endless amounts of teasing and ridicule in middle school, something no one bothered to warn Rintarou about before he let the fact slip a little too loudly to one of his friends during lunch.
So who could blame him? Who could blame his fed up state? Rintarou didn’t like fighting, no, but let him get ignored by one more adult and watch what happens. Let one more kid make another comment about him and watch. Watch fists get swung, kicks delivered, hair pulled, chairs tipped, and on more than one occasion.
Watch his mother become distraught, unable to take any more time off of work to come collect her “wild child”. Watch his grandmother, judgmental and vexed and her grip tight on the steering wheel say:
“Thoroughly rotten, you are. Completely unfit for human consumption.”
Rintarou only let his tears fall silently in the beige expanse of the backseat
(They move to Hyogo less than six months later. They pretend it’s for a job opportunity his mother secures, they know it’s really to keep Rintarou away from trouble. Volleyball starts as a distraction, but becomes a passion, too. He cools down, learns a thing or two about sarcasm and straight faces. He goes to Inarizaki. The team there become like family. He falls for Osamu.
And well, you know the rest.
Right?)
-
It’s been three days.
His apartment is dim and empty. Rintarou blinks awake and finds his acute loneliness has freed itself from the corner of his chest to paint itself across his walls, weave its way between the dust particles visible in the light of the rising sun. It’s in the stripes of his comforter, on the blackened screen of his TV, and laughing a silent song of mockery. He tries to shove it all back in the pretty glass bottle the feeling’s been stored in for as long as he can remember, but is annoyed to find that there isn’t room.
Instead there’s a tree. It’s short and scraggly, with curvy green leaves and vibrant peaches that look fuzzy and perfect.
He hates it.
He marches to the shed tucked somewhere between his heart and his lungs, grips an axe with a wooden handle and a bloodied blade and swings it with all his might and anger and his twenty-four years of solitude.
And it laughs.
It’s not the kind of laugh the loneliness on the wall exudes. It’s bright and full and endearing. It’s pretty and loving and sweet.
(And it sounds very, very much like—)
Rintarou’s phone buzzes and the curtain closes with sweeping red waves. The notification makes his mouth dip down at the corners.
[‘Samu:]
Hey.
[‘Samu]
Feeling any better?
[‘Samu]
Komori told me you got sick. Sorry you had to miss out.
It’s not quite guilt that comes up in his system. It tempts itself like a bitter taste on the back of his tongue, but stronger than that are the distant sensations of that night. The exhilaration. The infatuation. The buzz. The warmth.
He doesn’t regret it, no. His hand comes up, ghosts a fingertip across the flesh of his bottom lip. Motoya was here, he thinks. He doesn’t regret it.
[You]
im good now. and it’s fine, it happens.
[You]
how’s italy? how’s husband life?
[‘Samu]
Italy is gorgeous. Good food. Good people.
[‘Samu]
And pretty damn nice so far, I’d say
[You]
sending keiji my condolences for putting up with you
[‘Samu]
Funny. Tsumu said the same thing.
[You]
and are we surprised?
[‘Samu]
Course not.
[‘Samu]
But it's real late over here. I better head to bed.
Nice talking to you.
[You]
yeah, you too
[You]
good night.
Rintarou lays back. His phone slips to the floor and he makes no effort to pick it up.
Osamu — just married. In Italy. The name no longer sits like a weight upon his shoulders. Not like it used to, years prior.
Motoya. — ???
It’s been three days since the wedding, and by extension three days since Motoya took the pieces of his heart and shoved them a little closer without him realizing. By extension, three days since the tree in his chest was planted under the pink tint of the sunrise, and three days since he pried his arms away from Motoya and ran without looking back.
Does he regret that?
He can’t fit his loneliness back into it’s bottle, no. But internal him drops the axe and props his back upon the tree, taking a deep breath.
It doesn’t look quite as bad from here, he decides. He doesn’t hate it.
-
There had been a fruit tree in the backyard of the new house in Hyogo too, actually. A non-threatening apple tree that gave them pretty, red apples every fall. His mother adored it, made her own apple preserves, apple pies, tarts, scones and practically anything else you could think of that was sweet.
Rintarou would help her pick them. One of those few, precious memories he holds in a certain chamber of his heart. She would turn, stare, flip and feel each fruit until she was thoroughly convinced it was ready for picking and eating. Rintarou once asked her why.
“Fruit has a peak period, when they’re fully ripe. They taste the best, then. Why would you choose to eat them at any time other than their best?”
They come back inside with a basketful. She puts her hands—thin and roughed by life—on top of his as they rolled chilled dough, he watches with widened eyes as she does careful lattice work with even strips.
It’s something in the way she warns careful, it’s hot, before letting him try the cooked-down filling, or in the way her smile loses its tired edge when she pulls the pastry from the oven, warm and golden, that makes Rintarou realize for the first time that he has nothing like this. Nothing that quite settles his uneasy, restless soul.
Until volleyball. Yadda yadda Inarizaki yadda yadda friends. Family. Team. Yeah.
You know the rest.
(Right, right?)
-
Volleyball. Right.
Practice starts back up again. Motoya is there of course, he has to be. Rintarou finds that there are words he wants to say, words he should say, words that perch right on the tip of his tongue. But when he meets those ash blue eyes, watches them widen, watches Motoya’s mouth form around something, and then stop—
He swallows them and turns away.
But Motoya is still there, of course. They split for three v. threes and he’s there. There when he serves, there when he spikes. There across the net, tracking his every move. He turns and there’s Motoya. Motoya is there, and there, and there. It’s Motoya, Motoya, and Motoya and—
“Motoya.”
It’s after practice. Only a couple of their teammates linger, but the row of lockers they stand in is empty.
Motoya looks at him, still a little dewy from his shower, and zips up his jacket before nodding. Rintarou feels his heart rise to his throat, just the way it did before. He’s beginning to think Motoya just has that effect on him, maybe.
“I’m sorry.”
Motoya smiles, soft, sweet. “Why are you apologizing?”
It’s a good question, really. He’s not apologizing just to apologize. Leaving that afternoon had felt right in the moment, and yet in the solemn confines of his apartment it had felt anything but right. Something had bloomed between them that morning; he has the tree in his chest to prove it. And yet he left. The fact bleeds guilt onto his palms, into his heart.
“For running,” he decides.
“Is that what you’d call it?” Motoya lifts a brow.
Rintarou shrugs. “Probably.”
“Well,” he shifts, picks his duffle bag up from the ground and slings it over his shoulder. “You’re here now, aren’t you?”
Here. Rintarou is here.
“And where are we?” He questions.
Motoya’s grin grows. “In the locker room, I thought.”
Rintarou turns his chin away to fight off the corner of his lip from turning up into a smirk. He fails. But he deserved that, he thinks. Can’t seem to get enough of the witty bastards in his life.
But he keeps thinking. Thinks of tipped chairs and the tears on the backseat and the pieces of his heart on the floor of Onigiri Miya. Thinks about Motoya, thinks of reddened arms and Toyotas and the pretty peach tree in his chest.
He turns them over. Considers their color, shape and firmness, the weight of it in his palms. If he bites, will it be it’s sweetest? If he offers it to Motoya, will he fall to the depths, waiting to be awakened by a kiss that isn’t Rintarou’s?
“Walk with me,” Motoya says with a sideways motion of his head. Rintarou only nods.
The outside air isn’t quite chilly yet. The sun hasn’t given it’s full salutations, the streetlights are only considering waking from their slumber. His heart beats a steady rhythm. Their footsteps sound distant, as they traverse the parking lot in near silence.
“We’re a bad idea,” he voices out loud, finally, “Probably, anyways.”
Motoya smiles at that and it makes his heart turn in funny ways. Damn him, and all the fuzziness and orangey warmth he exudes. Rintarou’s trying to tell him to steer far away, and he’s smiling.
“Maybe so.”
“But then why—”
—Why did I let myself go with you that day. Why did I kiss you when you asked. Why do I have a tree where my loneliness used to rest. Why does your laugh plague my mind. Why does your smile do this to me—
Rintarou realizes that the words he’s looking for, are why do I like you so much?
Why do you like me?
“Rin,” Motoya starts, and he doesn’t hate the sound of it. Doesn’t recoil at the nickname, when it falls from Motoya’s lips now. “We don’t have to talk about it, yet.”
“Seemed like the adult thing to do,” he offers, ignoring the way his shoulders relax.
“I think we’ve established that we’re pretty bad at adulting,” Motoya snorts, probably referring to running away from one of his closest’s friend’s wedding to go do karaoke, and eat fast food, stare at fireflies in a park, and whatever else. Not very adult, truthfully.
“Yeah,” Rintarou sighs, spotting Motoya’s beige Camry, “You’re probably right.”
The lights on it flash twice. “I’ll take you home?” he offers, eyes looking hopeful. Rintarou’s about to shake his head, the bus ride is less than twenty minutes after all but—”Nevermind. That’s not a question. I’m taking you home,” he decides.
And who would he be to not indulge Motoya?
What Rintarou doesn’t anticipate, though, is the tension following, settling thick and heavy in air as he drives. It feels the same as it did before, running away from the reception hall - except now there’s a longing, a longing to feel again, a longing to reach out, maybe touch him again, maybe ki—
“This is it, right?”
Rintarou nods, before turning and finding that Motoya’s eyes aren’t on the apartment complex, but on him.
And those eyes, wonderstruck they seem. Which is strange, considering Rinarou’s sure his mouth is set straight, his hair still a little flat from his shower, restless hours tugging down on his eyebags. And yet, and yet—
“Fuck,” he mutters. The tree in his chest sways a little with a heavy gust of wind. Some of those peaches tumble to the ground, by his side. He picks one up, turns it, flips it, feels it.
But he realizes, it doesn’t matter. He can’t pluck it. It’s already fallen to him.
“You don’t want me, Motoya.”
“Are you telling me or asking me?”
A pause. “I don’t know.”
Motoya turns in his seat, leaning forward in the slightest.
“How about this, then,” he proposes, “Do you want me to want you?”
Rintarou feels like he’s being drawn in, like some kind of weird Motoya-gravity has him moving towards the center between them.
“No, I don’t,” he starts, and suddenly it’s getting harder to breath. “But you will, anyways.”
Motoya’s lips curve up, and Rintarou knows he’s falling. Knows that he brings the peach closer to his mouth.
“You’re probably right.”
“You could still run,” he notes, like the space between them isn’t slowly burning away with every second. “It’d probably be better for you.”
“You could run, too,” Motoya says. “But you’re still here.”
Rintarou is here. Motoya is here too. They’re both here.
Here.
“Yeah, I am.”
So close. His heart flutters.
“Do you want me, Rin?”
It comes as a whisper, but he can still feel the breath of air against his lips. From here —close— Motoya looks perfect. He looks vibrant, and stunning, and perfect.
He bites.
-
(He bites, and it’s sweet and soft and good. Ripe, through and through.)