Archive of Our Own

The thunder wakes him up first, as it rolls across the rooftops and tries to stamp through the ceiling. The chill comes next, freezing tonight’s rendition of his nightmare in his brain. Skin prickling and body trembling with the rhythm of the storm, Kazuya sits up in his bed and soaks in the stillness of the dorm room at two in the morning. He hears nothing but the lingering whispers of his bad dreams and the soft snoring of his roommates. 

The rain crashes on the windows mercilessly, banging its fists like an animal against the bars of a cage, and Kazuya’s heart drums along in time to it. Streaks of tears stream down the window panes, and the plants sway and tremble, bending over and begging for mercy under the unforgiving weather. He can hear the sloshing of rainwater in the drains. 

Despite all the noise, he feels silent and numb, like he’s faded beyond where the world can reach him and he’s all alone. 

He’s always alone. 

He throws off the sheets, sweat sheening his forehead and neck and making his t-shirt cling to his back. The phantom of a fever that’s been wracking his body has been the bane of his existence for a while, as he’s chased down the corridors of this labyrinth full of his nightmares every time he sleeps. They’re not anything tragic or horrific - rather, it’s the humane and real nature of them that frightens Kazuya. 

The scorching heat of a tear carving a trail down his cheek is usually what makes him up most nights. 

He slides his feet into his slippers and leaves the room, stepping out into a corridor drenched in rainwater. The winds pick up and snake under his t-shirt, sliding over his skin, the sensation like the cool pair of hands smoothing out the knotted muscles and aches that pervade his body regularly now. The wind carries the rainwater against the doors, hitting Kazuya in the face with a cool and goosebump-inducing spray as he stands there, hands in his pockets and soaks the weather in. 

Visibility is low, behind the sheets of water plummeting from the sky, but the walls of rain light up with the night lamps in the hallways. A slice of sickly yellow light cuts through the darkness, prompting Kazuya to move closer to the railing, shield his face against the torrent and lean over the slightest. 

He recognises Youichi by his footsteps and the odd scrapes his night slippers make because their soles are slightly coming off. Kazuya is certain he could recognise Youichi by the heat of his breath and by the way his body displaces air in a dark room. Eyes closed, wordless, soundless… in every circumstance, even if the world made it so that he and Youichi had never met, he would recognise his best friend. Against Fate, whatever destiny would have foretold, Kazuya would know him anywhere. 

Oddly, it’s the knowledge that Youichi is under the same storm as him that calms Kazuya down just the slightest, nulls his fear and makes his anxiety ebb. However tumultuous, however merciless, however unrelenting any storm is, Youichi is just as sturdy, benevolent and kindly constant. Kazuya closes his eyes and calls his friend’s face and voice to memory, and his thundering heart responds like a crying child finding its mother’s embrace.

Suddenly, the storm isn’t as loud. The rain isn’t as ruthless. The winds aren’t as imposing. Everything is muted as Kazuya breathes slowly, clutching the wet handrail a little tighter until the distant click of a door signals that Youichi has returned to his room. Kazuya takes his final deep breaths and, with a newfound courage in his heart, returns to his small room to brave the rest of the night. 

Every night has been the same thing, ever since the spring showers washed out his days and left him with nothing but the indoor gym and limited practice. With no games and no pitches to call, the colours have greyed and grown diluted with the bad weather. 

Kazuya is, quite literally, under the weather. With battered down courage and will, he’s at his wit’s end. There seem to be far more monsters to face every night now. 

He climbs under his covers, pulls them over his head despite being a sweaty mess already, and braces himself for another few hours of tossing and turning till the sun rises and dispels all the darkness. 

The rain tapers off in the morning until it’s a drizzle. It plops on the ground and leaves echoes like that of a plucked harp string. The sky has gone from howling with grief to singing with celebration of a season of new beginnings. 

Kazuya shakily steps out of his room to the sound of the rest of the boys waking up and making a beeline for the bathroom. The multiple voices blend together, assaulting his tender morning senses and forcing him to burrow deeper into his hoodie as he struggles to calm his nerves. He steadily makes his way past his teammates, greeting them good morning in a surprisingly steady voice as he hides his shivering under his oversized clothes. 

He can hear Youichi yelling and banging on the cubicle doors downstairs. 

“Shit faster, jerk! You’re holding up the line!”

He smiles despite himself, hiding his expression by burying it into his collar. His nightmares seem distant now, drowned out by the sounds and sights and people he’s come to associate with this place he calls home. In the daylight, when he’s around these boys, skeletons will hesitate to step out of the closet. 

“You look like shit,” Youichi tells him through a mouth full of toothpaste as they stand beside each other at the sinks. “Did you sleep last night?” 

“Yeah. Well enough,” Kazuya lies and immediately earns a look from his friend. He shrugs and bends over to spit so he can avoid Youichi’s incisive gaze. There’s something in that look that makes Kazuya feel unsettled and bare in a way he can only feel with Youichi. 

He wrestles some food into his mouth, despite his waned appetite, ignoring the concerned look Sawamura shoots his way. Kazuya normally has no problem downing the hefty meals but recent turn of events has seen his eating habits fall out of regularity. Eating meals has become a chore and he relies on small snack breaks at regular intervals throughout the day to keep him going. 

Keep him going, it does, but it’s the bare minimum. With their outdoor training cancelled due to the rain, their rigorous schedules of in-squad games and situational fielding practices have been put on hold and essentially, incapacitated. Kazuya blames this sudden change of routine for his poor appetite though truthfully, he knows it’s something else.

He gets through the first and second periods without breakfast, but by the third, it takes all his power not to pinch his navel in reprimand to his growling stomach. There are equations on the board - equations that he’s already studied and mastered a week prior to this class - and his mind is elsewhere. 

His eyes wander from the teacher to the city in the distance, skyscrapers reduced to stubby fingers on the horizon. Sunlight fractures through the thin drizzle of rain and Kazuya searches for those colours, like he always did when he was a kid. But there are none. There have always been none. 

He remembers a childhood of nothing but rain, with no end to the storm, and no break in the clouds. The memory of the crashing thunder and throbbing bedroom walls is fresher and deeper than that of open buds and ripe fruits. The cold and barren distance between him and his father remains like a scar on him today. The hole in their family portrait and the cavity in his heart both remain unfilled.

The storm brings back nightmares even during the day. His shadows overwhelm him under the feeble kiss of a rain-stained sunlight. All of his scars - the ones unseen and invisible to anyone but him - ride the tide of time backwards and open up as fresh wounds. He closes his eyes to the noise around him and presses against those incisions, memories surging forward like electric pulses carried by the jolt of pain. Fresh, unadulterated ache that spreads like rot from his chest to the rest of him.

And he knows why he hates the weather, why he feels like his sanity is balanced on a pin. 

Fourth period is Literature, and with Literature, comes the teacher that drones about Hamlet and at odd intervals, professes Shakespeare’s brilliance. Kazuya thumbs his temples and closes his eyes, and ears to it all, the words on his worksheet imprinted on the back of his eyelid tauntingly. 

The imagery in the play, specifically of the country as a diseased body, hits too close to home. Hamlet’s solitude in bearing the weight of these state of affairs, and his own state of mind in an environment that has stolen his access to parents, and even a lover, feels like a language of its own. It’s one that pins Kazuya and crucifies him on a cross of his own shame. 

When the analysis comes in, and the wall between fiction and reality crashes down to let the dots connect as is common of the subject, Kazuya shuts off. 

He really hates Literature.

The bell finally rings, jerking him out of his stupor just as Youichi’s hand slams down hard on his desk, startling the other classmates who have yet to leave for their recess.

“What’s the matter with you?” Youichi asks, a deep scowl on his face. 

Kazuya deliberately avoids his gaze and stares at Youichi’s hands on the table, drinking in the faint scars, extrapolating from memory the calluses on his rough palms. His rough, but warm palms and the sensation of his hands on Kazuya’s shoulder and elbow when holding him steady. Hands that, Kazuya believes, could fix just about anything and create everything. Problems, solutions, contrivances.

He wonders when exactly he started to think of them like that; when did he move past that gut fear that took root the first day he met Youichi and started to water this flower that’s wound around his ribs? When has that barren landscape he’s come to know of himself start to sprout life and bear fruit? And in this desert, why does he think of only one person to open up his oasis to?

He stamps down the speculations with unfathomable violence, tucking their remains away in the same corner of his mind as his grief and guilt.

“Did you shower?” Kazuya asks, yanking a teasing grin onto his face. “I can smell yesterday on you from a row away.” 

Youichi reflexively grabs him by the collar and rattles off a string of curses before speaking. “Don’t get smart with me! Worry about yourself!”

“Why? You worried about me?” He asks this, but doesn’t prepare for the answer.

“Yes, stupid!” Youichi replies, his voice taking on a chiding tone. “Anyone would be!” 

Anyone would be . Yet, of all people, it is Youichi.

Kazuya reaches out absently and starts picking at the dried paint on Youichi’s cuticles. His friend sighs, pulling a chair over by the leg and sitting down into the characteristic silence that prevails whenever either one lets it. 

“I’ll be late for practice today,” Youichi tells him. “Coursework runs late.” 

“Right,” Kazuya responds absently. It’s coursework day for Youichi. 

All the third year art students are working on their final project. There is a buzz of wonder and speculation among the student body - one that seems to always follow the artists around. Art seems to attract that kind of energy, the same way it did in the days where it was only accessible to the rich. There is a certain wealth of passion and skill that everyone associates with those that study it. 

Kazuya is no exception. He wishes he were as dexterous as Youichi is with charcoal and clay. 

However, his skills are limited to the baseball field alone. It’s not a bad thing, he knows this, and he loves feeling like the field is a kingdom on its own that’s open to him. That feels like where he’s meant to be. After years of searching for it, the sport gives him a place he feels like he matters and people who matter to him. (No matter how skilfully he conceals the latter.) 

He feels Youichi’s hands in his, their palms folded idly against each other as Kazuya uses the paint as an excuse to read the map of lines on his friend’s palm. Youichi doesn’t say anything either, and Kazuya feels the heat of his gentle but present scowl piercing the silence that neither of them has the courage to dodge or the force to break through. 

They have fragile moments like this when Kazuya listens to the lurching of his heart, and thinks about the split second of silence in between his heartbeats; he wonders if Youichi’s could fill that silence on its own. These crisp thoughts that he entertains as long as they last, before scattering when Kazuya and Youichi’s gazes meet. 

“When do you think the weather will let up?” Youichi asks. His thoughtful tone makes his voice dive pitch. 

“I don’t know,” Kazuya responds, following Youichi’s gaze to the field. “Soon, I hope. We can only go so long without proper practice if we want to make it to Nationals.” 

“You can only go so long without a proper meal,” Youichi says, incisively. “Have you eaten yet?” 

Kazuya holds up his bread roll in response. “I was meaning to, but someone hijacked my mealtime to complain to me.” 

Youichi grits his teeth, his eyebrows pinching his forehead. “Just eat your damn bread.” 

This is comfortable terrain - the two of them bickering petulantly but naturally. This is where Kazuya feels safer, where he can ignore his racing heartbeat, flushed hands and hot face. Where he can ignore his uncertainty, and just ride the currents of their friendship and the ease that comes with it. It keeps his mind from wandering anywhere beyond that territory where things are unfamiliar and scary and uncalculated. 

Youichi steeples his fingers below his chin and closes his eyes, the scowl lingering on his face. Kazuya wonders what it would be like to kiss those wrinkles smooth, his lips on warm skin, another’s pulse throbbing against his mouth. He banishes the thought as quickly as it comes and when Youichi opens his eyes to glare at him, he gives his friend a crumb-filled smile, earning a disgusted groan.

Thunder crashes outside, and that forcefield around the two of them seems to tremble and shimmer as Kazuya flinches. He suppresses his trembling and tries to tear his appetite back open with more mouthfuls of bread. 

In this tangle of emotion, the prickly forest of everything he doesn’t want to face, he follows the sound of Youichi’s heartbeat back home. 

Youichi doesn’t like Kazuya watching him work, though there’s no real harm intended on Kazuya’s end. 

He finds Youichi in his studio when the torrent beats down on the fields and drowns the sights in white and nearly opaque sheets of rain. The other art students throw him a glance, and only Furuya pauses in his work to greet him, promptly going back to his assignment leisurely when he notices the weather. Youichi is the same, finding no reason to rush.

“What are you doing here?” Youichi asks, his tone blatantly scathing even to himself, as he directs the question at Kazuya. 

Kazuya’s lips peel back into that shit-eating grin that once used to grate on Youichi’s nerves, but now is more endearing than anything. “What? I can’t visit my very hardworking and dear friend to drop off food for him?” 

He pulls out something in an aluminium foil and drops it on the stool next to Youichi, nearly knocking off the sculpting tools and bowl of drying slip. Youichi, from where he’s crouching on the ground with fingers coated in clay and dust, growls in warning. 

“Is the purpose of your life to be an absolute menace?” He asks, to which Kazuya responds with a shrug and annoyingly, sits down near him. 

He shows no signs of leaving and deep down, underneath all that impenetrable hide of indifference (and a little irritation), Youichi doesn’t mind having him here. 

“Practice is cancelled again today and Sawamura has remedial lessons for Math, so I don’t really have anything to do,” Kazuya responds. He idly reaches out and thumbs the cut off lumps of clay stuck to the ground and rolls it between his fingers. 

Youichi tries to unfold all of Kazuya’s words, tearing back all the small lies to find out what really it is that has him acting so strangely. It’s obvious to the others on the team that there has been tumultuous undercurrents to all of Kazuya’s actions and words lately and Youichi, despite knowing how indecipherable his captain is, has become painfully sensitive to those changing tides. 

He feels people like points on an emotional radar - reads them like he can feel the pulses of their joy, the seismic trembling of their anger, the crashing of sadness and every emotion that humanity has understood so far. He has come to predict Sawamura’s despondence and read it like it’s second nature, feels the gravity of disappointments from the bunk below his own and the violent starbursts of ecstasy when the pitch crashes into the mitt just right.

He feels everyone else too, in the same intensity. It leaves him feeling bare, and overwhelmed; he is open and vulnerable to the world’s sheer vastness and intricacies. 

Youichi feels Kazuya there too, in a manner that’s different from everyone else. There are seas less capricious than he is, and storms that are kinder. 

Yet, Kazuya is those two at once and a force of nature all on his own. There are cracks in his barren land, only because the entirety of spring and the force of its vitality are struggling to break free under that crust. The question is why Kazuya won’t let it through. 

Youichi spends a lot of time seeing Kazuya - seeing , not looking. Seeing him - in all his unpredictability, and apprehension. Trying to see through him and that armour painstakingly glued with all his lies., and in any other way he can look through the fissures in the dry land. And through his efforts, Youichi has realised nothing about his best friend compared to what he’s learned about himself. 

His love for Kazuya can be measured in mountains - jagged cliffs, deep valleys and all. He loves Kazuya with all his torn edges and faded paint like he’s not loved anyone or any work of art before. Out of all that he feels on that radar, his feelings are the most intense and invasive, pervading every sensible thought and breaking him down to fragments. Into tender, vulnerable pieces, all of which he imagines being held in Kazuya’s calloused and steady hands. 

His imagination ends there and on the worst days, he stops it at his fingertips before they can take any form through clay, charcoal or written words. His fear keeps him from leaving any evidence of these emotions around. He tries to forget them as best as he can but his effort to dig them out cements them further into their place. 

“Are you going to the career fair?” Kazuya asks him. 

“Yeah,” Youichi responds. Every interaction with Kazuya feels rehearsed to him now, with him carefully picking his words like one picks blocks in Jenga. One wrong word could have it all come crashing down between the two of them. 

“Do you have any idea where you want to go?” 

“You’re going to Meiji, right?” Youichi expertly deflects the question. Inquiries about his future make his palms sweat and his head reel. He has no idea what he wants to do with his future and is not ready to let anyone know. 

“I guess so.” Kazuya has begun to roll the small clumps of clay into one big ball. “They already sent me an offer letter for a scholarship. As long as I clear the entrance exam, I’m good to go.” Youichi envies how calmly he says that, with eyes set on a future that is rolled out for him. He walks on water towards it, while Youichi gets left behind, struggling to stay afloat.

“I’ll decide after the fair,” Youichi concludes sternly. He squeezes acrylic onto his palette paper and prepares to paint the fibreglass. The silicon mould of his sculpture feels rough and crisp against his sweaty fingers. 

“Are you going to continue art? Become a professionalist?”

Youichi’s hands tremble and he abruptly drops the brush to hide it. Of course . He’s been told the natural thing would be to pursue his skills professionally. Earn the big bucks through what he’s the best at, but there is a different kind of fear that comes with it. The trepidation that douses the searing passion until it’s lukewarm. 

“No,” Youichi says, with certainty. He may not know what he wants to do with his life but he knows what he doesn’t want to do. It’s enough for now.

Kazuya doesn’t even hide the surprise on his face as his eyebrows arch in question. 

“I don’t want to make my art a means of earning a living. I don’t see myself enjoying it the same anymore if I do that,” Youichi explains, honestly. He wipes the sweat on his face with clay-dusted fingers, taking refuge in the split second that he can break eye contact with Kazuya. 

“Well, what do you want to do?” 

Youichi feels his temper flare but bites down on it. He’s been through this type of conversation so many times before with many other people. There’s always that surprise when he denies wanting to continue what he’s good at and the question following it that insinuates that it’s where his options end. If not baseball… if not art… then what is he good at, really?

“I don’t know,” He replies, curtly. “Not everyone knows what they want to do with their life or have options handed to them. I’ll figure it out.” The previous sentence, unintentionally, he directs it at Kazuya, his words pointed and tipped in that poison of jealousy that’s corroding his coherent thought. 

“It’s fine,” Kazuya responds, with surprising patience. “We’re too young to have everything figured out, anyway. You know a lot of people don’t even end up in jobs that really require their specific university degree.” 

“Yeah,” Youichi sighs, the words tempering him until intelligent ones rise out of those murky waters in his head. “I’m going to take lots of arts and language classes, though.” 

Kazuya smiles like he expected that response. “I think with these Japanese-Mandarin and English translation classes and art studio hours, you’re more than suited for it, actually. Being dexterous and fluent in three languages should get you a scholarship.” The surety in his voice is startling. But more than anything, Kazuya’s confident words scaffold the crumbling self-confidence and hold Youichi upright. 

He wishes he could believe in himself like that. 

Kazuya bends forward and touches his face; it takes all of Youichi’s will to not flinch away at the heat of those fingertips on his cheek until he realises it’s to wipe away the drying clay stains on his skin. 

Youichi tries to memorise this feeling - fingers trailing his cheekbone, rubbing his jaw and coming dangerously close to the soft skin under his earlobe. He tries to commit the sight of this - Kazuya’s unusually kind eyes, chapped lips and the shadows of brown hair falling over the frame of his glasses - to memory, burying it with all those feelings he’s been dodging for weeks.

There’s a break in the clouds for the first time in a week and sunlight spills into the spacious studio through the glass windows, bleeding into Kazuya’s brown eyes and turning them a rich shade of amber. He’s not moving away, and Youichi swallows his nervousness down, attempting to drink in the moment until it settles into his bones and in the thrum of his heart. 

He wonders what it would feel like to lean into Kazuya’s fingers just the slightest but he fears a little won’t be enough, nothing compared to the temptation of what will come next. Youichi could drown in that touch, willingly. 

“Shouldn’t you be going for practice?” Youichi says, breaking the tense silence and deliberately avoiding looking at Kazuya. They both know there is no practice today because of the unpredictable weather. 

“Yeah, I should,” Kazuya responds, nevertheless. He slings his bag over his shoulder and leaves, but not before tapping on the aluminium foil and adding, “Don’t forget to eat.” He waves goodbye to Furuya, and the door closes behind him. 

Youichi had hoped the feelings would depart with their object of focus, but he’s still very much trapped with them in the studio. He wonders if Furuya feels their presence and finds them stifling. 

“Losing my damn mind,” Youichi swears at himself, tearing off his apron. He washes his hands, opens up the foil and tears into his lunch viciously, swallowing down his feelings with each morsel of his food. 

Youichi’s translation class on Saturday ends later than other times, so the sun is kissing the horizon when he’s walking back to the dorms on campus. There’s a particularly secluded route, where the one-way road ends, that he favours above any other path. He dubs it the scenic route - with the overgrown grass, the screaming crickets, the brambles and weeds in all their glory.

His bag is heavy, and he feels its weight more than is normal today than any other day. He attempts to clear out his woes onto the empty road as he goes - the wariness for the future sinks into the mud, his deadlines scuttle away quickly through the tall grass, his feelings vanish like smoke. 

Except the air is damp with rain and the smoke coalesces, leaving him to wrestle through his “I’m scared”s, “I love you”s and “I don’t know what to do”s that stand in his way like unseen boulders. 

This is an uphill struggle - trying to get over it, to keep his head cool on the diamond and stop himself from tackling Kazuya at the end of every successful inning. 

Every time a game concludes, Youichi stands in the middle of a field awash with a crowd’s cheering, flooded with aspirations and breathes an air rippling with snapped tension. Those times, more than anything, the urge to put his mouth to Kazuya’s and drink in the taste of victory from his throat is something visceral and off-putting. He wants to take down the walls brick by brick. He wants to eat every loss and victory raw.

The all-consuming nature of this, the sensation of being eaten bare himself - it puts ice in Youichi’s blood. If he isn’t careful, he’s going to get swallowed whole. 

With every step towards his room, the fatigue erodes his strength like acid. He hears Sawamura yelling formulas to himself 2 doors away in an effort to prepare for his Math test, and smiles to himself. These days, Youichi is getting increasingly comfortable with that much amount of noise and finds it somewhat endearing. The world seems bigger, and more in reach with Sawamura’s intrepidity and stubbornness. 

Youichi doesn’t want to admit it, but all of the kid’s shouting overpowers the cutting whispers of bad thoughts in his head that have been getting more persistent lately. Nothing conventionally tragic or heartbreaking - Youichi has talked to Rei and the career guidance counsellor. 

He’s at the age where he’s fearing for his future and foreseeing multiple dead ends.  

He hasn’t told his parents that he isn’t certain if he wants to professionally pursue art for money. He has no intentions of getting drafted. He is still failing Math, and still seething into his sleeves during the Math exams. He has not told anyone about the scholarship offers for Mass Communications and Linguistics. But he has told his parents about the pretty girls he had fleeting crushes on, being careful not to mention wanting to kiss boys too and as of recent, just this one particular bastard . 

Athletics, academics, family, friendships, sexuality, relationships - there are too many things for the singular axis of the teenage phase to handle. Liking boys isn’t an issue; his aunts are lesbians and his parents are cool. Liking Kazuya is the problem here.

So, the counsellor tells him, it’s completely normal to feel frustrated and like you’re struggling to catch up with everyone else. 

He wishes he could breathe those words in, let them settle and live on each syllable of them. He’s out of breath, trying to keep his neck above the water to catch vague signs of the shore. And he’s sick of the unbearable weight of it - why does his performance as a teenager determine his whole life?

“It’s normal,” He whispers only for his ears, like he’s been talking to himself recently. “It’s normal, it’s norm - What the fucking shit ?!”

His room is a mess and the floor is taken up by books, sheets of paper and people. All the first years seem to have gathered for some sort of cram school before their term tests in the coming week. The problem is the scribbling on the walls, the ink stains on the floor where a pen is bleeding its contents, the stains from crackers and Cheese Balls on his sheets. And the rolls of sleeping bags.

“Sawamura!” Youichi yells, flinging his bag in the vague direction of his cabinet, and tackles his junior. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” 

Toujou calmly takes out another cracker, eyes fixed on his notebook as he holds out the packet for his other peers.

Nobody else, in the slightest, acknowledges the two of them, as Youichi proceeds to fold Sawamura into halves and then into quarters in an attempt to squeeze out a coherent explanation from him and his garbled yelling until he’s satisfied. 

The abundance of people in his room is startling, but Youichi would rather die than thank his junior for bringing in the much-needed company. The atmosphere feels charged, and the chatter seems to close in on him, pressing him - all his chipping bits and pieces - and packing him together. A certain steadiness comes with it, as Youichi settles into the chatter like it’s a harness. 

He feels them like voltage or electric currents. Furuya’s is a sluggish one, Haruichi sharp and steady, Kanemaru explosive but patterned, Toujou swelling and subsiding like tides, Sawamura fluctuating but powerful.

Youichi sinks into his mattress, and drowns in the lull of his noise-filled room and noise-filled world within the four walls he’s called his home. 

He’s tired, and still scared, but at least he’s not alone. 

The following week, Kazuya finds himself greeting the end of the school day with reverence, thankful for yet another day in a row without the torrents. Normalcy and routine seeps back in as the shards of sunlight win out over the currents of stormy weather. Little breaks in the cloud smile at him and Kazuya feels himself smiling back, ever so slightly.

He washes the day off himself when he bathes that night, trying to rub off the soreness in his muscles. He feels the fear taking root again as the night creeps in. He’s been slowly and gradually been losing grip on his personal routine and emotional regulation as nightmares carve out pieces of him. Like he ever had enough of himself to lose in the first place. 

It’s a phase, it’s a phase, it’s a phase . He recites it like a mantra. He knows this season is harder than any other, and that once spring draws to a close and summer bursts onto the earth like an overripe fruit, things will be better. He just needs to wait it out, until the rains bleed out completely and the clouds are as empty of their tears as he is of his.

He ambles towards his room, his towel smelling of lemons and draped over his neck. The cool winds touch his warm skin and spread over his body like a balm. There’s sluggish and sleepy activity in the corridors as the other boys go for their baths, fill up their water bottles and catch up with their roommates. There’s scenes of damp hair and swinging towels, the motley smell of soaps and shampoos, the sounds of thin slippered footsteps. 

And Sawamura’s faraway yelling that somehow makes the peace louder.

Kazuya passes the vending machine, in front of which he sees Youichi feeling around on the dirt and clicking his tongue in annoyance. It’s a simple sound and acutely familiar, as are the rest of Youichi’s small and unnoticeable mannerisms that Kazuya has come to memorise and know by heart. 

There is a painful intimacy to knowing Youichi like that - for the dips of his muscles, the map of veins on his arm, tightly drawn eyebrows, incisive smirks, the planes of his face and the curve of his Cupid’s bow that Kazuya thinks about too often for it to be normal.

“What are you doing rolling around in the dirt like that?” Kazuya calls to him, but Youichi just shoots him a glare and goes back to clawing at the ground with one hand, the other wrapped around a few newly-vended cans and bottles. 

“I just lost some change,” Youichi explains curtly, discarding the drinks on the bench and going back to feeling around in the dim sunset light. 

“Do you need help?” 

Youichi grumbles incoherently in response. 

“Kuramochi.” 

No response this time. 

“ Youichi .” Kazuya intends for it to come out stern, but his breath escapes him when the tone hits his nerves. Kazuya is terrified - more than anything - that Youichi can read the reverence that crashes into his words. He pulls back, watching Youichi ignore him, because he’s scared of saying something stupid. 

“Worry about yourself!” Youichi bursts out, startling Kazuya into silence. He feels the hot punch of his friend’s irritation right in the nose and turns away quickly before the emotions bleeding out onto his face are visible. He sits down on the bench, watching Youichi’s back as he finally starts to turn up the coins from the dirt. 

There’s a tension between Youichi’s shoulders that Kazuya wishes he could hook and untie with his fingers. He still remembers their conversation from the studio, the impending deadlines and applications and the tournament. Though, right now, baseball is the last thing on Kazuya’s mind. 

“We’ve got a test tomorrow,” Youichi says, gathering up the drinks into his arm but reaching into the pile and pulling out the isotonic to hand it to Kazuya. “Make sure you don’t stay up too late.” 

His voice is kinder - as explicitly kind as it gets for someone like him - and Kazuya stares at his outstretched hand holding the can, trailing his vision across landscape of faded scars on knuckles, veins under skin and the arm duned with muscles that also knot the rest of his body. 

Time is still when they look at each other and the obvious response of expressing his thanks evades Kazuya’s sensibilities. He can smell the dirt on Youichi’s hand, the scent of grass and rain on his t-shirt from when he was out for batting practice, the aroma of that lilac soap he uses. 

The wind whips around them, carrying their breaths and Kazuya hears the whispers of his unsaid feelings, like they’ve been pulled out from his throat by the current of air. Maybe it’s the same current that carries Kazuya’s hand to Youichi’s wrist, where he circles his fingers, pulling his friend to bend down until they’re nose to nose and breathing a single breath.

He watches Youichi’s expression shift, irritation dissolving into alarm and knows he’s barely skimming the lip of a black hole here - where the infinite gravitational crush ends in his shredded feelings and Youichi’s heart. He wonders how many worlds he’d throw off the axis if he tilted and redirected his orbit to crash into Youichi’s. If he leans just the slightest until the space disappears and takes everything they know with it. 

Kazuya sees his reflection in Youichi’s irises and is startled by the want he sees in his own miniscule reflection. He wants to say something stupid again - something along the lines of “I want you”, “I need you” and “I love you”. He wants to test just how far fate will let him take it; he wants to know how much of this he’ll be allowed to have before it’s ripped away from him. 

He watches Youichi clutch the can tighter, but neither of them says a word or makes a move to pull away. 

He recognises the danger in this. Kazuya doesn’t have much to lose - plunging himself into uncharted territory. He couldn’t bear to drag Youichi with him or live with it after. 

“Thanks,” He says, instead and bends down to kiss the back of Youichi’s hand. It takes every ounce of his strength to pull away, take the can and leave. He doesn’t say “goodnight”, because he doesn’t trust himself to hide everything he wants to say under that one word.

Youichi wants to kill somebody. 

This week has been one bad thing after another - the highlight of the list being continuous rain, a missed deadline, and above everything, Kazuya ignoring him like his life depends on it. He leaves the class during their breaks before Youichi is done packing, and wordlessly slinks off to his strip of road, out of everyone’s sight, to practice his swings. 

Youichi still feels the moment lingering on his skin, the memory and sensation of it clutching molecules and hanging like invisible wind chimes around him. In all its startling clarity, Youichi feels the kiss on the back of his hand, smells the scent of lemons that lingers around Kazuya after a bath, and feels his breath on his cheeks. 

More than anything, he thumbs that resultant abrasion from having all of that ripped away as he continues to be ignored and watches Kazuya as if from behind a screen. Youichi feels his absence like a bruise, and prods at it occasionally whenever he’s overcome with the urge to return Kazuya’s tender unprecedented gesture with one of his own. 

He’d thought, for a split second, that they’d each wanted it just as much as the other. That they were both aware of that unneeded space, the gap between the hollows of their mouths charged with need and flooded with a hot flush of yearning. 

Maybe it was just him. And that’s what angers Youichi the most - that he had the briefest hope. 

But as much as he tries to squash it, to beat it into the ground to pin it down against his research board, a new bud grows again. He wants to bury it under the sketches of these compositions, wants to tear down everything around him, cut and sketch and paste it where it all feels comfortable to look at.

He shoves the clay into the box for recycling and contemplates kicking over his sculpture, barely reining in his frustration to clean up after himself before he calls it a night. It’s just turned dark outside and the school is empty, all the students having left after classes when Youichi stayed behind to catch up on that deadline.

He just seems to be doing that nowadays - chasing answers, deadlines and this one boy who seems always just out of reach.

He hoists his bag over his shoulder and leaves, hoping he can lock all of this behind in his school building for a good night’s worth of sleep, at least. 

The wind screams, and the thunder crashes in contemptuous response to his wishes as he steps out onto the porch of the back exit and grits his teeth against the weather. Rainwater sloshes up to his ankles as he wades to the wall, stepping over the drains that burp up muddy water instead of swallowing it. He struggles with the gate for thirty seconds before he realises the guards have forgotten about him and locked up already.

If he could cry, he would cry. Good for him though - he’s not a crier.

He just tosses his schoolbag over the wall and jumps over after it, feeling the rain beat against him as he swings himself over. 

The water rises above his ankles here and panic swells in his chest as he squints against the opacity of the rain. The storm today pounds the earth with more vice than usual, its drops pelting the ground like bullets and leaving stings over Youichi’s arms. He clutches his dripping bag to himself and struggles against the water in the general direction of the dorms. 

He sees Sawamura standing outside their room, squinting against the rough winds and searching the boys’ faces as they race back to their rooms and into shelter. The rain is spilling onto the cement path and creeping towards the room doors. 

He hears Sawamura yelling for him and stumbles into the shelter, still clutching his bag and shivering as his junior throws a towel over his shoulders. He can barely stutter out a “Thanks” when Maezono races past him, with Shirasu flanking him. The latter pauses for a second, worry evident on his usually tranquil face. 

“Have you seen Miyuki?” He asks. “Coach needs him to do a headcount. We’re locking up and bracing for the storm.” Youichi takes in the shrivelled expression on Sawamura’s face, recalls the panic in Maezono’s eyes and meets Shirasu’s steady but perturbed gaze with one of his own. 

His abrasion is bluing to a bruise, pain splitting his sensibilities beyond coherence.

“He’s not here?” He dreads the reply as he asks this. 

“No, he went off for batting practice from the bullpen, but he doesn’t practice with the rest,” Sawamura says. “Rei-chan has gone out to look for him.” 

Thunder crashes again, drowning out the last sentence - not that Youichi hears anything other than the frantic pounding of his own heart. With the last sliver of sense, he throws himself back into the walls of plummeting water, shoes squelching in the mud and grass as he feels around in the low visibility. 

It’s instinct that guides him through most of it, taking him by the hand and pulling him along, from the evenings he took the same steps to go get Kazuya for dinner. He knows these steps, has memorised the rise and fall of the uneven ground, feels the knot of anticipation - the one that rises in him in a flood of warmth at seeing his friend lit gold by the sunset - in his stomach like muscle memory. 

The wind bites at him, the sky screams at him, the lightning slashes across the darkness and Youichi hates Kazuya at that moment. Hates him for thinking he has to do everything on his own, hates him for refusing help when he so clearly needed it as of recent, hates him for not worrying about himself anyway. Like Youichi is supposed to just let him self-destruct. 

Like hell. There is not a single storm Youichi wouldn’t wrestle for that boy. 

The certainty in his declaration terrifies him. But more than anything, the adrenaline burns through him like an electric current. Loving Kazuya feels the same as breathing in a hurricane - electric, frightening beyond what words can measure and simultaneously, with Youichi’s innate daring, exciting. 

He struggles up the cemented steps, as the water roars down like a waterfall and finds Kazuya on the road, crouching and feeling around the ground under the blanket of water. Youichi tastes the bitter and twisted deja vu; as the rain scatters his vision and he unfocuses his eyes, he can imagine them back at the vending machine a week ago. 

With Youichi feeling around in the dirt, feeling Kazuya’s arrival before he even called out to him like ozone before a cyclone. Sweet and invasive, but welcome. Remembers the fear he felt when he understood what feeling like that meant. 

The rain washes that fear away now. Youichi just needs Kazuya to be safe. 

“Miyuki!” The thunder swallows up his voice and he growls in frustration. He walks through the water, deliberately dragging his feet until the sloshing successfully grabs Kazuya’s attention and he looks up, squinting in Youichi’s general direction. 

It takes Youichi roughly a few seconds before he realises what’s strange and notes the bareness of Kazuya’s face - the red skin on his nose where his glasses were perched and where they no longer sit. And the alarm, together with the uncertainty because in a storm where everything has melted into single faded tones, he’s lost his glasses. 

“Miyuki, it’s me,” Youichi says close to his friend’s ear as another jagged sword of electricity sweeps across the sky and cymbals follow as it makes its mark on the earth somewhere on the horizon.

Recognition relaxes Kazuya slightly, and he reaches out to grab Youichi, tugging on his sleeve insistently. “My glasses! I lost my glasses!” 

“I can see that,” Youichi responds, trying to pull Kazuya up. 

“Well, I can’t!” Kazuya snaps, feeling around his knees stubbornly. 

Youichi assumes he’s going to hell for wanting to laugh. 

But the urge dies down as a gale sweeps around his legs in warning and he bends down to pull Kazuya up by the arm. He stops at the sight of swollen eyes, gritted teeth and cracked lips. Kazuya’s hair is pasted to his face, dripping over his eyes and ears and Youichi himself is trying to keep his cool but the expression on his captain’s face is jarring. 

“Kazuya,” He says, against his better judgement. They really need to find shelter. 

Kazuya doesn’t respond. 

Youichi reaches over to his face, and gently pushes back the bangs from his forehead so that his tightly drawn eyebrows and clumped lashes are visible and confirmed not to be a hallucination. Youichi is floored by how painfully real this is - how real Kazuya is: the weight of his rain-drenched body, the pulse in his hands, the frailty of his heart, the fear in his eyes now before he quickly glances away. 

“Come on,” Youichi says, “We’ll get you new glasses.” He yanks him up and starts when Kazuya changes his grip in his hand, his fingers leaving Youichi’s palm to slide between his knuckles instead, where he holds onto him and shows no intention of letting go. 

“We should hold the hands of our elders when crossing the road,” Kazuya says, the slightest teasing smile on his face. 

Bastard , Youichi thinks affectionately but doesn’t say a word as he pulls him along behind him. 

Sawamura rushes them the minute they step on campus, and Rei curtly demands they get into the hot bath before they crumple from hypothermia and cause paperwork for the admin. But she holds back on the rest of the lecture, squeezing the two boys by the shoulder affirmatively and leaving them to recover. 

If anyone notices Kazuya still clinging onto Youichi, they don’t say anything.

The two of them wordlessly get into the bath, keeping to the ends of the tub and deliberately avoiding eye contact. 

Youichi lets the hot water urge the feeling back into his limbs as he tries to scrub the image of Kazuya’s weary and despondent face off from the back of his eyelids. He’s incredibly aware of Kazuya’s body on the other end of the tub, his nose just above the water. His spare pair of glasses rest on the bundle of towel, condensation gathering on their lenses.

Youichi thinks of the times he’s wished to pull off his glasses and kiss him in the middle of his eyebrows. Looking at Kazuya now, he knows that there’s something different - a good difference. The weeks’ worth of tension and tumult that were drawn in the lines of Kazuya’s face seem to have snapped and ebbed. 

The swelling sea has receded, but not without wreckage in its place. Cracked lips, nails bitten to their beds, a crimson gaze - like the shattered streets, fallen buildings and grey skies. 

Youichi doesn’t want to ask Kazuya about all of that. He knows he won’t get any answers. Kazuya doesn’t talk about his problems or his feelings - if he has any - and he just throws himself on the front lines of his battles by himself. He wrestles with shifting trajectories on his own. Now that this war’s won (whatever it was), Kazuya will just pretend like it never happened. 

He’s alone, all the time. Youichi wishes better for him. He sighs, and closes his eyes, sinking into the water and wishes he could just dissolve in it until he’s ready to come back.

Kazuya feels weightless, and not just because of the water. It feels like all his muscles have come loose after the weeks he spent holding his breath, expecting himself to fall apart at the slightest twitch. The rain is appreciated - the frustration at losing his glasses, the fear of being trapped in the rushing water and the month of nightmares crashing together broke him down, leaving him bare under the weather for the water to clean.

He can’t remember if the howling was the wind or the sound of his anguish leaving his body, ripping its way out of his chest after being trapped for that long. Then, he just remembers feeling tired and Youichi leading him back home. With the ground moving under him and the wind tearing at him, the warmth of Youichi’s hand in his grip kept him anchored. 

Youichi makes Kazuya feel fearless. That, in equal parts, is a good and bad thing. 

He blows bubbles into the soapy water, breathing out the residual worries so that the only thing remaining is the hollow exhaustion. He feels empty and carved out, but for this night, he doesn’t need that filled. 

When he surfaces, he has two seconds to take a breath before Youichi lunges for him with the fury of a wild animal. 

“What the fuck is the matter with you?” Youichi yells, hand clamped on Kazuya’s jaw and the other swatting his arms away. 

When Kazuya peels himself away, he has to suppress the urge to jump out of the tub and make a dash for it. “Sorry,” He manages. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble.” 

“No, I don’t care about that. I’m talking about - “ He cuts himself off abruptly and simmers, shrinking until he’s resting his head against the sides of the bath. 

“What do you want me to say?” Kazuya asks, feeling his temper flare just the slightest. The steam in the bathroom and condensation on his skin don’t do anything to make him feel better. He knows what Youichi is talking about - the kind-of kiss, the deliberate avoidance after, the surprisingly convenient excuses to stay out of sight, the silence and every problem that Kazuya has ever fucking caused ever . 

“I don’t know,” Youichi responds stiffly through clenched teeth, pursing his lips. 

Kazuya wants to agree. He doesn’t know anything either. He doesn’t trust himself to speak, no matter how fiercely he believes Youichi will listen anyway. 

They dry themselves wordlessly, throwing their towels over their heads because there are no doors to slam, and get dressed. The dressing room smells of citrus and lilac, and Kazuya thinks for a fleeting second if the world would feel as familiar, exciting and magical all the time if he were to forfeit his infinity to Youichi.

Youichi speaks into the silence, so softly that Kazuya is certain he imagined. “Say anything.” His voice is brittle, and his gaze tentative when he pulls off his towel from his neck and looks at Kazuya. “Just say anything. I don’t care what. As long as you say something.” 

“Youichi,” Kazuya says, instinctively. Because it’s the only thing he knows to say, the name’s syllables nuanced with a fierce tenderness, an insistent affection - it swells until he’s brimming with it - and spills into his next words. “Thank you, Youichi. For coming to get me. And for bringing me home.” 

Youichi blushes. From the tip of his ears to his chin and across his nose. Then, abruptly turns away, rubbing the back of his head the way he does when he’s embarrassed. “Anyone would have done it.” 

Anyone would have done it . But of all people, it is Youichi. 

“Youichi,” Kazuya begins again. “I’m sorry, Youichi.” 

“For what?” It’s more of a demand than a question, and Kazuya recognises this as Youichi wanting him to really list everything that he’s done wrong in the past month. 

“I’m sorry for worrying everyone.” 

Something crunches - teeth, Kazuya guesses - and Youichi turns to him, temper flaring on his face in the frown lines Kazuya can trace over even with his eyes closed. 

“You’re missing the point then,” Youichi says, closing the distance between them and grabbing him by the collar roughly. “Why the fuck did you go out alone? Why do you insist on being alone? You don’t have to do every damn thing by yourself! What am I vice captain for? Is this a joke to you?” 

Kazuya doesn’t have it in him to fight back. He takes Youichi’s words like bullets to his body. 

“I didn’t ask you to worry for me,” He retorts feebly and watches Youichi’s face slacken. 

“Jerk,” Youichi mumbles and then his voice gets louder. “You’re a jerk! A douchebag! Every word for it!” A deep breath punctuates the yelling before it subsides into a tone of reprimand. “It doesn’t matter what you ask of me. It doesn’t stop me from caring about what happens to you. What about that don’t you understand?” The last part comes out like a plea. 

Kazuya feels stones weighing down his chest. “On purpose?” He doesn’t understand his own question, nor does he understand what he’s asking. There’s cotton in his ears. 

“Yes,” Youichi responds, without a moment’s hesitation. “On purpose. I choose to care about you. The more you tell me to stop, the more I’ll care. And I’ll never stop. Not even after you’re sick of me.” 

Kazuya feels like the sky has crashed down on him and buried him in sheets of lightning. He takes Youichi’s wrist, the same way he did before and pries his fingers off his t-shirt, watching recollection strike across his friend’s face as the distance between them draws tighter. They’re nose to nose again, the space between them filled with their breath, need and weighted with everything they’re unable to articulate. 

This time is different than the first. 

“Youichi,” Kazuya begins. “I’m sorry.” 

“For what?” The words disappear into the back of Youichi’s throat gradually as the expression on Kazuya’s face prophesies his next words. 

“I’m sorry for not kissing you when I wanted to.”

Then, kiss me . Make up for it and kiss me now, before I go insane . 

Youichi thinks it, but doesn’t say it. He’s sure it’s written over his face. The sun has risen in his chest, filling him with the heat of summer. This just feels like a parody of that night - Youichi can see the kingdom behind Kazuya’s eyes, follow the curve of his throat to the collarbone, smell the lemons on his skin, feel the charge between them. 

He feels the gravity they’re both straining against, the gravity that’s forcing them together into unknown terrain, to places where they’ll both be amateurs, and practices they’ll be strangers to. They’re standing at the cliff’s edge, with waves licking at the bottom, foaming hungrily for their broken pieces and remains. Youichi is scared, but where he would exercise caution, he doesn’t want to be careful now. 

“Then do it,” He challenges. “Kiss me.”

That’s all it takes for them. Kazuya pulls Youichi in until they’re kissing against the wall, with Kazuya pressed between Youichi and the wood, bent over the slightest so they’re mouth to mouth. The fissures in the walls between them widen until each of their universes split open and swallows the other’s whole. 

Youichi clings to Kazuya fiercely, arms circled around his waist because he’s scared he’ll dissolve and this will all have been a dream. He feels Kazuya’s fingers on his neck, on his back, and his heart beating wildly against his where their chests are pressed together. 

His lips are soft. That’s the only thought Youichi can decipher in his echo chamber that is full of Kazuya. His lips are soft and hesitant - they both are, to be honest. But Youichi likes it like this. Kazuya’s hands are nervous, and his pulse throbs in his throat when Youichi runs his finger down the curve of his neck.

They are anxious, and still dripping soap suds because they haven’t properly dried their hair and smelling of skin, rain and ozone.

Despite all that, neither is scared. Youichi wants this and tastes that sentiment in Kazuya’s mouth too. 

The minutes blur together and they kiss each other until they can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. When they’re both dizzy and incapicitated by the heady warmth and fervour, they finally pull away to gain their bearings, still clinging onto each other. 

Kazuya reaches out to touch Youichi’s face, and Youichi leans into his palm this time, kissing his fingers. “Idiot,” He says, muffling the words a little in another kiss on Kazuya’s palm. “What took you so long?” 

Kazuya grins that shit-eating grin. “I was scared I’d be a bad kisser.” Youichi feels his face burn. 

“Shut up! You’re just saying that because you want me to tell you you’re a good kisser!” 

A laugh. “Maybe.” 

Kazuya reaches up and slides his fingers under Youichi’s jaw, reaching up to thumb at his lip where faint teeth marks are visible. Youichi wants to burn that touch into his skin, to stay in this field of gravity forever, and see the universe as it is for Kazuya. He wants Kazuya to kiss him again, he wants to kiss Kazuya, and he wants to kiss until they’re sick of it but stuck on it at the same time. 

But eternity is a long time, an undiscovered realm and there is no fearlessness in facing it, no matter how desperately he wants his eternity to be with Kazuya. Maybe not infinity just yet, but he wants to collect all these infinitesimal moments and stitch them together to create one that lasts that long. 

“What now?” Kazuya asks, his voice thin. 

Youichi shakes his head. “We’ll figure it out.” 

A hum is all the response he gets before they crash into each other where their orbits converge. Their lips meet again, like the universe is reaching its end and they kiss, collapsing into each other like dying stars at the beginning of their lives.