Archive of Our Own ^beta

The train rattles as it rounds a curve, swaying Keito with it—and Kuro, sitting beside him, puts a hand on his elbow to steady him. 

Keito intends to say a thank-you, because it is only proper, but it lingers on his tongue for too long and there it dies. He's staring at Kuro's hand, warmer than the sun shuttering in through the windows, more real than the stiff seat upholding him and the crisply recirculated air he breathes in. He stares at it and only does not when Kuro's eyes, even more real, are on him, maybe like an accusation or a question, definitely like something Keito cannot answer. 

Caught, Keito finally leans away and mutters his thanks. He keeps the sorry for himself. 

What am I sorry for? he thinks, annoyed, hand twitching as he refrains from placing it where Kuro's had been.

"You good?" Kuro asks. His hand has retreated to his knee, where it curls loosely.

Keito clears his throat. "Fine. I can't exactly circumvent the laws of motion."

Kuro is going to say something else—it's in how he leans imperceptibly forward, in the furrow of his brow; those tells Keito has studied as closely as he would a book—but Souma lapses the brief silence.

"We are nearly there!" he says. He's in the seats across from Keito and Kuro, peering out the window. Souma's reflection, blue-tinted as if it's his own soul, tilts left; in it, Keito sees the gleam in his eyes, the earnestness of his grin. Then Souma twists around, his excitement written on his own skin. "It will be the next stop."

Though Souma is the one who'd invited them to the beach, Keito had forgotten he was there. He feels guilt briefly—it fades when Adonis speaks up, something mild and inconsequential that has Souma chirping away to him. Just as Keito had minded Souma less than who sits next to him, Souma had done the same.

"Are we—" Kuro starts, and Keito's air lodging in his throat is as abrupt as it is intense. In the second of silence that follows naturally between words he thinks of a thousand ways that sentence could go, and they sputter to nothing when Kuro finishes it with, "—glorified babysitters?"

Keito exhales, controlled, as meditation demands; he empties his body, vessel of unnecessary worldliness. And then he still says, "Parents have to watch out for their children."

His regret is immediate, as is his mental self-flagellation: why must he be unlike himself when Kuro is around? 

And like he knows it isn't someone else saying these frivolities, but who he could be if he wasn't too himself, of course he also knows why it's Kuro that draws them out. It's a seed of thought that, when bloomed, might resemble plants long-withered in the fertile ground of his heart. But he has ignored it; he wills the life-giving rain and the sun to go away; he throws a tarp over the greenhouse of his tenderness, locks it, and throws away the key. 

He still wonders it, like questioning his own heart will see him finding reason and logic, as he always has. 

Always except this time.

Upset, Keito has no concept of time; too many thoughts had happened to have been crammed in a heartbeat or two, but Kuro laughs. And it's sincere, an easy reply to something just said; no hitch or nervousness in it indicates that it's a laugh after an awkward pause, a laugh for want of a real answer. This is it, genuine as it gets, Kuro's low laugh bouncing off the train's plastic walls and metal handholds. In the cramped space, it rings, and Keito feels he's inside a struck bell, bones chiming to its reverberation. Instead of pain, there is only sweetness, and he feels a smile coming, often as it does with Kuro around.

The PA crackles with a pleasant pre-recorded voice; it announces their stop, and after the train has slid to a halt, the four of them step out. Souma leads them; Adonis is by him while Keito and Kuro loiter back. As they walk from the train station to the beach, Souma occasionally turns to look at them.

The tenth time he does it, Keito says, "Kiryu and I are still here, Kanzaki. If you don't watch where you're going, you will trip."

"Yes; my apologies!" Souma says, cheeks a light pink. He dutifully faces the front and remains that way until the sidewalk becomes dusted with sand. The beach is in view, a thin golden slope crowned by the blue of the ocean and the deeper blue of the sky, with gulls' cries persistent. "Ah, we have arrived!" he says, and bolts off, Adonis running after, calling on for him to wait.

"Kids," Kuro mutters through a fond shake of his head. 

Souma turned eighteen that spring, just a year behind Keito and Kuro. The bright-eyed archaic sixteen year old he'd been is who they still see.

As for Kuro…

Keito glances at him. His hair's gotten longer; strands curve at his nape, brushing his ears where they escape what slicks it back. Kuro doesn't care; his hands are in his pockets, his posture loose. Relaxed. Softness in those harsh lines.

To think two years ago all Kuro had been was harsh, in his words and actions. To think two years ago, Keito had not considered Kuro his own person but a means to an end, a sacrificial piece on the shogi board he and Eichi had assembled.

Keito is watching Kuro and he knows that despite the ugliness of his past, unrepentable as it is and as he cannot apologize for, the second member of Akatsuki could not have been anyone else.

A flicker of green, vivid in his vision: Kuro's eyes on his. "You sure you're good, danna?""

"Yes," Keito says, facing the front, embarrassment at getting caught again hot in his chest. He'd replied too brusquely. Even if he won't speak vulnerability, Kuro doesn't deserve its opposite. When they are at the beach, properly settled on Kuro's beach towel and shaded by an umbrella, Keito adds, "Thank you for worrying about me."

"I mean, parents are also supposed to do that with each other."

The grains of sand under Keito's bare feet crunch, loud as teeth meeting teeth, just as gritty in his mouth; he spins so quickly a muscle in his neck protests. "You—"

"Hasumi-senpai, Kiryu-senpai?"

Keito snaps his mouth close. He smooths away any annoyance on his face and looks at Adonis. "Yes?"

Adonis favors a small frown. "I think I've come at a bad time. Sorry," he says, ever perceptive and polite. "I needed to give you this, though. Because neither of you brought swimwear, Kanzaki is asking if you could please watch over his sword." He gives it over as if it is feather light. Keito needs both hands to hold it. "It can't get wet. If you want to go swimming, I can take over watching it for you. I do not mind."

"What's Kanzaki thinking, makin' you do this for him?" Kuro asks.

"Ah, please don't think badly of him. He saw hatched eggs and thought they might be turtles, so he is searching for them." Adonis, a small smile on his face, looks toward the beach. Souma is a withdrawing figure, footsteps dimpled on the beach flattened by the calmly lapping waves. When Adonis looks at Keito and Kuro, the softness on his features hasn't faded.

Hmm, Keito thinks, arms crossed.

"Please excuse me," Adonis says. "I think Kanzaki is going too far away." 

Once he's left, Kuro says, "They're cute."

Keito startles. "They're dating?!"

"Not as far as I know. I'm just sayin' even I can tell there's something going on there."

"Oh." 

"Did that scare ya?" Kuro smirks. "Overprotective mom."

Keito frowns. "I am not the mom."

"Are too. You're the fussy one."

"And you're the one who likes sewing and cooking."

"A man can't like that?" Kuro says, scowling. Under the umbrella's shadow, his face appears harsher than it is. It reminds Keito of how Kuro was—all those sharp edges, the abrasiveness—helped in no part by Keito's own old, cold cruelty.

He breathes in through his nose, lets the ocean breeze invigorate him. "You're right. Sorry, Kiryu."

Whatever tension had tethered itself between them undoes itself. Kuro blinks at him as if Keito has spoken in another language. 

"What?" Keito asks, concerned.

Kuro leans back on his hands and stretches his legs. They extend past the umbrella's cover, and the sun glows gold on their sinew. "It's kinda weird hearing you apologize."

"Why? It isn't like I am flawless."

"For a long time," Kuro says, "it felt like you were." He is focused too intently on the horizon. 

They are on unstable ground here. They aren't their former selves, but the past is not so easily forgotten. It blends into the present, bleeds into the future; the past is all that was, and because an is and will be are inevitable, they must be shaped by what preceded them. Once, Keito would not have apologized for anything, believing even his heartbeat justified; once, Kuro would not have questioned that cruelty, believing it righteous. That they can take an uncomfortable step away from their unbalanced past is progress. It should be good.

In Kuro's admission, Keito realizes he doesn't want him to think he is imperfect. And neither does he want him to cling to the justice-ordained perfection Keito had tried to manifest.

Keito pulls his legs in, folding his arms over his knees, and he mumbles, "I was never flawless."

"Hmm?"

Keito could sweep his comment aside with a Never mind. He could never acknowledge how he's wronged Kuro, either explicitly or by perpetuations. He would have taken that coward's choice once. 

Once.

"I said I was never flawless. Only self-absorbed. If I do something uncalled for, I want to apologize for it." He thumbs his shirt where it folds on itself from where he's tucked it in. "Of course, I can't quite apologize for what I've done in the past. Those would be hollow words; I believed in what I was doing then. Now, however, I know better. I want to do better. If it's odd to hear me apologize, it means I simply have more work to do."

Kuro nudges him, and it's stronger than he realizes. It hurts a bit, but Keito keeps that to himself, especially when Kuro's grinning so brightly. "So mature, danna," he says.

"We have to be. We're getting older.”

"Mmm. Soon, that one will be too." Kuro jabs his chin in Souma's direction. "That's weird to think about."

Adonis has guided Souma back, and they're splashing each other in deeper waters nearly kissed by the sun, soon to sleep. It is the idyll of summer. For Souma, it is the last; for Keito and Kuro, it's the beginning of the next part of their lives. They all need to enjoy today.

"Next year we'll all be graduated," Kuro says. "When we get big enough, it's tours around Japan. Then the world."

He'd said when, not if. Pride billows in Keito.

A plump cloud has drifted to cover the sun, and the beach is cast in a darker version of itself.

"You're gonna get sick of me," Kuro jokes, but his eyes are flat, and it's not the first time he has disparaged himself. It's his belief veneered with a laugh to mitigate the consequences.

And Keito will scrape that veneer off with his very teeth.

"I will not," he says. "There is no Akatsuki without you—not merely for your talents, but because I enjoy your company. I wouldn't let anyone stand as my equal on stage and off, you know. If anything, you will be the one to tire of my lectures. Such as this one. Though if it's a lecture to remind you of your worth, I will repeat it as many times as necessary."

Kuro's smile unfurls gradually. When it is there, Keito doesn't want it to go away. "Thanks, Hasumi." 

The cloud moves out of the sun, resplendence returned. 

Keito glances down at Souma's sword, sheathed and wrapped carefully. "I wonder if Kanzaki will be able to travel with this abroad. I doubt foreign countries will honor the deed he has with Japan's government."

"Don't put that thought in his head. He'll cry. It's a big part of our choreography, though, so we should look into getting traveling with it approved."

"He can use a plastic replica in our performances, surely."

Kuro raises an eyebrow. "If you had to draw manga with a crayon instead of your fancy pens, do you think it'd be as good?"

"I—" He closes his mouth. "No," he flatly admits.

"Same for Kanzaki. Plus, even if the quality of his dancing didn't suffer, he wouldn't like using a plastic sword as much. He wouldn't tell us—he's too considerate—so we have to look out for that sort of thing ahead of time."

Keito huffs, but not out of anger. "We really are like his parents."

"And neither of us is the mom."

"Neither of us is."

They let silence wash over them in place of the waves. It is as soothing. To simply exist beside someone, expecting nothing but companionship, is a small indulgence Keito readily takes. His fretting over unfinished work disappears into the void only meditating brings, but he is not sitting there to purposefully achieve inner peace. It's a consequence of the ocean's susurrations, the freshness of the air, and Kuro. 

"Hey," Kuro says, eventually, taking Keito away from his peaceful trance. "You hungry?"

"No."

"Oh." He slumps a little.

"What, are you? You don't need to refrain from eating for my sake."

"If you say so," Kuro says, reaching for the basket Kanzaki had brought. But there's something in the tautness of his motions that means Keito is missing something.

He realizes what it is when Kuro takes out a meticulous fruit salad: halved strawberries, peach and orange slices, apples cut like rabbits, plums in the shape of the moon.

"Did you make this?" Keito asks, leaning in closer. 

"Me and Kanzaki. He was real excited about today. I couldn't not help out." 

"Then of course I'll eat," Keito says, grabbing an apple rabbit. "It's a lovely presentation."

"Thanks," Kuro says. The tautness is gone; he's all easy smiles now. "Tell Kanzaki, too. It was his idea."

"Speaking of the prodigal son," Keito says as Souma bounds up to them, Adonis calmly behind.

"Hasumi-dono, are you enjoying the lunch I prepared with Kiryu-dono's help?" he asks.

"It's nice," Keito says. "You have an eye for presentation, Kanzaki."

Souma hums, pleased, as he plops down.

"Is it all fruit?" Adonis asks, sitting beside Souma. 

"No; I know your preference for meat, and I made you an appropriate lunch. Though I am unsure how well meat goes with a pleasant evening at the beach." Souma pulls out a bento box from the basket. "For you, Adonis-dono. I hope it is to your liking."

"Of course it will be," Adonis replies, taking the box from Souma. "It's from you. Thanks, Kanzaki."

Souma basks in the praise. 

Keito looks away and happens to hold Kuro's eye. Kuro smirks, an I told you so expression that masks something almost— sad. Wistful?

Unless a response is expected of him, Keito eats in silence. Souma and Adonis don't notice—they're talking to each other more than they are to Kuro or Keito. But Kuro does. It's in the worried sideways glances Keito pretends to ignore.

When Adonis and Souma, sword under his care, run off to build sandcastles, Kuro turns to Keito. "Is something the matter, danna? You've been weirdly distracted today." He pauses. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't wanna. But I'd like to know that much."

He purses his mouth. "It's... complicated." It's an answer to Kuro's question, but it's not the right one. Too evasive.

Then there's a thumb on his forehead.

"You're gonna get wrinkles with all that frownin'," Kuro says, smoothing the crease in Keito's brow. "Scary faces are my thing. Ain't suited to pretty people like you."

"'Pretty'?" Keito echoes, a radiance of heat with an epicenter under Kuro's thumb spiraling out in him, like a child's drawing of the sun.

"Uh." Kuro removes his thumb. "Yeah." He rubs the back of his neck. "Ya wanna walk around?"

Keito fears that if they leave the sanctuary of the umbrella's shadow, the moment will be permanently lost. "I'm fine," he says. "If you want to go, don't let me stop you."

"C'mon, you aren't Sakuma, so you can stand a little evening sun, right?" Kuro says, and Keito does not have time to repudiate being anything like Rei because Kuro is dragging him by the wrist—not unkindly—from the umbrella's shadow, to the waning light. 

And then the sunlight is on his skin again, warm despite the late hour, but not as warm as where Kuro holds him.

"Just a short walk," Kuro says. "Otogari and Kanzaki are nearby and won't let our stuff be taken, if that's what you're worried about."

It's rare for Kuro to be this insistent. And it's not that Keito doesn't want to go—it's that he doesn't know what next would be if he says yes.

That's the beauty of it.

"Alright," he says, and risks curling his fingers around Kuro's arm.

Kuro's eyes widen. But he doesn't shake Keito off. Doesn't say anything to discourage it. He silently leads them on, the sand whispering, as if sharing rumors it does not want the waves—respectfully distant—to overhear.

"You can't come to the beach and not relax a little," Kuro says, though he speaks without turning to look at Keito. 

"Just don't expect me to swim."

Kuro chuckles. "I don't."

Kuro holds him with purposeful care, because where he is pure physical strength, his hand, like this, is just a suggestion of touch. Like one of them will say something to shatter their strange precariousness and they'll have to let each other go, but the looseness of his grasp would lend him plausible deniability: he hadn't realized he'd held on for so long.

Or maybe Keito's overthinking, doing what he does best: expecting the worst, because it's better to be right if with bitterness in your mouth than to have your heart beaten to a pulp.

They're holding not-hands and the breeze is cleansing, the sand soft, the day ending. There is work Keito had left unfinished; once in the dorms, he'll have to hurry with it before he sleeps. But seeing the sinking sun gild the ocean like it's liquid gold, causing their shadows to be thrown larger than they are—as he hopes they will one day be—maybe coming here wasn't the most terrible decision. 

He looks at the back of Kuro's head. It wasn't a terrible decision at all.

The beach's end is not in sight. Kuro stops at a random point, and that is when he lets Keito go. He covers his forehead with that hand as he stares into the glowing horizon.

"Don't do that. You'll go blind," Keito chides.

"Sorry. I was just thinking." Kuro drops his hand.  "There are whole other countries across the ocean. If we make it big, we can see the sunset somewhere else. That'd be nice."

"It would be." Keito touches the tip of his tongue to the roof of his mouth. The sun is the sun, grand and near-eternal. What could change is the ground beneath your feet, the color of the sky, the language you hear when you care to listen. That would suffice, Keito thinks: change around one fiery constant. "I think I prefer the dawn, however." 

"'Cause of our name?"

The corner of Keito's mouth quivers with a smile.

"Yeah," Kuro says. "Me, too."

Rapid as a flipbook, Keito's mind flits through the recent pages of his life, and a constant is the very person in front of him. 

"I'm happy you think so," he says, and he means it so much that speaking it lifts a weight off his heart; his breathing is deeper, sweeter.

He'd scolded Kuro for staring at the sun but Keito can't look away, either. They watch it melt below the sea—an illusion, the rotation of the Earth; the sun cannot be truly defeated. And yet how beautiful to pretend it's bidding farewell, fleetingly, to rise tomorrow just as radiant. It had smeared itself downward across the sky, and where last it had been, orange and pink stubbornly remain in the midst of night. 

Keito blinks, circular afterimages shimmering behind his eyes. The sunset is no quick affair; how long had they stood in comfortable silence?

"Wait," Kuro says, sounding as dazed as Keito feels, "what time is it?"

"Just past eight thirty," he answers after checking his wristwatch.

"We should get going, huh."

"No," Keito says before he realizes it's out of his thoughts and into the air, cooler with the water near and the sun far.

Kuro looks at him. 

There's no taking it back without a lie or half-truth that would sour Keito's tongue. So he will speak the truth. "Kanzaki and Otogari need to go home, as they have school tomorrow, but I do not mind being here a bit longer," he says, pushing his glasses up. 

Kuro smiles. "Me either. Let's go get them, though. They're in their own world over there. Or kingdom, maybe. Get a load of that sandcastle..."

Keito turns. Gapes. "That is— that is a very impressive sandcastle."

"Kanzaki's got all sorts of talents," Kuro says, chuckling. 

"Kiryu-dono, Hasumi-dono, look what we made!" Kanzaki says when they're there. 

"It was mostly Kanzaki," Adonis says. "He is very knowledgeable on classical Japanese architecture."

"You flatter me, but you need not be so modest, Adonis-dono; I could not have sculpted it by myself."

Kuro claps them both on the shoulder. "Then the two of you did a good job."

"Indeed they did. Matsumoto Castle, isn't it?"

"Yes! As expected of Hasumi-dono! Thank you very much for your praise!" 

"But it's time for you two to go home," Kuro says, letting them go.

Souma's face falls. "Already?"

"You have to get a good night's rest so you focus in school tomorrow," Keito says. "Kiryu and I will stay. Once you've graduated, you can also occasionally follow your whims, Kanzaki."

Kuro nods at Adonis. "Make sure Kanzaki actually goes to class, won't ya, Otogari?"

"Of course, Kiryu-senpai."

"Then let us be in our way," Souma says, dejected but obedient.

That leaves Keito with the ocean, ceaseless; the night, seeping further in; and Kuro, stalwart as ever.

"Do you wanna keep on walkin'?" Kuro asks.

"I don't mind. But I'd actually like to get closer to the water."

"I thought you said you weren't swimming?"

"And I won't," Keito says. "I'd like to feel it, since we're already here."

Kuro's look is amused, but fondness tinges its corners. "Sure."

The sand goes from dry silk to moist clumps to fully drenched, squelching with sounds that make both of them laugh. Where sand and water converge, Keito lingers. He rolls his pants up to his knees and walks forward into the water.

It's not as cold as he thought it would be, but it still sends a small shiver up his back. The water flows calmly around him, and he soon is accustomed to the texture of something ever-changing, to the temperature below his body's but not so low to cause him harm.

"Feels nice, don't it?" Kuro says, joining him.

"It does."

Kuro kicks up a splash of water, darkening Keito's clothes.

"Hey," Keito says, no true annoyance in it. With a smirk he can't stifle, he does the same to Kuro.

But Kuro is expecting it, and he's hopped out of the way, laughing. Not one to lose, Keito wades after, bending down to scoop water and throw that at Kuro, too. 

The water parts easily; it lets Keito in without a sigh, even as he kicks, scoops, chases Kuro through it. Perhaps because it likes the clear sound of his and Kuro's laughter—the only human presences in the quiet span of the emptied beach—too much to disrupt them.

At the least, Keito does.

"Quit moving!" he tells Kuro.

"Quit bein' so slow!" 

Water droplets have gathered on the surface of his glasses, partly obstructing his vision. He takes them off and wipes them with a dry part of his shirt. He's about to put them back on when he notices the sky, darkened fully, the white points of stars blinking awake from their daytime sleep.

He hurriedly puts his glasses on to read his wristwatch. "It's past nine," he says, stunned. Time had diluted itself to meaninglessness. "Kiryu, it's late. We need to go." He eyes the barren beach. "I'm sure we're breaking a rule on the beach's hours, too."

Kuro studies the sky and seems as surprised to find the sunlight sapped away. "Damn, you're right." He plods through the water, back over to Keito. "Where'd the time go?"

"That's a good question." 

"So you had fun today? No regrets about putting off work to mess around for a few hours?"

"None at all."

"Hmm. Maybe there's hope for you," Kuro says as they return to shore.

"What do you mean?"

"Acting your age for once. You can be impulsive, but today you were pretty carefree. It's cute."

In quick succession: Keito trips—over the wet sand and his own feet and a clump of seaweed slick and startlingly on his ankle; but he'd reached out to grasp Kuro's elbow, both at what Kuro had said and at the simultaneous fall he'd felt approaching. And Kuro, reflexes demon-fast, twists in that split second it takes for Keito to stumble. Keito drags Kuro with him, but Kuro had bent his arms to pad his fall, and as Keito lands flat on the shallow water, Kuro is hovering over him.

The ocean is cool, gentle under him; the air is, too, devoid of the sun's mercilessness. The only warmth radiates from Kuro, who is small compared to the might of their earthly surroundings, but that same warmth, wrapped precisely over Keito—the closeness of their chests, their faces shy of a kiss—might be the only thing that has ever mattered. 

What Keito should do is apologize. He says, so faint the waves drink it up, "Kiryu."

A heartbeat passes. Kuro counters it with, "Hasumi."

Keito raises his hand, knowing he has to pull himself away. 

He grazes it to Kuro's cheek, barely there before he drowns it into a fist underwater.

They're alone, and no photograph could be taken now to slander them. If Keito doesn't stop it now, it will continue; it will become as large as he wants it to be and it will hurt. It always has.

Kuro's eyes flit to Keito's mouth. "Hasumi, I want—"

"No," Keito says. It is a single word, and it is the most difficult thing he has ever had to force himself to say.

Kuro shrinks back, minimally, but the distance it has opened up between them when they lie this close might as well be an abyss. 

"You shouldn't want it," Keito says, terse. It's as if he extracts his own teeth without anesthetic; it's as if the world is unraveling from a string he himself tugged. "Nor should I." He casts his face aside. The water dips over his cheek and down to the inside of his glasses. If one wasn't looking properly, they could be mistaken for tears.

"You're right," Kuro says, quietly. And then he's climbing off, muttering an apology, and Keito has to bite his tongue to keep himself from demanding to know what's happening. He caused it himself. This is his talent, ruining things before they start. But it's necessary.

Isn't it?

Keito sits up, head thumping, clutching the wet fabric of his shirt clinging over the skin housing his foolish, manic heart.

"Let's go back," Kuro says, pointedly not looking at him. "You need to dry off before we can hop on the train."

He nods. He shouldn't speak. 

On the shore, Kuro removes his shirt—drier than Keito's; he'd not been the one pinned to the water—and places it to the sand. He picks up the beach towel, dusts it, and hands it to Keito. Still turned away from him. "Here," he says. "You can sit on my shirt so sand doesn't get on your clothes."

Keito silently takes it, careful not to let their hands brush. He sits, wrapping the towel over him, hiding Kuro beside him. He looks down and wonders when it is that he is going to vomit up his heart.

"Sorry," Kuro says again, when the waves' sloshing and the stretching emptiness of the beach proves too much. "I wasn't thinking. I know how to punch people, but I don't know how to…" He trails off. "Guess we should be glad no one else is here. We've already debuted. If I got Akatsuki into shit, I'd never forgive myself."

"Kiryu," Keito says, facing him; it is less an indication he has something to say and more of a pause in the conversation, veering into Keito's reasoning for why that on the water could not have happened. But it's different to hear it from Kuro. It becomes too real in its lack of materialization—and, in turn, so do Keito's feelings, spurned. 

"Our lives are gonna get scheduled down to the minute," Kiryu continues. "What we can and can't do. Probably at the very damn top of the 'can't do' list is 'date.' Especially not someone in the same unit." He flicks away sand from his knee. "Especially not when we're both guys."

"Kiryu." A plea now: to stop talking, to look at him.

"It's fine, Hasumi. I get it. It ain't you or me, it's everything we're in. We've worked too hard to let some stupid feelings get in the way." He runs a hand through his hair and finally, finally he looks at Keito with a lopsided smile that might split him or Keito or both if it stilts just one more degree. "But maybe it's more stupid for me to think that even if we can never do anything about it, I'm really happy you like me, too."

Pure blankness slates over Keito's mind, and there is no more thinking, no more fretting. Simply doing. The towel slips free from his grip as he wraps his hands on the back of Kuro's neck and brings his mouth down to his own.

The motion had been premeditated, not here but in idle daydreams, in what-ifs Keito had dismissed as fantasies. In all of them, the kiss had happened perfectly. Real life isn't as kind: the move had been graceless, and their teeth click; their mouths aren't quite aligned; Kuro isn't doing anything. Kuro isn't doing anything, and Keito had misread it, hadn't he; he has brought on complete and utter destruction to he and Kuro's relationship, to Akatsuki as a whole.

Keito withdraws, tongue forming the first shape of an apology swiftly smothered, because Kuro's cupping his face and pressing their mouths back together. There's no grace in it either—he doesn't know how to kiss, he'd implied as much—but there's so much need, so much affection, that it is the only possible way Keito would want their kiss to go.

And if Keito is the first to have the privilege, he will make it so that no one else will.

He urges Kuro closer by his lips' insistence, catching Kuro's. But Kuro, if inexperienced, doesn't allow himself to be so pliant; his fingers dimple Keito's cheeks in time to the firmer pressure of the kiss—his, now, his control; and Keito allows it, lets someone else lead for once, lets someone love him with all the force he burns with, too. If it weren't for Kuro holding him down, he would have floated off to the moon.

Keito puts off breathing in until it feels it will kill him worse than breaking off the kiss. He casts his head aside, and the sudden rush of air he loudly takes in dizzies him. Kuro is just as reluctant to part. At his cheek, he feels Kuro's own forceful breathing. Keito shifts, to say— something.

Kuro's lips remain parted from the open end of their kiss, and he speaks first, voice rough. "You just said we shouldn't—"

"I know," Keito says, holding Kuro tighter. "I know. I meant it. But... I also didn't." He brings their foreheads together, the humidity and their sweat and the ocean's spray mingled to one saltwater film. "What I want as an idol and as myself aren't always compatible. There's a balance that is difficult to settle for. But sometimes," he says, mouth quirked, "I'm impulsive."

Kuro smiles back: a silent concordance, an acceptance of Keito's irrationality. But his expression falters. "We still can't do anything, though."

That is the crux of it. It was one thing for Keito to suffer alone; learning it is mutual yet unattainable by forces greater than they is another thing entirely. Punishment, perhaps, for what he's done to be here. Maybe he deserves it. But he can hate it.

Keito gently extricates himself; where his skin had touched Kuro's, it parts with slow hesitance. He folds his hands on his lap. "We can't," he says, eyes on the ocean, bereft of people, existing beautifully on its own. 

And he sits straighter. 

"We can't," he says again, turning to Kuro, "when people are looking."

"People are always going to be looking."

"They aren't right now, are they? It'll be rare—idols exist to be seen." He puts his hand at his side, fingers brushing Kuro's. "But those moments will happen."

"That sounds too impulsive, even for you," Kuro mumbles, but he slides his hand toward Keito, fingertips solidly to fingertips.

"I'm not saying we need to go on obvious dates or— anything more serious than that. I merely want to be assured, in small ways, that we have each other."

"I can do that." Kuro links their hands together, private in the night. "I'd... like to do that. I don't want to wait ten years or whatever to hold your hand. You're gonna be over me by then, anyway."

"What?" Keito's hand clenches Kuro's. "You don't know that."

"Neither do you, Hasumi. It's okay. We're young and I'm... well, me."

"This isn't a fluke, Kiryu. I like you because of who you are, as you are." He scowls. "So we're young; what of it? I can't wish for you to be by me even in ten years? Or that I like you enough now it would remain feasible later? You're right in that neither of us knows where we will actually be then—of course we don't; the future hasn't arrived. I'd like to hope it will be a good one. One with you in it." He brings their joined hands to his chest. "To call my past relationships failures is an understatement, and part of me fears if I try it with you, that I'll ruin it as I have everything else. But the larger part of me knows you are different. With Eichi it was giving myself wholly for little in return; with Sakuma, it was too much animosity that rotted us to a stalemate. With you it's equal. It's right.

"With them, I had to consider what I did or did not say to get what I wanted. It was mutual manipulation. With you, I'm just me, and it is the most precious gift I could ask for. So whatever demon your name bestowed you is telling you that you aren't enough for me, please tell it to shut up. You're not merely enough. You're exactly who I need."

Kuro says nothing, and Keito's heart rate picks up, worrying he has upset the balance yet again. 

But then Kuro laughs, the laugh that sinks into Keito like it belongs there. "You're so long-winded," he says.

Keito's cheeks are warm. "But do you get it?"

"Yeah. I'm not good with words like you, so I can't say anything more than that. I do get it. It's just hard to believe."

"Well, you should. You're mine and I'm yours and I will fight people about it."

"You, fight? You can keep on leavin' that to me, Hasumi."

"If you insist," he says, in false haughtiness.

Kuro smiles. "I think I do."

The lull that follows is peaceful, the calm after the storm, ripe with possibilities that the single beat of a butterfly's wing could push into any direction. There are no butterflies here, but perhaps the beat of the heart is an equivalent substitute: Keito, still holding Kuro's hand, feels it at his wrist pulse point.

"Hasumi," Kuro whispers. "Can I kiss you?"

He's asked where Keito, esteemed in manners, had just done. Though it doesn't offend him. On the contrary; how someone with a past and appearance like Kuro is, at heart, burning with compassion, kindles Keito's own heart. "Yes."

Cautiously but with intent, Kuro's lips meet Keito's, and there is no desperation. It is a kiss to ground them, to seal what they have said. A promise. But a promise is two-sided, and so Keito kisses simply back, an affirmation. He doesn't deepen it: this tender connection suffices.

Kuro is also the one to pull away. The first to speak again: "If you've dried off, we should probably head back to the dorms." 

The day must end, after all. And there is no kinder ending than this.

"We should," Keito says, nodding. And pauses. "I should give you your shirt back," he mumbles, standing and picking the shirt from the sand. He dusts it as best as he can and offers it to Kuro, respectfully glancing away.

Kuro laughs again. "Now you're shy? I'd been sitting there shirtless. Thanks, though." Keito hears it whisper on his skin as he puts it on.

The umbrella, useless for some time, is snapped close; the towel gets folded in its tote bag and slung on Kuro's shoulder. Then they're off, walking out of tandem, hands touching by serendipitous spontaneity, though they say nothing of it. They let it happen; they let their smiles go private—but Keito catches Kuro's, as he's sure Kuro catches his.

"I'm somewhat tired," Keito says when they're at the station, lights artificial and white, brick and plastic cold. "If I fall asleep on your shoulder, it's through no fault of mine."

Kuro, mere millimeters away, could outshine the sun. "Okay," he says. 

Faint mechanical humming fills Keito's ears—the train approaches; and then it is there, whooshing by, so mightily his hair flutters, his clothes snap, and he sways with the train's passing force. And there's a hand on his elbow for the second time that day.

The train has stopped. Its doors slide open, beckoning.

Kuro, hand still on Keito's, tilts his head. Let's go.

Let's, Keito thinks, striding forward.