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“Did ya try to call me?”
The question comes on a rainy night, when the streets are slick with water and the buildings damp and dripping. Kiyoomi and Atsumu lean against a rough facade with a slight overhang that shields the rain and keeps them relatively dry. They are already soaked to the bone from the walk, and the moisture that seeps through from the press of clothes against building walls is a minor thing in comparison.
“I don’t know if you got the message. I need a boat ticket,” Kiyoomi answers.
Their bodies are angled slightly towards each other, but they do not face. They look outwards, into the heavy rain that slams down onto dark pavement.
“To where?” Atsumu asks. In his peripheral, Kiyoomi can see his head turn towards him in concern. The styled blonde waves that normally swept over his forehead perfectly were now plastered to his forehead. For a moment, Kiyoomi fondly thought he looked a little like a lost puppy.
“The newspaper is short of staff in Singapore. They’d like me to go and help out.”
In the answering silence, the rain falls even harder around them.
“How long? Why are ya leaving so quickly?”
Kiyoomi feels the weight of Atsumu’s gaze, but refuses to look back. He has answers, but he knows Atsumu won’t like them. He says them anyway.
“I don’t know how long. I guess I’ll find out when I get there.” Kiyoomi pauses, thinking of how to word the next response.
He has a million reasons to go, and only one to stay for.
“I need a change of scenery. It’s confining here. People talk, and I thought I’d never care, and that we wouldn’t be like them, but I was wrong.” He continues, “our situation won’t change. So I’d rather walk away.”
It comes out in a rush, in a flood, unexpectedly. In the wake of his words, another silence follows. Kiyoomi had always been careful about what he said, but not tonight. And Atsumu had always been talkative, there to fill the empty air with his noise, but not tonight.
The seconds could have stretched into minutes and minutes into many minutes, but Kiyoomi cannot tell. There is only the rain that bears down indefinitely. He doesn’t really expect a response, but he hopes for one, maybe. Kiyoomi doesn’t know what he hopes for, only that it’s something.
“I didn’t expect you to fall in love with me,” Atsumu finally says. He is no longer turned towards Kiyoomi, but facing forwards and looking down, eyes shuttered.
“I didn’t think I would either.”
Kiyoomi wants to say things about how he wished he could pinpoint the moment this all started, about how the feelings crept up on him without any warning, and about how he thought he was in control.
He turns to Atsumu to say these things, except one look at his face tells Kiyoomi that maybe he already understands. So instead, he asks for a favor.
“Help me be prepared.”
--
There is nothing more Kiyoomi hates than carelessness and being unprepared. He would like to be ready for every situation imaginable, if possible, and so he runs through numerous hypotheticals in his head and rehearses to himself. This is a scenario he has imagined himself through ever since the call from Singapore came in and his decision was made, so really this right now is more for Atsumu, he reasons. He would hate for Atsumu to be unprepared too.
The rain has stopped now, leaving puddles that reflect the dim street lights above. Their stillness is disrupted by Atsumu’s pacing as he walks in a slow circle.
Kiyoomi watches him. His back faces the light, illuminating the planes of his shoulders, but his face remains in darkness until he turns back around. He can see Atsumu’s shadow on the opposite wall, trailing him as he moves.
“Can you not look for me again,” Atsumu says. It is not a question. His expression is serious and his tone even. Before Kiyoomi can respond, Atsumu speaks again.
“Am I hopeless?”
“Not really.”
Kiyoomi holds Atsumu’s gaze, who looks at him with resignation and longing, and a hint of pain. With his eyes, Kiyoomi maps the memory of Atsumu’s face, and wills himself to remember it forever. Rain damp hair, triangular brows, and hooded expressive eyes. If Kiyoomi cannot return, at least he can hold this moment close to himself and never let go.
“I won’t ever look for you again,” Kiyoomi says.
He breaks eye contact, not wanting to see the resulting expression, and afraid of what his own face might show. He looks downward instead, focusing on Atsumu’s hands, and moves to take one of them. He feels the slide of skin against skin, smoothes his finger over the base of Atsumu’s thumb, and laces their fingers together one last time. Kiyoomi relishes in the warm, grounding weight of Atsumu’s hand in his for a while and wishes to memorize this too.
Eventually, he lets go.
Kiyoomi watches as his hand leaves Atsumu’s. Fingertips unconsciously stretch out in an attempt to connect again, but their hands fall back into place by their respective sides.
Atsumu turns away, eyes glittering with unshed tears and leans one shoulder against the wall as he curls slightly into himself.
Kiyoomi hates it. Hates the way this has happened, hates the way it’s made Atsumu look so small when he normally stands so tall and proud. And he hates himself a little for it too, despite all the times he’s told himself it was a necessity.
“Don’t cry,” He tells Atsumu. “It’s only practice.” His voice is rough as he says it, as if he would also like to convince himself.
“It’s not real,” Kiyoomi repeats, but his mind tells him, it will be real, it will be real.
He grabs Atsumu’s hand again as a shaky sniffle escapes him, and is pulled into a hug. He buries his face into the nook of where Atsumu’s neck meets his shoulder, a familiar spot. He inhales the scent of verbena and rain, and presses further into him, letting silent tears mix into already damp fabric while anchoring one hand on Atsumu’s shoulder and smoothing the other up and down his back. Atsumu clutches onto Kiyoomi tightly and openly sobs, loud, snotty and ugly. His heartache echoes off the walls around them and fills the petrichor air.
--
“I don’t want to go home,” Atsumu says.
In the taxi ride to Kiyoomi’s place, Atsumu reaches for Kiyoomi’s hand, and this time, he doesn’t pull away.
--
A few days later, a call comes in at work. Atsumu doesn’t answer, and resolutely types away instead. He checks the voicemail afterwards.
“It’s me. If there was an extra ticket, would you come with me?” Kiyoomi’s grainy voice through the phone says.
--
The room is empty. The red curtains and tacky red flowery wallpaper are the same, and everything is untouched, save for the absence of shoes, clothes, the stacks of paper and scattering of pens usually on the desk, and the absence of Sakusa Kiyoomi.
Atsumu can only sit at the bedside desk where they used to spend their nights together, when he read over Kiyoomi’s work and gave small comments here and there. Mostly, he watched Kiyoomi’s diligent form as he wrote, and sometimes caught his gaze in the mirror.
When Atsumu looks in the mirror now, he only sees himself. The silent tears trickle down slowly.
“It’s me. If there was an extra ticket, would you come with me?” Kiyoomi’s voice repeats, in his head.
--
In the old days, if someone had a secret they didn't want to share, do you know what they did? They went up a mountain, found a tree, carved a hole in it, and whispered the secret into the hole. Then they covered it with mud. And leave the secret there forever.
--
At work, Kiyoomi gets a call.
“Hello?” He asks into the receiver.
“Hello?” He asks again. Kiyoomi doesn’t know what he hopes for, only that it’s something.
There is static and the faint sound of shaky breathing, but he gets no response.
--
The room is empty. There is no red wallpaper, no red curtains. Only the lampshade is red. Atsumu shouldn’t be here. He lays in a bed that isn’t his, takes a cigarette from a pack that isn’t his, and goes to a phone that isn’t his, and picks up the receiver. He dials the number he’s got memorized by heart, and listens to the rings. When the other end picks up, he doesn’t know what to say. There are a million things he wishes he could express, a million things he wishes he could reasonably ask for, and everything he had wanted is within reach, in the palm of his right hand and pressed up against his right ear.
But in the end, nothing comes out. All he has to offer is shaky breaths and a silence that stretches until he can’t stand it anymore.
So he eventually hangs up.
He lets the receiver rest in it’s place with a lingering hand on it, and then lets go of everything could’ve had.
He places the cigarette in the ashtray as a farewell.
--
When he returns, Kiyoomi finds a cigarette he didn’t smoke in the ashtray. He picks it up and curls it into his fist and holds it close to his heart, and searches for the ghost of imprints Atsumu has left in his room.
--
Three years later, Kiyoomi returns. But he doesn’t go looking for Atsumu. He’d promised, and he’s a man of his word. When he arrives at his old apartment, everything has changed. The landlady has moved out, and so have the other neighbors.
When he asks subtly about who's next door, they do not mention Atsumu, or an outgoing blonde man.
Kiyoomi supposes this is expected. Their love was only theirs, and as such, only they will remember the other. They were each other’s secrets, tucked into the hollow of their chests and covered with flesh and bone, kept there until the end.
He looks at the door where Atsumu once lived. Everything he wanted could be on the other side.
But he does not knock.
--
That era has passed. Nothing that belonged to it exists anymore. He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.