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Leo wakes up, and the world is white.
It’s blinding after living in his cave of a room for--weeks? It’s been weeks, he thinks, since he saw sunlight through the windows. He doesn’t remember going to bed, but he also doesn’t remember the last time he ate more than a few, perfunctory bites, so that is perhaps meaningless. The blanket is a light, ice blue actually, he notes as he rolls away from the window, and the sheets are softer than he remembers, and he thinks, maybe--
“Leo-kun, get out of bed already, we don’t have all day.”
Izumi.
Leo presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. There’s no describing the ache that fills him, a deep, clawing, longing thing in his chest, in the pit of his stomach, in his throat that makes his voice stick.
How long has it been since he heard Izumi speak to him? Oh, he sounds as waspish as ever, but even that somehow makes Leo hug his pillow--not his pillow, but someone’s pillow, his pillow now--to his chest.
How long has it been since he heard Izumi call him “Leo-kun”?
Leo wants to get up, wants to throw open the door and ask him to say it again, but he’s saved the effrt when Izumi pushes it open anyways.
“Get up already, Leo-kun, it’s already almost noon, how are you still in bed?”
Something is off.
Leo crawls out from under the covers, just a little, to peer over to where Izumi is leaned nonchalantly in the door.
Izumi is different, he realises. Something in the curves of his face or how his clothes hang on his figure. The way he carries himself, less like he needs to be the only person that matters in a room, more like he knows you’ll look at him, no matter what.
“You’re not Sena?”
There should be a “probably” in there, he thinks, but he’s at least partially right from the way not-Izumi pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. He only does that when Leo’s right.
(He doesn’t remember the last time he did anything right around Izumi.)
“I’m still Sena, just not your Sena, so get out of bed already, and I’ll explain, Leo-kun.”
“Hang on, Leo-kun, that’s supposed to be me?”
Izumi stalks over, throwing the blanket off the bed and drops a pile of clothes in their place.
“You need lunch. And a shower.” Leo sits up at least. That’s progress, even though Izumi still glares at him like it’s not. When it totally is. He’s moved. That’s better than he did yesterday. “Those should fit. You said they would, so just let me know if they don’t or something.”
“I did?” Leo holds up a shirt. It looks like a shirt. Definitely a shirt. Sort of a shirt? There’s a hood on it and strings, like a hoodie, but it’s large and looks baggy enough for him.
Well, it is kind of perfect.
“Down the hall, on your right,” Izumi says, completely ignoring his question, so maybe this Izumi isn’t that different after all. “Don’t break anything.”
Maybe this Izumi isn’t that different after all.
“If you want to lie in bed all day, fine, but I’m not telling you anything then!”
Or maybe this Izumi is as alien as everything here. Leo wants more time in this place, wants to poke around Izumi’s room and figure out who he is. What else is the same about this not-Izumi. What’s different. What made him like this.
There’s a voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like his parents that reminds him snooping is rude, and well. Leo’s not a rude person.
Besides, he does really like this shirt-hoodie-thing. He hopes he drowns in it when he puts it on.
Not-Izumi isn’t in the hallway when he slips out, but he can hear water running from somewhere else. The kitchen probably, from the hiss and sputter of a coffee maker starting up. Leo can hear Izumi humming. Loudly, like he’s not used to another person being in his space, or maybe he doesn’t care that Leo’s there.
It’s one of his old songs, something he wrote even before Knights, back when they were still first years fumbling their way through the intricacies and delicacies of Chess together.
Leo steps into the shower, washing the grime of wallowing alone for the first time in a week (or maybe longer; the days blur together at this point). Even if this person is an imposter, does that really matter? He always prided himself on his imagination, even now, when it’s failed and abandoned him. The face is similar enough. He can just imagine it’s his own Izumi calling him Leo-kun again.
---
Izumi doesn’t even say anything when Leo steps out of the bathroom an hour later, still feeling half-bedraggled, but at least comfortably drowning in his new shirt.
Lunch is a quiet affair between them, when they grab a quick bite from one of the restaurants near Izumi’s apartment and set out after. He doesn’t know where they are. Somewhere in Japan still, at least, but where in Japan, Leo couldn’t say. The cars are different, but now. The clothes are different, but not. Even the money is different, but not.
It’s a beautiful day out though, really. At least if this person is some villain here to end him, Leo will get to enjoy a single nice day.
“If you’re planning to murder me at any point, can you at least do it after we eat lunch?” Leo doesn’t know if it’ll work, but his mother always said that it never hurt to ask.
“Pass, I would’ve done it while you were in the shower or something if I was going to kill you,” Izumi says. He walks with a certain surety in his step. Less swagger. “Or while you were sleeping or something.”
“You were watching me sleep?”
“No, you were hogging my bed.” Izumi rolls his eyes, but something about the gesture feels affectionate. “That’s not what I brought you out here for, though.”
Izumi has that frown he gets when he doesn’t know what he wants to say next, the one he always complains will give him wrinkles, except now, Leo can start to see where they’ll be. “I’m not really sure how, but you’re ten years in the future. We were at my apartment, and you switched places with my Leo somehow.”
“So we’re together?”
“ No , absolutely not.” Izumi’s answer comes too quick for anything resembling hope to build in Leo’s heart. “You’ve got--” Izumi stops himself, biting off his words and looking away. Leo can’t see his face from this angle. “I’m not supposed to tell you. Just not me, okay? You’re happy. That’s what’s important.”
To Izumi. This ten-years-older Izumi, with his carefully guarded expression and even temper and the faintest flush on his cheeks when he glances over.
It’s a little nippy out, Leo supposes.
“Look, before you left, you told me I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything about where he--you, I guess--are at now. I’m not trying to scare you with what happens. Let’s just make the most of today, okay?” Izumi gestures behind him, where there’s a beautiful stretch of chilly beach and no one else in sight. “Nostalgic, right?”
Very nostalgic indeed, Leo thinks as he kicks off his shoes and peels of his socks to dig his toes into the still-cold sand. But when he glances back at Izumi, there’s more in his gaze.
It’s been longer for him, he realizes as Izumi sits down next to him without even a word of protest over his clothes getting sandy. They haven’t done this in a long, long time.
The sky feels too blue, like straight out of a movie or a painting. The sun is too bright, but maybe he’s just been living in the dark for too long. The ocean is calm today, and there’s a soft, salty breeze that chills his skin enough that he has to scrunch up and hide his arms in his hoodie-shirt hybrid. There are birds, even, circling overhead and swooping down every now and then over the water.
And there’s Izumi.
He’s so beautiful, or maybe it’s the fact that Leo hasn’t seen him up close like this in too long. His hair is shorter, maybe, cut closer to his head. It still looks just as soft as it did before, though. And his eyes. He knows how meticulous Izumi’s skincare routine is, but even still, he can almost trace where the crow’s feet will line his face.
He’s calmed, Leo thinks. There was always so much weight to Izumi, a grief that he always carried with him and never shared, but Leo can’t see those same worries in him. Maybe he found new things to stress out about. Non-Leo things. Non-Makoto things.
Izumi was always stunning. He remembers defending Izumi’s talent against the people who would claim his success came easy because of his pretty face, and not the countless hours they drilled together, when he would make Leo work harder, faster, better.
Those days seem like a world away now, and not just because Leo digs his fingers into the sand next to an Izumi that’s ten years older and ten years wiser and ten years harder.
Nostalgia is a funny thing. He’s thought about making trips out to see the beach again where they would while time away from the Yumenosaki and belt songs to the beat of the waves crashing against the shore. That it’d inspire him, maybe, reliving those memories, recapturing those feelings. (He’d always stopped before, though, the front door like an insurmountable enemy that he couldn’t cut down, no matter what he tried.)
Instead, the sea tastes like melancholy, and he feels emptier than he’s ever been.
And that doesn’t feel like a bad thing.
“When was the last time we did this?” Leo asks the handful of sand that slips through his open fingers.
“Years ago, probably,” Izumi tells the sea that laps ever closer. He’s older, but he wears it well. It’s a shame that his older self apparently doesn’t appreciate that more.
“So we’re not really friends then.” Leo closes his eyes. If he doesn’t see, it doesn’t have to be real.
“It’s not that, it just got...complicated.”
“Isn’t that a Facebook thing?”
“The point is that we’re still friends, okay? Don’t worry about that,” Izumi says with a shake of his head.
Leaving things alone is normally something he’s pretty good at. Except for Izumi. But Izumi’s always been the exception to a lot of things.
“I’ll just make the most of what time we do have together then,” he says. The sun is getting lower on the horizon, but time still feels like it’s slowed around them. “No matter what I do, I’ll probably wake up with regret that I didn’t give you more time because all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough for how much I want to spend with you, Sena, but I’ll cherish what I can get, then.”
Leo finally chances a glance over at old-Izumi to see the clench in his jaw and the way his throat works. He looks like his heart is breaking. Or maybe it was already broken in the first place. His fingers are dug into the sand, but he doesn’t stop Leo when he digs to search for them and brushes against the tips of his fingers.
“No matter what I tell you,” Izumi says slowly, but he grips Leo’s hand back, “no matter what past me says, any time that I’m with you is my favorite, okay? Past me is an idiot. Don’t listen to him.”
“Just because you’re also Sena doesn’t mean I’m going to let you badmouth him, you know,” Leo says but gentler. After all, this isn’t some random bully jealous of Izumi’s talent and hard work, knowing they’ll never reach him because they won’t try the same way he has. This is still Izumi, just older, with new armor, stuck together differently.
The sun creeps even lower, just skimming over the waves, but the passage of time still doesn’t feel real between them. If it were ten minutes, ten hours, ten months, or ten years, Leo wouldn’t know. He wouldn’t care.
“You can yell at me later about it, but I never told you before,” Izumi is quiet enough that Leo leans against him, just a little, to hear him, “because I was always telling myself all these excuses. Like, ‘oh, it’s Leo-kun. He’ll know.’ And maybe you did, but that doesn’t matter. Because I never told you out loud: I’m sorry.”
Izumi’s shoulders are drawn up tight and close to the body, and it’s probably not all from the cold.
Ten years.
Ten years is a long time to keep things in.
(Some part of him always wondered if maybe he’d just be dead in ten years, and maybe that would just be better for everyone if that were the case.)
Izumi hunches over, and the wind picks up in the dusk, but Leo still tugs his other arm out of his shirt to wrap Izumi--old-Izumi, with his old regrets and old pain and old, weathered heart--in a hug.
Izumi’s pain is like a scab, a scar, something he must’ve picked at over the years. But for Leo, it’s still fresh, an open wound that he let fester for too long, threatening to rot, and maybe Izumi is finally looking for forgiveness, but all Leo can feel is--
-- relief .
Freedom.
Like he didn’t ruin everything just by existing.
It becomes night at some point. Time is an illusion, especially since he can apparently time travel. They’re too close to the city to see any stars, or even ten feet in front of them as they unfold from where they were seated on the beach.
“You’re gonna catch a cold, geez,” Izumi says as he wraps his scarf around Leo’s neck. It smells kind of like him and Sena house and warm, happy things. “What were you thinking, putting you in this hoodie thing? You’re going to freeze out here. We’re going back. I need to make you dinner. You’ll never grow like this.”
Some parts of Izumi have withered. Some parts of him have been lopped off, willfully or not. Some of him has grown in different; some of him is new. But some things about Izumi will never change, and Leo thinks that’s the best part about him.
---
“I know you weren’t trying to leave without saying goodbye.”
Izumi’s back is killing him. He’s not nineteen anymore, able to lounge and fall asleep on whatever flat surface is offered. Twenty-seven is hardly any time at all, it feels like, except for the fact that he’s too old to be sleeping on couches anymore.
Nothing that coffee and an aspirin won’t fix.
His coffeemaker is old, some ancient thing he got on sale when he realized he’d be living alone. Once upon a time, he’d been pickier about his caffeine. Now, as long as it goes down, it’ll work. It sputters to life, percolating at its own slow pace as Izumi reaches up for a pair of mugs.
“You can stay for a cup, you know.” He tries for nonchalant. He’s too tired for nonchalant.
Izumi was never very good with things to say to him, and that doesn’t change for early morning Leo-- his Leo, not the Leo that looked worn out from a war he shouldn’t have had to fight in, hurt by too many things and too many people. Leo, who’s still achingly pretty, even at this obnoxious hour.
“Thanks for your help,” Leo says. So that’s what he sounds like in the morning, a little raspy and deep. “It wasn’t too much of a hassle, was it?”
Izumi pours them coffee and sets their mugs on his tiny, rickety dining table in lieu of a response. Black for him, too much sugar and milk for Leo.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?” The coffee is bitter, bitter, bitter. It helps clear the last vestiges of sleep.
“I thought it was all a dream for awhile,” Leo says. He traces the whorls of Izumi’s table. His nails are short and neat. Izumi thinks he remembers Ritsu teaching Leo piano once upon a time, thinks he remembers hearing Leo play at one of his concerts before-- “And by the time I realized that it wasn’t, it seemed like it was too late to say anything. Besides, time travel? Seriously?”
Izumi’s sink drips in the silence. Leo’s nervous. His hands never stop moving. Izumi’s only happy he apparently managed to kick his habit of composing on every damn thing, but, well. Younger Leo made him...wistful. He wouldn’t mind a souvenir.
“I missed talking with you. It was nice.” Is that careful enough of an answer? What does that give away? Nothing, right? Not too much. He can still hide.
(He’s been hiding for years from Leo, though. Because he’s a fucking coward .)
(It hurts.)
(He doesn’t want to be anymore, but it hurts and he doesn’t know how to be brave--how to be honest .)
“I missed you.”
Izumi doesn’t know what possesses him, why he reaches to stop Leo’s wandering hands and twine their fingers together, but he does. He doesn’t know why he finally, finally meets his gaze, but he does. His eyes are still the greenest Izumi’s ever seen.
“Even just like this. I missed you, and I know things have been--”
“Yeah, just don’t mention it--”
“Yeah. I just.” Izumi swallows. He told himself after Leo’s younger self had gone to bed. He promised. For the boy he’d broken with his own two hands, for the him who’d been too scared to make the wrong move, no matter who it hurt. “If you wanted to. To talk again. Or come by. Anything. Whatever you want.”
It’s really been too long, Izumi thinks, because he can’t read Leo’s expressions the same way. Or maybe Leo just finally grew up and learned not to let so much through.
“I’d like that. A lot.”
Izumi lets go of the breath he doesn’t realize he’s holding. He sags back into his chair with an exhale, squeezing Leo’s hand.
Leo squeezes back.
Fuck. Fuck, he missed this so badly.
“What did you do when you went back, then?” Izumi says. The coffee’s not so bitter this time when he takes a sip.
“Left some presents!” Leo’s eyes are shining as he says it. He’s always shining when it comes to music. Izumi got out of the idol scene years ago, but that didn’t stop him from following Leo’s meteoric career with bated breath. “I wrote you one too. You liked it a lot, remember?”
Dear moonlight...
The bars he hums are still familiar to him, even after all this time. Hours spent in the studio practicing choreo, running and rerunning parts, practicing on his own to hammer it into perfection for that song rush back.
“You--we--shut up, you didn’t.” It’s like he’s seventeen and flustered over the genius of Tsukinaga Leo all over again.
“Sorry, I guess I’m not very good at being honest either, huh?” Leo says, and he has the audacity to look bashful , even when he takes Izumi’s hand. When he smiles at him, it's like seeing the sun for the first time: dazzling, beautiful, and bright.