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Yatora only realises it’s raining when the door swings open, and the sound, harsh and extremely grating, carries itself in with a harrowed-looking woman still in her work clothes. And just like that, his mind strays—so does the pencil in his hand. It lands on the table before he can save it, and Yatora is sure it’s the flailing act of it that startles Yotasuke into nearly dropping his sketchbook in his bowl of chazuke.
“S—sorry!” Yatora says, a little too loudly. The bar is fairly empty tonight—probably because of the rain, now that he thinks about it—so the few people around them turn to glance at their table. Yatora can already see Yotasuke’s brows pinching together. Crap, there goes his third attempt. “Ah, don’t mind them, Yotasuke-kun.”
Yotasuke shrugs before going back to his drawing. Yatora lifts his hand to his neck, scratching it with the back of his pencil as he flips to the next page of his own sketchbook. Okay, never mind. Third time’s the charm, right? Isn’t that what people say? This time, he’ll get it right. No more rain, no more distractions, no—
“I’m done,” Yotasuke says.
Yatora freezes, his pencil still mid-air. Eh? Ehhh?
“Eh,” Yatora vocalises, and his face is cracking a huge, unconvincing smile before he can stop himself, “you’re sure making me look bad, huh?”
Yotasuke doesn’t reply, but he raises a brow curiously. Yatora lets out a sigh, making an effort to sound defeated. He’d be lying if he said he’s not dying to see Yotasuke’s sketch of him right this second, but they’d laid ground rules to this thing long before they’d sat down at the bar—same table as last time, except Yatora’s the one facing the door. The first rule is that they would use the same instrument: graphite pencil, 4B. They must also keep as still as they can for the benefit of the other. (Yotasuke is surprisingly bad at this for someone who’s so straight-faced all the time.)
The third rule is that neither one of them can reveal their drawing until they’ve both completed. Yotasuke has not only closed his sketchbook, but he’s resting his elbow on it now, too—a totally different pose than Yatora’s last two sketches. Yatora is about to call him out already, out of sheer frustration, the words at the tip of his tongue: Oi, did you forget about Rule Number Two?
But he stops himself. Besides the pose, he sees that there’s something different about Yotasuke altogether. His face is the same—his mouth still a thin line, eyes dark and inscrutable as ever. Yet right now he looks just a little more relaxed than he had. More satisfied.
“It’s the first time I’ve felt glad about drawing,” Yotasuke had told him, in a quiet hallway in Geidai. It hadn’t made much sense to Yatora then; Yotasuke crying, confiding in him, revealing far too much in just a few words. But it was enough so that something had opened up within Yatora, something so sharp and visceral he’d felt the need to take Yotasuke to see the morning in Shibuya. Like Yatora might have died if he hadn’t, because he needed to tell him, because Yotasuke had to know that—yes. Yes, he gets it.
It’s kind of funny, Yatora thinks. He’s never actually seen Yotasuke when he’s drawing, never noticed the dislike in it. He has only ever seen Yotasuke after, side-by-side with his finished artwork and the unbidden confidence that he’d created something outstanding.
“Um,” Yotasuke says, fidgeting, “why aren’t you drawing?”
“Sorry, I was just thinking,” Yatora says. His eyes widen in panic when Yotasuke starts unfolding his arm. “Wait, wait! Don’t move!”
Like a deer in the headlights, Yotasuke goes rigid. Yatora exhales and continues, “Yotasuke-kun, please stop moving or I’ll have to start all over again. And besides, you look really nice like that.”
That somehow makes Yotasuke move even more, twitching restlessly in his seat as he tries to readjust his arm, positioning his elbow back on his sketchbook. His face is all scrunched up.
“Just… try to relax,” Yatora says, which is kind of ironic, because relaxing is the last thing he can do now that Yotasuke is fully staring at him. “I’m putting the finishing touches.”
How lame. Shit, that was so lame, saying ‘finishing touches’ like he’s producing some grandiose painting instead of an idle drawing that no one but Yotasuke is going to see. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s not just some idle drawing. It’s an idle drawing of Yotasuke. And Yotasuke is going to see it.
Which brings Yatora to their fourth rule of this session: they’re meant to trade drawings by the end of it. Would Yotasuke think Yatora’s drawing is even worth keeping? What if Yotasuke doesn’t think this is nice enough to look at, like Yatora does with Yotasuke’s rabbit? Would this just end up in the trash?
“Yaguchi-san.” Yatora looks up from his sketchbook to a bored expression on Yotasuke’s face. “My food is getting cold. Can I eat first?”
“Eh, ah, yeah. Sure.” Yatora flushes a little before finishing his drawing. He decides that it’s already mediocre compared to anything Yotasuke has ever sketched. Maybe it’s meant to go in the trash after all. Well, he’d tried his best. “Okay, I think it’s done.”
He closes the sketchbook and sets it aside like an afterthought. He’ll deal with the blow of the feedback later. The rain outside grows more intense, and in the quiet of the bar Yatora can hear it pouring through the ceiling. He takes a long swig of his ginger ale and watches as Yotasuke takes sip after steady sip from his chazuke, the palm of his hands reddening from the warmth of the bowl. Yatora kind of wishes he’d ordered something warm, too, but he hadn’t expected it to rain, so now he’s stuck with his karaage that’s already gone cold.
“Okay,” Yotasuke says after a good while, setting the bowl down. “Show me your drawing first, Yaguchi-san.”
“Huh? Wait a sec, that wasn’t one of the rules!” Yatora barks, fully aware of how loud he’s being. “T—together. We’ll just swap the sketchbooks at the same time, okay?”
Yotasuke looks enquiringly at him. “Fine.”
Yatora flips to the page where he’d drawn Yotasuke in his latest pose, elbow resting on the table, the line of his sketchbook just barely visible. He studies it one last time, the way one would go through a test in the last five minutes before submitting it. It’s not too bad. In fact, Yatora could say that it’s probably one of his better drawings. He’s come pretty far with his line art (those long weeks of doing dessin non-stop at cram school really paid off after all). Yotasuke looks relaxed in the drawing; almost at home in this bar, a place Yatora had spent so much of his high school years in that he’d once considered it his second home.
Yatora hands the sketchbook to Yotasuke. Ah, well. Here goes nothing.
What greets him first as he takes the sketchbook from Yotasuke is his own big smile. Something else unusual about it is that Yotasuke has made it a very genuine one, not like the kind Yatora always plasters on with everyone he meets. His eyes are almost wild, and the fact that Yotasuke managed to draw this in less than an hour is unbelievable. In the drawing, his hand is crumpled into a fist around the front of his shirt, the way it usually does after he’s finished an artwork, satisfied in his own quiet victory. How did Yotasuke know this? Had he really noticed that thing Yatora does, even in the brief time they’d spent together at the cram school?
“Woah, this is really good!” Yatora looks up to grin at him. “The details are amazing, but, I mean, ’course I already knew it was gonna be goo—eh?”
Yotasuke is still staring silently at his drawing, but his face is doing a lot of things at once. His eyes narrow, and he opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, but nothing comes out.
“Yotasuke-kun?”
“Is this,” Yotasuke says, with a trepidatious look on his face, “really how you saw me, Yaguchi-san?”
“Huh? What do you—”
“Just now.” Yotasuke’s not exactly frowning, and he doesn’t sound like he’s mad, but the tone makes Yatora nervous all the same. It might just be the poor lighting in the bar, but he thinks he can see some colour bloom in Yotasuke’s cheeks. “Right then, when I was, um, p—posing for this. Tell me. Is this really—?”
“W—wait, I don’t understand…”
To Yatora’s horror, Yotasuke pushes himself out of his seat. “Excuse me. I need to use the toilet.”
As soon as Yotasuke is gone, Yatora starts flailing again. What the heck did Yotasuke mean by that? What was he trying to say? Worry spikes in Yatora’s chest as he reaches for his sketchbook. He studies his drawing of Yotasuke again. It can’t be that terrible, can it?
Maybe Yatora had spent too much time on the background. Along with the vacant tables behind Yotasuke, he’d tried to include the door to the bar, too, and the windows at the side; tried to sketch in a bit of the rain. His shading isn’t bad either, he thinks, because it lends a nice, dusky feel to it, almost romantic even—
Oh. Ah, okay. Yeah. He can definitely see it now. It’s right there, clear as day.
The thing is, Yatora can’t tell whether it’s his own hand that had conjured it up—that tender, faraway look in Yotasuke’s eyes as he continued staring at him, trying and failing to replicate the pose. That’s when Yatora had thought he looked the most relaxed, and free. Had he made it all up in his head? Is that why Yotasuke ran off, because he’s so disgusted?
Argh, seriously, Yatora grumbles silently, hanging his head in shame. He probably thinks I’m a creep.
Maybe he would have been better off letting Yotasuke see him drink after all, if only to have some kind of excuse to fall back on. Yatora looks at Yotasuke’s drawing and sees his own smile, not quite recognising it yet somehow finding himself yearning for that feeling again.
Yotasuke is really, really amazing.
As if summoned by his thoughts alone, Yotasuke rejoins him at the table. His eyes are bloodshot, and the rims around them are red. Yatora very nearly jumps out of his seat in a panic, and his heart flies up to his throat.
“Eh? Yotasuke-kun! You’re crying! I’m really sorry, did I do something wro—”
“No,” he replies, cutting him off. His voice is soft. “No, I’m alright.”
“Are you sure? We can go if you want.” Yatora wrings his hands awkwardly. “Ah, I’ve ruined it, haven’t I? We were having a good time, too…”
Yotasuke shakes his head. A sliver of a smile appears on his face and Yatora’s stomach flutters, and leaps up to meet it. It’s small and fleeting, but Yatora is certain that he will remember the sight of it forever.
“I’m fine, Yaguchi-san.” Yotasuke picks up the sketchbook and looks at the drawing again. “Anyway, thanks. Can I have this?”
“Huh? Really?” Yatora blinks back at him. He feels the heat rise to his cheeks. Seriously, what the heck, is he for real? “Uh, of course! Did you forget Rule Number Four? We’re meant to trade anyway.”
“Thanks.”
Yotasuke takes a sip of his ginger ale, and Yatora thumbs aimlessly at his bottle. Outside, the rain is still pelting down onto the street with no sign of letting up. They’re definitely going to miss the Shibuya sunrise at this rate. In fact, they might be stuck in the bar for a while.
“Maybe we can catch early morning Shibuya again next time,” Yotasuke says. He flips to the next page of his sketchbook. “Right now, I feel like drawing more.”
“Next time?” Yatora asks, and he only registers the hope in his voice belatedly.
“Yeah.” Yotasuke’s expression is unreadable. “I’d like to make more memories with you, Yaguchi-san.”