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The skate park doesn’t feel like theirs anymore, so they make the long trudge back to Kojiro’s as the sun still sets, unscraped at the elbows and knees.
Kojiro’s room doesn’t feel like his, either. It has been shaken, scooped halfway out. The closet gapes, nearly empty, and a great morass of suitcases conquers the corner. There are cold spots on the wall, where Kojiro’s favorite posters and photographs have come down, stashed away in so much luggage.
He’s leaving for Florence in the morning, will be gone when Kaoru wakes.
And so they sit there on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, as close as they can be and they are silent.
There is something Kaoru wants to say, but he scumbles it. Can he truly afford it, now, another travesty? Another marrow-deep embarrassment?
He chews his piercing, and lets shame wash him, sits in it like a bath.
But he’s leaving for Florence in the morning. Kaoru does not know when he’ll be back, only that it could be months, that it could be years.
He knows that Kojiro watched over him, since Ainosuke went, since forever before, that he let him into his home in the pre-dawn hours, that he sheltered him, fed him up and shared his bed.
That he needs him, right now, and the shame ebbs, and he grabs Kojiro roughly by the wrist and speaks.
“There’s something you have to do for me,” he says. He smothers it with threat, with dissident attitude. Kojiro nods.
A sigh, as wistful as it is exasperated. “You’re texting me. The instant your plane touches down, you’re texting me.”
Because airplanes make him shudder, and the wide dark ocean only makes the image worse. Because it has been--he cannot remember how long it has been, since he has gone a day without speaking to Kojiro.
He thinks he needs it, like a person needs sleep.
Kaoru chews at his piercing. “And every day after. And you’re sending me pictures if you find a cool place to skate.”
“Can do,” Kojiro says, and even with his carefree voice there is a solemnity to it.
“And you’re taking off your binder when it’s time, because if you crack a rib I’ll walk to Italy and crack all your other ribs--”
Kojiro raises a hand, as if to gentle him. “Alright,” he says. “Alright, I will, I promise.”
Kaoru sniffs, primly. “And if anyone’s an ass to you, if your professors get all snotty, I’ll, I’ll walk to Italy then too, and beat the hell out of them, so you have to tell me if anything’s wrong.”
He’s fixed, then, with a smile like the first bite of a warm meal, a favorite food since childhood.
He wasn’t going to say the rest of it, really, wasn’t going to tap at his thin eggshell like that, but now he--now he has to.
Because he wants to feel that sense of shelter again, like every time he’s climbed through Kojiro’s window, like every time Kojiro’s fed him. Because he cannot stand to be forgotten, not again.
And so his bitten lips part and he says it, as softly as he’s ever said anything, he says “and also, you should kiss me.”
Kojiro does--a chaste little peck on the cheek, the way he’s done so many times before. Except those times, it was to make Kaoru snarl. This--
“No, idiot,” says Kaoru, starving to be touched. “Kiss me properly.”
The way Kojiro looks at him--like he has just leveled the city with a single stroke. As if there is a life before Kaoru said this thing, and a life after.
He’s fucked it up, he thinks, desperately. Like he fucks everything up.
At the very least, Kojiro will not miss him when he’s--
--Kojiro is kissing him, exactly how he’d asked. His head angled slight, warm lips parted, breath soft on Kaoru’s skin.
Kaoru is still, because he never learned what else to be. Kojiro kisses him anyway, coaxing at his lips, suckling at his piercing in a way that makes him whine.
It’s so much, to feel him like this. And it doesn’t stop, it carries on until Kaoru draws back for a panting breath. Until he sees the naked awe on Kojiro’s face, like he’s seen god.
Kaoru kisses him again, wide-mouthed, his hands grasping at Kojiro’s back, his soft wash-worn shirt. Kojiro’s own hands lay warm on Kaoru’s forearms, and they cleave to each other, open.
And Kojiro’s lips leave his, travel across his cheekbone to his ear. He nibbles at the piercings there, too, makes Kaoru shake. One broad hand comes to rub slow circles on his back, right at the center. Like he’s afraid to go down any further, and Kaoru--Kaoru doesn’t know if he wants him to, if he ever wants to feel a hot palm in the small of his back again.
He huffs with the thought, because Ainosuke is not supposed to be here, because what use is he to Kojiro if he can’t be present, if he can’t--
Kojiro only whispers to him, gentling. “Hey,” he murmurs, “hey. I’ve got you.”
And Kaoru feels held, for the first time since he came to Kojiro’s door that foggy hour, when Kojiro made him eat two bowls of spaghetti, made him believe, if even only for a moment, that things would really be okay.
It’s true. Kojiro has him.
For the moment.
His voice is tiny when he speaks again, curled at the edges like the papers he’s burned. “You’d damn well better have me,” he says, and he sounds like a yowling kitten, like something that needs a kind hand. Something without pride, he cringes at the inside of himself, falling out now from slick lips.
“I’ll do my best,” Kojiro says, because that’s all he ever does. “When I’m gone. I’ll text you, I’ll call you every day--you can come visit me.” He sounds desperate, half-certain, like he needs it to be true.
“You’d damn well better think of me.” When you’re gone. When you’re out in the full breadth of the world and home’s the last thing on your mind.
Kojiro pulls back, then, meets Kaoru’s red-rimmed eyes. When he speaks, his voice is raw as Kaoru’s nerves. “Fuck, Kaoru. As if I could ever stop.”
There is more here, Kaoru realizes, than he knew. Or perhaps there is simply more than he’s been willing to acknowledge. He feels like a bastard--what game is he playing, coming to this poor boy’s home, treating him like shelter just because he knows Kojiro won’t say no?
But there is another side to this coin, one that comes up quavering inside him.
He feels like he could sink into it, this broad dark sea that spills from Kojiro, and he’d be safe the whole time.
Only Kojiro is leaving, he’s leaving in the morning.
Or--looking at him--he isn’t sure, because Kojiro’s pupils are blown, his irises around them like promise rings, he thinks that he could make him stay.
But he won’t, he can’t, they’ve talked about this. This is what’s right for Kojiro, even if it’s not for Kojiro right now. Even if it’s not for Kaoru, he is not so small and gritty that he cannot think beyond this moment.
He can, and all he can see is how wretchedly he’s fucked it up. That he’s only made it harder, only strummed the taut sinew between them, made it ache. There is a life before he said his piece and a life after, and really, which is the one he’d rather live?
Kojiro, though, looks placid. Soft, warm and florid in the face. He smiles, and it’s a thing scooped out from the depth of him.
“I wanted to take care of you,” he rasps. “I wanted to be there for you, this way.”
“And I,” Kojiro tells him, with every certainty, “will wait for you.”
You deserve better than that, Kaoru almost says. It’s bitter in the back of his throat, but it’s true. Kojiro deserves not to be anyone’s last resort.
But Kaoru says nothing, because this is what he wanted. To be held, in some heart-shaped locket somewhere, cherished. Needed, not forgotten.
He thinks he should kiss Kojiro again. He thinks he should say yes. He thinks he should make love with him, and that it should be the first time he’s ever let himself be touched, but it’s a bit too late for that.
He thinks he should run, and hide, and stay rooted to this spot.
In the end, exhaustion takes him over, wears down at his nerves. His bold decisiveness--it’s gone, discarded on the pavement at the skate park.
In the end, Kojiro puts him to bed, nestles into the twin bed beside him, tells him it’s okay. In the end, he doesn’t let Kojiro hold him, but the warmth, the proximity lulls him regardless.
Kojiro is gone when he wakes, but Kaoru swears he can feel the imprint of a kiss on his forehead.
What he isn’t certain of is how to hold it.