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*
In his mind, Yamato had put his phone face down quietly before burying his head in both hands, but the sudden dimness of the bar tells him something else.
He ought to apologize, if not to the bartender who still stood before him, startled by his rude, undue response to her interruption of his distracted mind, then to the patrons for the clattering outburst when he'd slammed the phone onto the counter. He doesn't, and it's only after the chatter picks up around him and the woman's footsteps fade that he looks between his fingers and sees the frothy half pint she'd left there. On the house, he remembers her starting to say before he'd lost a temper she didn't deserve.
Yamato does not like to be thought of as unkind. Stubborn, skeptical, aggressive, he's heard before. Obtuse, aloof, withheld, which he believes to be untrue. Realist, he prefers. Competitive, difficult. Raw.
His stomach turns, his skin warm from shame and the two drinks he's already had, and he lowers his hand to the counter, unwilling to look up again. Instead, he picks up the mug and finishes it quicker than he should. He's wiping his mouth with the back of a wrist, turning on his seat ready to leave, when he feels his hand on his shoulder, turning him back.
"What are you chasing?" chuckles Taichi, good-natured and at ease, his drawl a lazy calm. He slides onto the stool next to him, pulling it back from the bar to give his knees a buffer from the marbled wood paneling. Admires their setting with a relaxed whistle, like he doesn't how late he is. "This place makes me think I should be having a Cognac."
"I said, 'come for a beer,'" Yamato replies at once, sinking his shoulder away just enough for him not to notice, if Taichi were the type to notice something like that.
"I dragged myself all the way across town for you," defends Taichi.
"I said beer."
"Hm," and his tongue clicks dismissively, so self-assured in how the night will go that he doesn't bother giving it words.
Instead, Taichi's rested his forearms on the bar, fingers laced loosely together on top of the counter that he leans over. The bartender finds herself back before them, drawn to his wide-mouthed grin. "Rémy XO on ice. And two of them, sweetheart, if you wouldn't mind," tips his head in Yamato's direction. Her smile doesn't leave Taichi's face as she adds the order to Yamato's open tab.
"Christ, Taichi," swears Yamato under his breath after the bartender moves away to prepare the glasses. "How much do you think I'm gonna make at this new job?"
"Forty minutes across town," defends Taichi again. "Plus, like, another thirty when I missed my stop and had to circle back again." He yawns, shoving his hands in the pocket of his windbreaker. "Ended up taking a cab. Nothing looks the same anymore, Yamato. Every time I come home, it's like something else got built, or moved, or remade. It's weird." He nods, or shakes his head, a mixed movement meant to ward off serious conversation. "So you owe me."
"I didn't change anything," says Yamato.
"Could've warned me." He rubs his nose, then pushes the hand back into the pocket again, rocking on the stool to warm himself up quicker. "Jou's got a baby on the way; Miyako and Ken are on their second. Willis is engaged. I mean—fuuuck, right?" and he laughs, unbothered.
The knot in his stomach tightens. "You missed a lot."
It's unnecessary commentary, but Taichi's been thinking the same, too. "Well," he says, eyes brightening when the bartender returns with their drinks, "here's to your turn."
Yamato palms the glass, the amber swirling around a sphere of ice. He doesn't even like Cognac, he remembers too late. "I don't even like—,"
"Never satisfied," interrupts Taichi, shaking his head pityingly at him.
When Yamato doesn't move, he heaves a sigh, then stretches an arm across him to close Yamato's fingers around the clear crystal tumbler, tapping the rim of his own glass against the other. "Cheers, and slow." The last instruction an admonishment from how Taichi had found him, his dark eyebrows lifting in a cheeky warning.
They sip in silence, then fall into place again, like nothing's passed. Like nothing could.
"How's your mother?"
"Better," answers Taichi, his face breaking with relief. "Dad's a bit overbearing with her, but she's able to get around all right with the crutches."
Yamato nods. "I can make some more frozen meals before I go."
Taichi shakes his head, "Don't trouble yourself."
"Not trouble. Did the same for Iori, too."
Taichi agrees in a wordless hum, like he doesn't remember he hadn't been here for that, either.
Yamato puts the unkind thought from his mind, and keeps the conversation going. "Sora's father's not well."
"Heard that," and Taichi winces, still lost in thought. "We're all getting so much older, aren't we? Everyone." He tells himself aloud, "I need to call her."
"Will you actually remember to?"
Taichi swallows too large a sip for something this expensive, but Yamato's past the point of exasperation again. "I was literally already on the way here."
"Two hours late."
"You knew I was on the way."
"You're late a lot lately."
"Late a lot lately," repeats Taichi with delight at the rhyme, his tongue rolling over the shape the letters make in his mouth, and Yamato looks away from him. "I had a day, you know. Daisuke's new place opens next week, so Kou and I went for a taste testing. Can you believe how good he is?" His pride swells his face, eyes glossed. He rocks back on the stool again. "Had a video chat with Meiko. Says hello, by the way. Then dinner back at my parents, and coffee with some university friends. All of that, and I still came all the way back across town for you."
"Well, I nearly left," answers Yamato.
"No, you wouldn't."
Without looking up, Taichi shakes down his wristwatch to a more legible angle. "Speaking of, remind me to give you something for Takeru before you go. Something I picked up on my last trip. Mimi told me at breakfast how his next book's going—shit—," but Yamato's foot is already there, stamping on the bar between the two front legs of Taichi's stool.
He's nearly off his own seat to reach him, his other knee jammed into Taichi's back as the latter is knocked upright again. Taichi's hands grasp the railing of the bar so hard his knuckles look ready to break, heart ringing in his ears, but even that's not as tight as Yamato's hand around Taichi's forearm.
He takes a minute, bewildered, uprooted. "Okay. Well, so much for the solo balancing act," Taichi jokes, catching his breath and letting go of the bar rail.
Yamato's breath can't catch a thing. He thinks he's drunk, but he hasn't had enough yet, he's sure. He thinks he's lost his mind, but Taichi's still here.
Taichi covers his fingers with his own, patting gently. "I'm good, Yamato."
His words do nothing, which means he will have to find another way to talk to him. With a sigh, Taichi tenderly draws Yamato's head up with a hand to the nape of his neck. "Hey." When dark blue eyes finally narrow, he smiles. "I wasn't trying to make you worry."
That's not it.
"That's not it," says Yamato.
"Then what?" asks Taichi. He lets his hand fall back but is still turned towards him on his stool.
When I don't know where you are, I—
Yamato shakes his head at last. "It's hard to get hold of you sometimes."
His arms fly up, animated and agitated. "It was one call!"
When I don't know where you are, I—
"Are you even going to have cell service there, anyway?" he prods, adamant.
The corner of Yamato's mouth twitches. "Probably just email."
"Right, exactly, so what're we ev—oh, that reminds me," remembers Taichi, scattered with his thoughts in a way that puts Yamato even more on edge, unable to keep up, afraid what unable will do to them after they've gone from each again, and again.
Taichi pulls inside out every pocket he has. "Can you do me a favor? When you're down there? I need—fuck, where is it?—I need a picture of this. Except, with your base's fancy telescopic camera, 'course."
A folded slip of paper is finally produced, and Yamato takes the scrap. It's a clipping from a scientific magazine, a torn excerpt of a lengthy technical article on a southern constellation cluster. "What are you reading about stars for?" he mutters, staring at the ripped sheet.
"I'm not," chuckles Taichi. "I'm missing Hikari's birthday with my next work trip, and that magazine said something about this one star that's gonna be the same age as her. That's not right." He makes a face, impatient with himself and his dumbness, in front of him, of all people. "It's—what—the light, yeah? The light that will reach her, this year, from this star, will have taken as long as she's been alive to find her. I like that. She should know that. So I was thinking you could take a nicer photo for me—well, for her. From me. You, whatever. You get it."
Yamato looks up, paper still clutched in his hand. He knows he's drunk now. He knows he's lost his mind. He knows Taichi's still here, and he knows how far from here that his here will be after tomorrow.
That's it.
Tell him.
"What are you reading about stars for?"
Taichi's expression is bemused, sizing him up in a way that makes Yamato feel difficult, and raw. "I can't keep up with you?"
Tell him now.
"You think you can?"
Taichi considers it for a moment, not the fact of it, but how to put it in the kinds of words Yamato's always struggled to say back. "When I'm looking for balance, I look for you." And he nods, "So, yeah, I think I can. I think I have to. I think we—oh."
Because Yamato has sunk forward, sudden and heavy and abandoned, to anchor his forehead to Taichi's shoulder. An awkward posture to take but one he needs, like light in search of itself, clawing himself always back to this, to his center of orbit.
Taichi bends over him in concern, measured and grounded, rooted in ways he isn't. "Yamato?"
The muscles in his mouth ache from the pressure to not cry, jaw stretching and gnawing over everything he wants to say, and all the things he can't. "Then when I call you, you have to answer me. You need—," he says, voice so husked and scared it howls, "—I need to hear you. When you're late, when I don't know where you are, when it's been months, or however far apart. You need to talk to me."
Taichi's arm is around his neck, his fingers scraping back the hair at his temple where he presses a kiss. "Yamato—,"
"So answer your fucking phone when I call you."
He feels the laugh through his skin.
"Never satisfied."
Yamato prefers realist. Determined, passionate. Vulnerable. His.
"No. Never."
*