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Aoyagi woke up on Saturday morning to the sound of his phone vibrating against the bedside table.
(1) New Messages
[Junta]
[8:43am]
hey you up ?
[Me]
[8:43am]
…
[Junta]
[8:44am]
haha sorry !didn’t mean to wake you
[Junta]
[8:44am]
can I come over ? I have a new cd
[Me]
[8:45am]
?
[Junta]
[8:45am]
I know said I wasnt going to buy more until after my birthday but in my defense my mom bought it for me
so you can yell at her instead
[Junta]
[8:47am]
ok I’m getting on my bike now ! See you soon !
[Me]
[8:47am]
!
[Junta]
[8:47am]
! <3
Aoyagi pretended he wasn’t blushing at the heart and busied himself with counting the time. It always took Teshima thirteen minutes to bike from his own home to Aoyagi’s, which meant he’d arrive at exactly 9:00am. Aoyagi had to smile, knowing that Teshima had probably planned it that way. Teshima was a natural strategist with an appreciation for small details, and Aoyagi held a secret fondness for the myriad tiny ways Teshima would plan out his days.
Okay. Maybe it wasn’t a secret fondness. And maybe it wasn’t just for one of Teshima’s particular quirks. It might have been adoration for Teshima as a whole, but Aoyagi just chalked it up to the closeness of their friendship and tried not to think about it too hard.
He checked his phone again; 8:50am. Ten minutes to make himself presentable. He stretched out like a cat, groaning in satisfaction when his joints popped, then slid off the bed and trudged to the closet to fish out a clean pair of underwear and a t-shirt. Yesterday’s shorts were collected from the floor on the way to the bathroom and he tripped against the door like he always did.
Nine minutes later he was feeling much cleaner and more awake, and was curled up on the couch with his DS, waiting for Teshima.
He played through two levels before realizing that, surely, more than a minute must have passed. When he’d fished his phone out of where it had fallen between the cushions, the backlit screen cheerily informed him that it was now 9:03am.
[Me]
[9:03am]
?
[Me]
[9:10am]
??!
[Me]
[9:15am]
!!!!
[Me]
[9:18am]
junta!
The DS beeped, abandoned on the floor. Aoyagi paced around the living room, clutching his phone in a death grip and failing to resist the urge to look either at it or out the window every thirty seconds.
Something must have gone wrong. Teshima was never late for anything. Maybe he’d fallen off his bike? But Teshima had fallen plenty of times; he always got right back up and kept going. A simple fall wouldn’t delay him by – Aoyagi checked his phone, again – 20 minutes.
Maybe not a simple fall, then? Maybe he’d been hit by a car. Maybe someone had blown through the intersection at the end of Teshima’s street. Maybe it was a hit and run and Teshima was lying on the side of the road, bleeding, alone, and oh god.
Aoyagi was well on his way to full-blown panic and halfway to deciding to get on his own bicycle and go looking for Teshima when he heard the front door open.
“Hey, sorry I’m late! I figured you probably haven’t had breakfast yet so I stopped by that diner you like, you know, the one with the checkered floor, but apparently they don’t open until nine on weekends! I guess they don’t get a lot of people in for early breakfast. Anyway, I got us some – Aoyagi?”
The sudden rush of relief made Aoyagi dizzy and he sat down, hard, in the middle of the floor. His head spun and he covered his face with his hands.
“Hey. Hey, Aoyagi, are you okay?” Teshima’s voice was worried and his hand was rubbing small circles on Aoyagi’s back. He nodded jerkily, taking a deep breath to try to pull himself together.
When Aoyagi looked up to where Teshima was crouched beside him, Teshima’s face was even more worried than his voice had been. “I’m sorry,” he said, and there was an audible hint of guilt. “I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Aoyagi quirked the corners of his mouth down.
“Oh, um, I turned my phone off. It startles me if it goes off when I’m on my bike.” At that, he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. It chirped cheerily when he turned it on, then four more times in rapid succession. The guilty look deepened as he read through Aoyagi’s texts. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t think… I’m sorry.”
Aoyagi nudged him with his elbow, perhaps a little harder than he normally would. Teshima lost his balance and tipped over with an “oof!”
They sat on the floor and looked at each other, then Teshima broke into a laugh and Aoyagi smiled back.
“I’ll text you next time.” Aoyagi nodded, and they pulled each other back to their feet.
“So, um. I brought food?”
“Mmm. Let’s eat.”
After they ate breakfast – during which Teshima chattered constantly and Aoyagi was quietly appreciative, as usual – Teshima leaned back in his chair with a satisfied sigh. “Ahh, I can really understand why that place is your favourite, the food is really good.” Aoyagi hummed. “Hm? Oh, the CD? Yeah, it’s in my bag, hold on. It’s some American band, I’ve never heard of them, but my mom said that the demo track she heard sounded like something we’d like so she picked it up for us.” Aoyagi marveled at how easily Teshima slipped into the plural. It felt like a privilege. He valued it like a privilege.
“Well, c’mon!” Teshima had his bag thrown over one shoulder and was already making his way to Aoyagi’s room.
“Junta.”
“What? Oh! Saturday! Your parents are working, right? Oh, excellent, the big stereo is so much better than the one in your room. Um. No offense, but, you know.”
Aoyagi did know. Teshima liked his music loud (mostly so he could sing just as loud, Aoyagi thought) and while he never complained about the small single-speaker player they used when Aoyagi’s parents were home, he always got excited over the chance to use the ostentatious surround-sound system Aoyagi’s father had for watching action movies.
They slid easily into practiced roles. Aoyagi switched everything on – he always did it, because Teshima always got excited and missed something – and reached back for the CD exactly when Teshima held it out. Then they retreated to the couch with the album cover to listen and read about the artists and – well, it wasn’t snuggling, because that was something couples did, and Aoyagi loved Teshima but they weren’t exactly a couple, so it was something else. Something probably very similar, though, Aoyagi mused, as he leaned against Teshima’s shoulder and listened to the music echoing through his body.
Usually, when Teshima had a new CD, they listened through it once, sitting quietly together and pausing after each song so Teshima could talk about what he liked and what he didn’t and why, and Aoyagi would silently add his own input in nods and frowns. The second time, Aoyagi usually got up to grab his DS, though Teshima always made him keep the sound turned off, or he’d grab a sketchbook and doodle scenes from the songs or caricatures of their teammates or try to capture Teshima’s “new music” face. Teshima would try to sing along and dance and Aoyagi would laugh when he messed up. It was a familiar routine, but Aoyagi treasured it nonetheless.
This time, before he’d even consciously decided what to draw, his hand had already sketched out a messy curl of hair against a sharp cheekbone. Aoyagi faltered, sneaking a sideways glance at Teshima. Who was stretched out on the floor, waving his arms back and forth with the music and fumbling over the English.
Cute.
Teshima caught him looking and gave him a thumbs-up, then grinned when Aoyagi gestured for him to keep singing. Aoyagi sketched out the general shape of his body and started filling the outline with geometric shapes and shadows and textures, but he left Teshima’s face and hair and hands as they were – they were art just on their own.
“Hey, that’s pretty neat!” Teshima said later, peeking over Aoyagi’s shoulder from behind the couch. Aoyagi hummed his thanks, adding a little detail to a fingernail, the curve of an ear, the bicycle wheels spiralling across the stomach and down one leg. Teshima pointed at the wheels. “This is cool. I wish I could draw like you, Aoyagi.”
“You sing.”
Teshima laughed. He leaned over the back of the couch and rested his cheek on the top of Aoyagi’s head. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
In the afternoon, they took their bikes to go wander around the shopping mall, the way they usually did. They knew the layout well, and Teshima always lead the way, choosing which stores to pass by and which to go into, Aoyagi following him, the way their friendship had always been. Aoyagi bought them ice cream as a late “lunch”, and to thank Teshima for the breakfast; plain vanilla for himself, as always, while Teshima chose one of the chocolate ones with the chunks and fudgy swirls. He seemed to like it, but it was a bit too rich for Aoyagi’s tastes. At one point they ran into Kinjou, who raised an eyebrow at their meal choice but didn’t say anything. They decided to go to the sporting goods store at one end of the mall together. The result was Aoyagi buying a new practice jersey he didn’t really need – green, this time, which made Teshima practically glow with happiness.
“Now we’ll match!” he said cheerfully. Aoyagi nodded along as if that hadn’t been his motivation in the first place, and quietly admired the way Teshima’s shoulders twitched back when he was particularly happy, and the way his ponytail bounced as he led their way through the mall.
Once Aoyagi’s parents had come home for the night, they retreated to Aoyagi’s room to pass a lazy evening with too many bowls of homemade ramen and a stack of old Tour de France DVDs and three games of chess – three spectacular losses, on Aoyagi’s part. He’d never beaten Teshima and had serious doubts that it would ever happen, but Teshima loved chess and Aoyagi loved to watch Teshima play through different scenarios in his head. His eyes darted all over the board, and his fingers twitched, and sometimes he made little noises under his breath, and Aoyagi thought that part of the reason he could never win was because he was always distracted.
Before they knew it, the sun was down and the moon was up and Aoyagi was far too comfortable not-snuggling with Teshima to even consider letting him get up and go home.
Luckily, Teshima seemed to agree, and called his parents to let them know he was staying over, just as Aoyagi had known he would. It wasn’t even a decision anymore, really, that’s just how it always was. Teshima kept a toothbrush in the bathroom and a few scattered pieces of clothing in Aoyagi’s closet – pants, mostly, since that one time he’d spilled soup all over himself and Aoyagi had laughed himself breathless at the sight of Teshima wearing his own much-too-short pants. The t-shirts, well, Aoyagi honestly couldn’t remember who most of them were supposed to belong to. But that was fine. That was normal.
They curled up together on Aoyagi’s bed, like they always did, Aoyagi with his back to the wall and Teshima with his back to Aoyagi. Teshima kicked – after several morning of bruised shins and toes they’d unanimously decided that having his feet caught between Aoyagi and the wall was a bad idea. In the quiet semi-darkness, Aoyagi automatically synchronized his breathing with Teshima’s; it was an instinctive response, after so long riding behind him. He knew every line and muscle of Teshima’s back, and he lay there watching how Teshima’s shoulder blades moved and the way his chest expanded with each breath even through the loose cotton shirt he wore to bed. It was sketched in notebook margins and doodled on crumpled napkins and it was perfect; every inch of him was perfect.
Teshima rolled over suddenly, too close, and Aoyagi gasped in surprise when Teshima’s chin smacked against his nose. He shuffled back so he was pressed against the wall and glared. Teshima exhaled a laugh.
“Sorry,” he whispered. Aoyagi frowned at him for a second longer, then scrunched up his nose and let his face relax. Teshima smiled at his silent expression of forgiveness.
“Today was fun, wasn’t it? Seeing the captain was nice, but it’s always so weird seeing him outside of school, don’t you think? I’m still not sure what I think of that new CD, though. It was mostly good, but that one song was a little weird, right? How did it go again? Something like…”
Teshima sang quietly, one finger quietly tapping against the mattress to keep his rhythm, switching to humming where he forgot the words. Aoyagi loved it when Teshima sang. He had an even, sweet voice, but what Aoyagi loved most was how he sang with his whole body. When they were at karaoke or alone in the house he’d dance and gesture broadly, but even during quiet afternoons in, he’d sway his hips as he sang over a pot of noodles, or bob his head and shimmy his shoulders when they huddled together on the couch with cycling magazines or video games. Or tap his fingers on the mattress and close his eyes and tilt his head back against the pillow.
Beautiful, Aoyagi thought. Teshima was so beautiful. A narrow shaft of moonlight shone through a gap in the curtains, illuminating the curve of his cheek and the ridge of his nose and the tips of his eyelashes. Aoyagi’s fingers itched for a paintbrush or a charcoal pencil, the way they always did around Teshima. The squeezed half-pain around his heart was just as familiar. He shifted under the covers.
“Hm?” Teshima stopped singing and opened his eyes. “Oh, sorry, was I –” He broke off suddenly, just staring at Aoyagi.
Aoyagi wasn’t sure what his face was doing, but it made Teshima’s eyes go so, so soft. Teshima leaned forward until their noses brushed together. When their foreheads touched, Aoyagi’s breath stuttered on the exhale, and he could feel Teshima’s answering smile.
“I love you too, Aoyagi.”
He said it like it was the most normal, familiar thing in the world.
Well, Aoyagi thought. Maybe it was.