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The taxi is warm, and Rosho at his side even warmer. Sasara watches in bursts of streetlight as Rosho nods off, head slipping to the side, breath evening out. His mouth hangs open just a touch, and Sasara can't wait to poke fun at him if he starts drooling. The flush is finally fading from his cheeks, retreating under the rims of his glasses slowly sliding off his nose with each start and stop of the car. Like this he’s practically defenseless. Open and unguarded in a way Sasara only ever gets glimpses of, like echoes of days long gone.
Looking at him is almost painful in a way Sasara can’t describe. It’s a twinge, or maybe just a hollowness. All he knows is that suddenly, he doesn’t want to look anymore. He rests his head on Rosho’s shoulder, absorbing his warmth that way, instead. This feels better, thinks Sasara, sleepy and content as a cat curled up in the sun. Rosho shifts to allow him better access, and Sasara welcomes it, all but melting into his side.
Sasara’s nearly nodded off himself by the time they arrive at Rosho’s apartment, but Rei’s hand on his shoulder jolts him back to reality just as he registers the slowing of the car. Sasara bolts upright, suddenly acutely aware of himself.
“…We’re here,” says Rei, much delayed and faintly amused. Sasara shoots him the beginnings of a glare before undoing his seatbelt, shaking Rosho by the shoulder gently. Rosho doesn’t stir so much as he groans, blinks at Sasara without seeing him, then lets his head slump forward again.
Stupid Rosho, thinks Sasara, more fondly than anything, this is why we drink at your house.
“Up,” Sasara insists, reaching over to undo Rosho's seatbelt and roll him out of the taxi. Rosho stumbles slightly on his feet, but Rei’s circled around to catch him by the elbow. Sasara scurries out of the taxi to loop Rosho’s arm over his shoulders, half-dragging him up the stairs.
Rosho mutters something (probably a protest) but it’s utterly incoherent--he could be explaining how to find the square root of pi, for all Sasara knows. Rosho is, at least, able to stumble his way up the stairs, and Sasara handles the lock, pulling a key from his pocket he keeps alongside his own.
They enter without issue, and Rosho manages to prop himself up on the wall and shrug off his glasses while Sasara goes for the closet. He’s hardly done spreading out the futon before Rosho’s collapsed on top of it, face down and drooling into the pillow. Rosho would adamantly deny he ever looks like this, were he conscious--but he’s a little less skilled at controlling his facial expressions than he likes to think. (Not that Sasara will ever tell him that. Not when that would make him try to hide one of his best features.)
Sasara rolls him over and brushes a bit of hair out of his eyes, the styling all ruined from the long night out. Rosho’s going to look like hell, tomorrow morning. Sasara snickers fondly at the thought. It’s a good thing it’s only a Friday night. He’s so proper, these days. His students probably don’t even suspect the kind of trouble they got up to back in the day. Sasara hums a pleased little tune as he throws some sheets over Rosho, delighted thier secrets still remain.
“You better thank me when you wake up tomorrow, y’know?” he jokes lightly. Knowing Rosho though, he will wake up tomorrow to a thank you message. He’s just that kind of guy--kind, in ways he doesn’t need to be. Sasara spares Rosho one last smile before slipping back to the door. He’s off to join Rei the rest of the way home, closer to Osaka’s beating heart.
Rei’s already halfway out the door by the time Sasara catches up; Rei flashes him an odd sort of look, the slightest bit puzzled as Sasara slips on his shoes and locks the door behind them.
They’re halfway down the stairs when Rei stops dead in his tracks. Sasara pauses a step behind him, tilting his head and humming a curious note. Rei doesn’t move, though. They stand frozen just a moment too long, but just as Sasara is about to slip past him, tired of standing out in the cold--“Sasara… Correct me if I’m wrong, but…”
Oh, Sasara doesn’t like that tone of voice. It means Rei has an idea in his head, and he’s absolutely, one-hundred and ten percent sure that he’s correct. (And, much to Sasara’s frustration, he almost always is.)
But Rei, much to Sasara’s surprise, hesitates. He’s used inebriation as an excuse to deliver some cutting words more than once in the past. Sasara’s probably not wrong to read his pause as a mark of trust. He tilts his head, and Rei, surprisingly, turns back to face him properly. A strange, frantic weight starts tumbling through his gut, and Sasara swallows hard. His tongue already feels heavy, and Rei hasn’t even broken out the gentle threats yet.
“Ah,” he drawls, scratching at his head rather sheepishly, “There’s not much of a delicate way to ask, these days, huh? Not that anybody in the department had much tact, either…” Rei cuts himself off, filing away a memory to dwell on later. “…Anyway. You sure you don’t want to stay the night?”
Rei lifts an eyebrow. Sasara’s own furrow into a confused little frown. They’ve all fallen asleep around Rosho’s low table once or twice in the early hours of the morning, having long since lost track of what round they’re on, and probably having woken all of Rosho’s neighbors on the way there. But none of them usually stay the night without warning like this. Entering for a few hours is fair game, but there’s an unspoken rule that barging in with the intention to stay the night is a bit too much of a burden, even for friends. On that and that alone, it’s just appropriate to ask, first. (They will summarily ignore Rosho if he tells them no, but that’s a different matter entirely--it’s about the asking, you see, not the answer.)
“What,” he asks with a bright, blank smile, “Am I missing something?”
“Sasara…” Rei stares him down with that look --the one that makes Sasara feel itchy, like he’s left something he shouldn’t have out on full display. He waves at himself like a fool, brushing away both his doubts and Rei’s attention.
He snaps his fingers in a parody of demand. “Chop chop, let’s cut to the chase! Time is money and our cab’s running!”
Rei huffs at him, as if whatever the cab ends up costing them, it’ll only be a trifle. Given the sorts of numbers he was throwing around on their first meeting—and how Sasara has, in the time since, very much judged them to be the truth—they could probably stand here all night. He takes one more deliberate breath, stares Sasara straight in the eyes. And he asks, with an expression Sasara can’t quite pin down, “So. You and Rosho, huh? How long’s my congratulations been overdue for?”
.
..
“...Huh?”
Sasara doesn’t choose to make the sound. Rather, the sound chooses to leave him, clawing its way out with a force that leaves him winded.
Rei lifts an eyebrow at him. “What, still too early?”
“Too early!?” Sasara splutters, “That’s not, that isn’t, I wouldn’t?”
Rei’s eyebrow makes a valiant attempt at escaping into the stars. Despite feeling like he’s just been shot into orbit, Sasara manages to collect himself just enough for coherent words to come out. “He’s my partner! I care about him, and I appreciate him! I just… I don’t want him. Not like that.”
Rei sighs, running a hand through his hair before rubbing at his temple, hinting unsubtly that Sasara is giving him a headache. “And you’re sure about that?”
“Why? What’re you tryin’ to say, huh?” It comes out a thousand times more defensive than he means it, but Sasara’s brain is moving twice the speed of light and for once, his mouth is having a hard time keeping up.
Rei holds up his hands in surrender, retreating into his fur coat--not that it makes him any smaller, damn bastard. “Nothing, nothing. You can forget it all in the morning.”
Rei winks at him, thereby ensuring that Sasara is absolutely not going to be able to forget that Rei thinks he and Rosho are, are…
There’s a flutter of a fur coat, the sound of a car door, and then Rei is gone, slipping off with the taxi into the night, leaving Sasara’s brain moving a mile a minute as the chill starts biting into his fingertips.
Only then does Sasara realize that Rei’s left him here, the bastard. Sasara grumbles a jumble of things under his breath that aren’t quite swears but would very much scandalize a live studio audience, unaware that Nurude Sasara and bad moods are things that can exist in the same sentence.
He calls a cab.
And the whole way back, because Rei has rendered him unable to do anything else, the bastard, he thinks.
Nurude Sasara doesn’t get into scandals. There are rumors, sure, in the way that anyone whose name sells ends up more fiction than fact—but not scandals. He is, apparently, ‘ frustratingly scandal-proof’ and ‘apparently the one man on this earth that hasn’t even looked at someone the wrong way even once”.
(To which Sasara would like to say if nasty looks are what you want, go check Tokyo, two years back— but never will, not in the least because there’s still a hint of ringing in the back of his head when he thinks about those days too hard.)
Sasara has learned that the tabloids aren’t very good at their jobs, at least when it comes to him. Case in point: There had been rumors about them back then, too. Sasara had never thought on them, much. Outside the occasional bit of teasing about couple’s manzai, it seemed neither had anyone else. Partners are like family. Maybe something even greater, if you find the right one. But not in their case.
Rosho is… attractive! Objectively. Sasara’s known that since they were eighteen and he spent too damn long staring at Rosho’s face, trying to figure out how to make him soften up a little. He’s got sharp lines in all the right places, and the roundness of his glasses do something to smooth out the intensity of his gaze, letting the kindness shine through. He holds himself with a pride that’s beautiful, power lurking just beneath gentle manner, ready to leap out like a tiger flexing its claws. His smile is one of the brightest sights in the world. His laugh is worth more than anything.
But Sasara wouldn’t, say, push him over in the dead of night and do indecent things until the sun rises.
(Sasara all but gags at the thought. Rosho is special, but he’s not that special.)
Sasara finishes off his beer with a gulp and drops the can inelegantly back onto the table. You’ve got weird ideas in your head now, he reminds himself, stupid Rei and his stupid romance.
The man’s always been a goddamn romantic, beneath the glitz and gold. It’s not surprising that he’s seeing things where there are none. And besides. If Rosho loved him, then Sasara, of all people, wouldn’t be blind to it.
“Now,” says Rosho, for the third time that night, “You really need to get out of my apartment.”
“Aww,” Rei drawls, lifting his half-full can, “The night’s still young. We’ve got time!”
“Unlike some of you,” says Rosho, staring down Rei with a skeptical eye, “I have honest work tomorrow.”
Rei, who had excused himself for a phone call twenty minutes ago and returned with a spring in his step, shrugs off the accusation with a devilish grin. Sasara, whose only obligation tomorrow is a meeting with his manager in the late afternoon, taps his can against Rei’s and toasts to the death of the 9-to-5. Rosho shakes his head at the both of them, probably wondering how the only one amongst them that works regular hours is somehow the most underpaid of them all.
“Unless you want to sleep on the floor—“
Sasara’s hand shoots up like lightning, waving around like a flag in the wind. “I’ll stay here!!”
“Go home,” Rosho scolds, smacking him upside the head. Sasara falls forward obligingly and leans on the low table with one elbow, raising his can with the other. He watches Rosho sidelong and plasters on his widest grin and declares, just to see if he can get away with it—
“‘M too drunk to go home!”
“He’s very drunk,” Rei follows, and Sasara sways like a fool, knowing Rosho won’t fall for it, but might give in anyway. He flashes Rosho a wide grin, brimming with barely-concealed mischief and brazen appeals for pity.
“Very drunk!!”
One breath, two. Rosho looks between them, then runs a hand down his face and sighs. “Fine,” he says, “Fine. I’ll pull out the extra futon. But I’m going to sleep, even if you two aren’t.”
Rei shoots Sasara a look. Not the earlier look, the one where it’s clear he sees too much (even if that too much happens to all just be in his head). This one is mischievous, by all means that cat that sees the opportunity to pounce. Sasara glares right back at him, and that’s how Rosho finds--then summarily ignores--them as he returns to set out the futon.
He spreads it out precisely, but not mechanically—it’s funny, he thinks, how Rosho moves. Not a motion wasted like this, but get him fired up and it’s nothing but big, over-the-top movements telegraphed to hell and back. Sasara grins at the thought, more like a memory. A holdover from when they were younger, maybe. Some things never change.
Rosho’s no sooner stood to admire his work than curiosity kills the cat. Rei waves his arm and promptly knocks over the last of Rosho’s can, sending it soaring straight off the table and onto the futon, perfectly upside-down. Sasara scrambles for it, but there’s hardly a chance—the can is empty before he can so much as lunge across the table.
“Oops.” Rei grins, charming and sly. He’s clearly not sorry in the slightest.
Rosho stares down at the can, now splayed out in a massive wet spot across the sheets, then at Rei, then back at the futon. He heaves out a sigh, either actually fooled by Rei’s pathetic excuse for acting or simply too tired to argue with the clowns in his living room. “I’ll get the extra pillows,” he says, and retreats back into his room.
Sasara waits one second, two, watches as Rosho disappears into his room, then— “What do you think you’re doing!!!!” Sasara hisses in Rei’s ear, grabbing his arm with all the necessary resolve to shake it off him. Rei, being built like a solid wall of concrete, hardly budges.
“I believe this is what kids these days call a ‘wingman’,” says Rei, clearly having fun at his expense.
“I don’t need a wingman! And if I did, I wouldn’t ask you!”
Rei clutches at his wounded heart, conveniently replacing Sasara’s finger stabbing into it. “Sasara, Sasara,” he says, each repetition of his name just that much more smug. “I don’t think you know what you need.”
“Don’t treat me like one of your marks!” Sasara hisses furiously, “I don’t need your help! Especially not with this!”
Rei laughs, too-loud for the tiny apartment and sure to alert Rosho to the entire rest of the conversation. “That’s what they all say, y’know?”
Rei winks at him. Sasara balks. That, in turn, just makes Rei laugh louder before he downs the last of his beer, relishing in his perceived victory. He stands with vintage grace as Sasara seethes at him, unsure exactly what game he’s lost but knowing it was definitive.
“It’s time for this old man to head home, I think.”
“Finally,” Rosho mutters, having made his grand reappearance just in time to complain.
Rei doesn’t seem to mind though. He laughs as he drapes his coat over his shoulders and drops hat on his head, the gold glint of their pin gleaming under the overhead light.
“Good night,” says Rei, drawling out the words far too long. He winks. Sasara pinches up his nose and sticks out his tongue, knowing he can blame the alcohol in the morning. (He probably won’t, but only because Rei is just kind enough not to bring it up.)
And then they’re alone. Together. Like they have been on a thousand other occasions. There’s nothing strange about this. Absolutely nothing at all.
They go to Rosho’s room.
Nothing has changed since the last time Sasara’s been inside--it’s still small, still minimal, the biggest trinkets being gifts scattered atop piles of books he’s clearly received from his students over the years. He doesn’t know their stories, but Sasara feels fond of them nonetheless. That one’s from Megumi, who keeps trying to bribe me to let her use her phone in class. That one’s from Haru, from one of his trips to Tokyo.
Sasara knows their names, if not all their faces. But his glances at their gifts are only putting off the inevitable. And that’s the fact that there is, of course, only one futon. They stand there staring at it like fools, as if squinting at it hard enough will suddenly make the double-vision manifest into reality.
“Sorry,” says Rosho, even though none of this is even remotely his fault, “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“No,” Sasara replies, feeling oddly responsible for Rei’s messes, as he often does, “It’s fine! I like the floor. You have a nice floor.”
Sasara, privately, wonders what in the world he’s even saying. Words have felt oddly broken when it comes to debating Rosho, which Sasara thinks is the exact opposite of what their last battle was supposed to accomplish. Maybe he’s drunker than he thought.
Rosho eyes him skeptically, knowing Sasara never in his life would willingly choose to sleep on the floor over a warm bed. “You’re the guest. You’re not sleeping on the floor.”
“I love the floor!” Sasara continues, too deep on this path to back out now, “It’s floor-ing!”
“You are—“
Sasara crosses his arms, simply determined not to lose. “I can’t stand on this anymore!”
And then he lays down on the floor, just to prove his point.
It’s hard. And uncomfortable. Even the fact he’s borrowing one of Rosho’s plushier sweaters can’t cushion the sheer inflexibility of a cold floor.
Rosho lifts the covers along with an eyebrow, and Sasara, with an odd, unsettled feeling he has no name for, slips in after him. It’s not wide. Even on their sides, it hardly fits one grown man, let alone two. Sasara squirms, attempting to slot himself under the covers without brushing his feet up against Rosho’s. It’s surprisingly difficult.
“I’m turning off the light,” Rosho says, and that’s all the warning Sasara gets before he’s pressed the button on the remote and plunged the room into darkness. Or as dark as it can get, when Rosho’s curtains are just a tiny bit too narrow, leaving a long strip of moonlight brushing against the floorboards.
Sasara stares at it and tries not to think stranger, more unwelcome thoughts.
This isn’t weird. They’ve been friends for eight years, time spent apart notwithstanding. There is nothing strange about having to share a bed with your best friend. He’s pretty sure someone at the agency just told a hilarious story about that the other day, except this entire situation has thrown his brain into the deep fryer and the details are coming up all crispy.
Sasara shuffles his feet absently. His toes are frozen; why Rosho will never turn on the heat is beyond him. How much does a teacher make, anyway? Enough to heat his house before going to sleep, surely. It’s the middle of winter, who doesn’t turn on the heater in the middle of--
An arm lands over his, stilling him. “Stop squirming,” Rosho says, voice thick with sleep and low with annoyance. It’s not harsh, though. Sasara shifts around a little more, this time to get comfortable, rather than to still his thoughts. He expects Rosho to move once he’s still--but he doesn’t, Sasara realizes. His eyes slide closed, breathing evens out. Sasara can see none of this, his back close enough to Rosho’s chest to feel the warmth of him. And just like in the taxi—like every time they’re this close, really—it grounds Sasara in ways he doesn’t really understand. His thoughts go quiet, though, and that’s what matters.
He falls asleep with Rosho’s arm over his shoulders, and it’s the best night of sleep he’s ever gotten.
Nurude Sasara doesn’t… love people. Mom and Dad in one way, sure. His fans in another. And his friends and teammates in a way closer to honest than either of those, for sure. He’s been flirted with and seduced and everything in between, and it’s been easy enough to excuse himself from it all. It’s just… another world, as far as Sasara’s concerned. He gave his heart to comedy when he was hardly seven years old, and never had reason to look back.
It’s not that he doesn’t care. He cares about Rosho more than he cares about just about anything. That’s why he always had to be one step ahead. Why Rosho could never be allowed to see his weakness, his uncertainties. Why they’d never been allowed to fight--the one thing, in retrospect, that might have saved them.
(Hindsight’s 20-20, Sasara has found himself thinking rather wryly.)
If there’s any person in the world he might love like that, then Sasara knows, somewhere he doesn’t quite want to acknowledge, it’s Rosho. But he doesn’t. Because, when it comes down to it, there really isn’t anything strange about sharing a bed with your best friend, your partner, just another person in this wide world that you aren’t attracted to.
At some point in the night they’d turned to face each other; long slants of sunlight trace the lines of them. Rosho’s face is pinched-up in sleep. He mumbles something under his breath, incoherent but suspiciously like Sasara don’t eat the special pudding, no one knows what happens when you eat the special pudding.
Sasara can’t help his laughter, soft under his breath. He hopes Rosho remembers the dream when he wakes up. Sounds like perfect material.
He presses a finger to the wrinkles in Rosho’s forehead, massaging at them gently until they smooth out, the sleep-talk vanishing alongside the dream. Sasara shifts subtly to check his phone, left out beside the futon haphazard but thankfully not dead.
He’ll have to be awake soon. But not yet. Sasara burrows just a tiny bit further under Rosho’s arm and lets himself sink into that warmth, that odd sort of contentment he’s never felt anywhere else. He’s never been sleepless, but it’s all too easy to drift back off like this, wishing morning won’t come.
The weeks pass, thankfully with no more strange attempts at misguided wingmanship from Rei. They settle back into their usual rhythm, unexpected visits with drinks and pudding in hand, weekends of late-night tv and re-runs of Sasara’s daytime spots that Rosho likes to play, just to poke fun at him. Or rather, the un-funniness of his jokes. (Sasara throws a fit when Rosho declares that thanks for pudding up with me is not in fact funny when Sasara threw it out there specifically for him. Not that he’d ever admit to it. He does fling the pudding spoon at Rosho though, accepting his fate when Rosho snatches his half-eaten cup off the table and downs it in three petty bites.)
It’s when Sasara’s finally done with a packed three days of shooting that his phone vibrates in his pocket, practically the moment he steps into the taxi home. Sasara grins down at the message, unreasonably excited at its contents. It reads, every letter in its proper place:
Are you coming back tonight? You left your notebook on my table.
Sasara swipes the first few bits of his response, then taps the call button instead, inexplicably pleased when Rosho picks up within the ring. “Sorry,” he says, “I just got back from the skydiving shoot! I’ll come by tomo—“
“The WHAT?!” Rosho shouts, forcing Sasara to jerk the phone away from his ear with a bout of laughter. He wishes he could see Rosho’s face. Trying to keep that one a secret had all but killed him. Technically, he’s still supposed to keep it secret until the first promos drop tomorrow, but who’s Rosho going to tell? At this point, it should practically be written into his contracts—no one’s allowed to know except the concerned parties, their management, and Tsutsujimori Rosho, who’s going to find out even if he’d rather be surprised.
Sasara chuckles at the thought. It’ll never happen, but it’s fun to imagine a world where it does.
Back in reality, Rosho chides him all the way home, Sasara assuring him that yes it was safe, of course I didn’t do anything stupid, the program airs next Saturday at noon, tell me what you think?
He lives for the exasperated breath on the other side of the line as he hears Rosho shift to set the DVR. “I’ll come by tomorrow?” he says again, wishing he had the energy to change course now. But there’s not really a point of going to Rosho’s if he’s going to fall asleep on his cushions the moment he sits down.
Rosho huffs again, but Sasara likes to think it’s in fondness, rather than exasperation. “I’ll be waiting.”
For the first time in three days, Sasara returns to his own apartment, and promptly hits the bed face-first, attempting to meld with his pillows. He’s going back out on location for another few days starting tomorrow night, but for now, at least, he’s got the comforts of home.
…Sasara doesn’t feel particularly comfortable, though. His own bed is too wide, too lonely. This isn’t the first time in his life Sasara’s had this thought, and he knows from experience it won’t be the last. It’s the problem with buying a big, open apartment, he thinks—no one told him just how much empty space there would still be once he actually started living in it.
What makes Rosho’s place so much more comfortable? Sasara squeezes his eyes shut and tries to picture it. The cramped little entryway, the first whiff of garlic that hits the moment one steps inside. The way it feels like the tiny little place he first rented when he joined the agency, like nostalgia bottled up and permeating every bit of the air.
Sasara could learn to cook! He could downsize, and go back to living a little more simply, not that simplicity isn’t the reason he’s in his current predicament. He could get clutter then. That’s an easy enough thing to accumulate, he’s pretty sure. Something to make the place look lived in.
…None of that seems like it’ll make much of a difference, in the long run.
Sasara leaps out of bed and paces his apartment instead. He makes a mental list as he goes, categorizing this and that and making himself wonder why he even bought this place anyway, when everything’s all wrong.
The fact this is a corner apartment, meaning the rain batters against the bedroom windows from two directions, instead of just one. The fact that this is on the wrong side of the building, facing out into the boring side of the streets rather than the bright, neon ones. The fact there’s nothing on the walls to distract from the emptiness. That’s the most damning thing, he decides. You can get away with a complete lack of interior decor when the rooms are smaller, but when you’ve got all this open space and nothing but a single photo to…
Sasara stops dead in his tracks and pivots on his heel, staring holes into the photo in question. It’s lit up by the moonlight, the refractions of Osaka below. It’s not the only photo from those days he’s ever printed, but it’s the only one he’s kept.
It’s from their earliest days. From just barely after he put those glasses on Rosho’s face, in any attempt to keep him from scowling at the world all the time. From the days before he started ignoring that edge of fear, that wild, desperate sort of effort he put into writing new routines, like if each one was just greater and better than the last, then perhaps it could fill that space between them and the laughter would return. That Rosho would come back to him, in the uncomplicated, carefree way they once were, holed up in Sasara’s shitty little apartment and sleeping over more nights than…
You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.
Sasara sits hard on his couch and drops his head into his hands. Rosho. The thing he’s missing—it’s Rosho.
Once he’s realized one thing, the thoughts come flooding in like a riptide, dragging him out to sea. He wants to come home from a long day of shooting and find Rosho there waiting for him. He wants to wake up every day and have the first warmth he feels be Rosho at his side. He wants Rosho’s laughter to fill up this house and make it a home.
He wants it with desire so strong it’s almost unbearable, squeezing like a vice around his chest. It’s the same weight that’s always been there, in regards to Rosho, but now with the vicious twist of knowledge that something is missing.
“You look terrible!” Rei says, far too cheerful for the occasion. Sasara glares at him. He’s not afraid of Rei’s ire, nor is he in the mood.
“No more wise quacks, wingman! Time is money, and I’m on the clock!”
This does absolutely nothing to hasten Rei’s lackadaisical pace, looking Sasara up and down with a leisurely whistle. There’s a glimmer of mirth in his eyes as he removes his sunglasses--not that it isn’t cloudy out today, the bastard--and his words are smug as the cat that’s caught the canary. “Ohh, someone’s been having fun.”
Sasara gestures to himself frantically. “What about this looks fun to you!?” He hasn’t slept in nearly two days, his stylist put so much makeup on him this morning in order to remove the pale as a ghost from him that it’s borderline illegal, and he forgot his wallet in the taxi this morning, which means Rei is going to have to pay for this lunch, which is half the reason Sasara called him in the first place. Rei can pay for his crimes. It’s only fair.
Rei holds up his hands in mocking surrender. Sasara turns on his heel and heads into the restaurant, thankful that Rei at least had the decency to be on time. They sit down and order without incident, the waitress rushing out their drinks at utmost speed. From the way she only just barely manages to avoid tripping over her words, she’s definitely one of their fans. Sasara resolves to flash her a smile the next time she comes around, a little disturbed he forgot to the first time.
Meanwhile, though, Sasara downs half a melon cream soda in one gulp, hoping the sugar will do something. It does not. Rei, quite possibly mocking him, sips leisurely at his black coffee. “So?” he says over the rim, “You said it was urgent?”
He certainly doesn’t ask with the tone of a man who thinks it is. Sasara squints, wondering just how much he knows. Rei, as per usual, offers up absolutely nothing save a smug little smile, confident he holds all the cards. Which is fine. Sasara is more than used to dealing with this. Rei has never once underestimated him, but he likes to pretend he does. Sasara, used to acting like a fool in order to dodge more serious things, is just as adept at playing him right back.
Case in point:
Rei has loved someone once, Sasara thinks. He has no evidence to back up his theory, would be grasping at straws if asked to prove it, but Sasara would all but stake his life on his intuition. He gives himself away in their every interaction. No one expends this much time and effort unless they’re projecting, at least a little bit.
“Wingman,” he asks, leaning over the table with a hand curved around the outside of his mouth, their conversation a parody of a secret, “We birds of a feather?”
Rei winks at him slow and deliberate, a flash of green. “I think you know the answer to that.”
And Sasara does, in fact. He sees more than people think he does, and Rei’s known that before he ever even arranged that meeting. He suspected from the moment he met Rei’s gaze what his relationship with Ichiro was, had it confirmed the moment he was entrusted with that note.
But.
“That’s not the question, birdbrain.”
“Oh?” Rei grins at him, the wide smile of a man who’s been counting cards. “I’m not so quick as I used to be, y’know. You’re going to have to do this old man a favor and be a little more specific.”
Sasara seethes, downing another gulp of melon soda under the pretense of pouting, but really just to buy him a second to think. Rei’s known since the start. Since before even Sasara. Maybe it’s something he knew same as he knew about Sasara’s past. It could be written in a file somewhere, for all Sasara knows. PS: He’s terribly in love with Tsutsujimori Rosho, and has absolutely no idea. What a clown, right?
“The question is, what do you call a person you’d give everything for?”
Rei lifts an eyebrow. “Respect?”
“Yes and no,” Sasara replies, then shakes his head sharply when Rei casts him a scathing look. “Not like that! Definitely respect. Maybe… What’s more than respect?”
“Desire? Adoration?”
Sasara shakes his head again. Desire, in the sense that Rei means it, has always been a zero. Adoration is closer, maybe, but doesn’t quite hit the mark. It’s too… objectifying, if Sasara had to pick a word. He doesn’t want to put Rosho on a pedestal, in a glass case to gaze upon but not touch. If Rosho’s not at his side--doesn’t want to be at his side--then it’s all for nothing.
“No,” he says, “More like…”
Sasara doesn’t know how to say this. He’s never cared for anyone enough to bother finding the words for it. He’s never been so open in his life. He’s never understood quite how to be.
I’ll show you how to trust.
Sasara would laugh like a fool, were they not in the middle of a public space and already drawing far too much attention. Then he’d really be giving the tabloids the scoop they want. Or maybe just that girl clearly shouting herself into the sun on twitter, debating if she should sneak a selfie with Sasara in the background. Sasara turns in his seat and flashes her a smile and a four-fingered fan just as she summons up the courage to snap the picture. It only takes a second for her to realize what happened, and Sasara grins as she combusts right then and there. He flashes her a wave. Personal crisis or not, there’s always time for a bit of fanservice.
Rei taps his fingers against the table, idle but with just enough rhythm that Sasara knows it’s a summons. Sasara takes one last breath, and, feeling slightly more grounded, finds his words. It doesn’t stop him from one final, manic thought, though— This can’t have been what Rosho meant.
“Your person,” he says, knowing he can’t leverage this but attempting to anyway, “How did you know?”
“You ever see a gal so beautiful you fall at first sight?” Rei says, winking at the waitress as she comes by with the next table’s order. She squeaks and skitters off, and what, Sasara thinks, she was Rei’s fan after all?
He makes a face. Rei laughs at him openly before following up with a damning—“Didn’t think so.”
What’s that supposed to mean, Sasara bites back, because he knows exactly what it means. He’s been left bewildered by the exact sentiment since the moment he realized that love or lust or whatever name they’re putting on it today was something more than just the stuff of radio dramas and fairy tales.
“How did you know?” Rei returns, and isn’t that just the question of the hour. Because, if he’s being honest—Sasara doesn’t know what he feels. If this is love, it’s not anything like what Sasara thought it was supposed to be.
Sasara stabs a finger at Rei across the table. “Changing the question! What do you call a person that feels like home?”
Rei sighs, and looks at him like he’s being rather obtuse. Which maybe he is, but it’s not exactly like he’s ever come home to anyone else that makes him feel anything like this. He closes his eyes for a long second, as if he’s actually thinking about it—or perhaps just wishing he’d left Sasara on read. “Family, usually.”
Not any sort of family Sasara knows. But then again, partners are family. And Sasara’s never really managed to stop seeing Rosho as one. Not even when he’d traded partner in comedy for partner in crime and left home behind in search of new horizons to conquer.
Partners. Family. What’s that even mean, anyway?
“And what if there’s no eggs in the nest?”
There’s no way Rei’s going to understand that question. Sasara barely understands his own question, and he’s the one who had the bright idea to say it in the first place.
Rei heaves out a sigh. “You know… I strike a hard bargain, but I would’ve made any compromise for her.”
Sasara casts him a wild look, wondering if Rei’s always been able to read him like an open book and has been holding back out of courtesy all this time. It might’ve made his skin crawl, months ago. Now he’s just bewildered.
“Sasara…” Rei fixes him with that look—the one he uses when he’s about to say something that he thinks is incredibly obvious, and maybe a little bit painful, too. “Love isn’t a thing you do to someone. It’s just something you don't want to lose.”
If you want to think things out, it’s at the very tip-top of Tsutenkaku, where Osaka is spread out below and all your problems seem small in comparison.
...Is what Sasara wants to say, anyway. But Rosho’s presence here is so large that Sasara can’t even dream of thinking things through objectively, let alone calmly.
He sees Rosho as he was when they first met, eighteen and full of boundless ambition. He sees them at the heights of their popularity, shaking each other apart in their silences, wide enough to carve out an ocean between them.
He sees the heart of Osaka itself, beating in time with his own. He sees this city, empty enough that he’d had to run away from it at the very first peak of his solo career. He sees himself in it—literally, plastered up on signboards and tv ads, and a little less so, watching memories of long-gone years play on.
It wasn’t love at first sight. It wasn’t love at first sight, because Sasara remembers his first impression of Rosho with perfect clarity, and that first impression was, in a word-- yikes. But Rosho wasn’t the person Sasara had first imagined him to be. He’s still not the person Sasara thinks he is, not really. Because for all Sasara tries--all but breaking into his house on the regular, showing up at his school unannounced, breaking out a new, innovative pun every chance he gets--it’s always Rosho that’s surprising him.
He’s changed, far more than Sasara has. And what better proof of that than his ghost, standing at Sasara’s side in his reflection in the glass? Eighteen, climbing up the guard rails to get a unique view of the world. Twenty-six, facing him down with the full intention of emerging victorious. Sasara reaches out for it, but brushes up against nothing but air. It’s started to rain, and the reflection of the tower lights turn harsh as rain batters at the windows, running down the panes little neon rivers.
…He really wishes he was home, right now.
(Not that his apartment would be any better. Then again, he admits to himself, delicate and tentative in the ways of men stepping on thin ice, that wasn’t really what he was thinking of.)
That feeling Sasara calls home-- when did he first start feeling it? That first time he snuck into Rosho’s house, Mic in hand and proposal on his lips? Only when he realized the lack of it, running through the Tokyo streets in search of something that could rival it? The first time he breathed in the same smoke as his idol, hoping to drown out the taste of humid rain in the back of his throat?
It wasn’t love at first sight. It couldn’t have been, because Sasara’s not the type to care about someone that quickly--he doesn’t know how. But by the time he’d decided that he’d take the top with Rosho, that it had to be Rosho, or else there was no point to it, no point to it at all…
How long, wonders Sasara, clutching to the railing like the floor is about to fall out from under him, how long was I fooling myself for?
He’s snapped from his thoughts by a sharp vibration in his pocket, mundane enough to make him jump. The crowd’s thinned out since the start of the rain, all turned towards the gift shop, and luckily there’s no one around to see him leap out of his skin when he sees the notification--or rather, the name attached.
He has to read it. There’s no choice. That doesn’t stop Sasara’s inexplicable, mounting dread as he reads, such a mundane thing to fear:
Sasara.
I almost took your notebook in with my students’ tests this morning. If you want it back, you need to come get it.
Right. The notebook. Sasara can do that. He gets himself to Rosho’s apartment on autopilot, thinking everything and nothing all at once, any rational thought he could’ve had washed away by the familiar press of Osaka’s scenery, the best home he’s ever known. It’s blurry in the rain, the neons sliding down onto the pavement, splashed up by rain boots and the hum of passing cars.
He gets out of the taxi feeling swallowed by it all, comfortably anonymous amongst sights he usually loves to be at the forefront of. The rain is wet and downright freezing, but Sasara drags his feet as he counts the stairs, things he’d usually bound up two at a time now feeling insurmountable. It's like climbing a mountain, he thinks--the top feels like a dream, when his breath puffing out white before his eyes obscures it like clouds.
Eventually, because there is simply no other choice, Sasara reaches the top. He stands outside Rosho’s apartment, running over what exactly he’s going to say like it’s the first day of a new routine and he’s got all the stars of the comedy world to impress. (Except his mind doesn’t cut to radio static when he’s got an audience. It never has, and Sasara’s fairly sure it never will.)
Somewhere along the line his body moves without his conscious permission; his hand is at the door and by the time he thinks to draw back, it’s already far too late.
Rosho opens after the first knock. Sasara has the single frantic, terrible thought that perhaps Rosho has been standing there as long as he has, seen him waste the minutes like a fool trying to figure out how to say I’d rather die than lose you again in any way except desperation.
Never desperation, a frantic emotion Sasara doesn’t know how to control.
He can’t show Rosho weakness like that.
Sasara puts on his loosest smile and says, exaggerating himself like he’s about to go on daytime tv—“Rosho! Sorry, you know me, irresponsible as ever!”
Rosho looks him up and down with a scathing eye. Sasara squirms, ready to laugh off a scolding, but all Rosho does is shake his head and sigh. “You’re wet,” he says, and Sasara suddenly realizes that wet might be an understatement. The wind had pushed the rain at his back, and Sasara’s mind had been too busy trying to summon up words to really register anything else. He’s not used to tunnel vision. It’s almost more unnerving than his lack of words.
“Well, come on,” says Rosho, opening the door just a little wider to beckon him in. Towards warmth and the sweet smell of budget cooking, that contentment that Sasara associates with only here.
Deep breath. Straight back. It’s fine, Sasara tells himself. It’s not like anything has changed. He steps inside Rosho’s apartment, lets the door click shut behind him, and tells himself that everything will be just as it always has.
…And, against all odds, it is. Because it’s true, Sasara thinks. Absolutely nothing has changed. He’s always wanted to be the most important person in Rosho’s life, for better and worse and all things in between. He’s always believed he’s invincible, so long as Rosho is at his side. Rosho’s always been the one person he’s never wanted to lose. Which is why everything has to stay as it is. What Sasara wants isn’t what Rosho wants. Compromise. Sasara should be able to do that.
Rosho shepherds him into the bathroom and plops a towel on his head before disappearing and returning with a pair of dry clothes. He knows from experience (and slightly too much sleeping over), that they’ll fit. He peels off his wet shirt and throws on the sweater, snickering at the fact this is the one whose sleeves he’s slowly been stretching out. He lives in anticipation for the day Rosho tries it on only to find only the tips of his fingers poke out.
Sasara pats his face dry with the towel, grimacing when some of his makeup from the morning shoot starts to come away with it. It’s not a good towel, at least. It’s a beat-up old one that smells like Rosho’s overly-generic laundry detergent. Nothing like the sweater, crisp and foresty-clean with the faintest hint of lavender, just like Rosho when Sasara...
This is a bad train of thought. Sasara throws the towel into the washing machine and smashes the button to run it, ignoring the fading hint of Rosho’s cologne.
He skitters out into the living room, abruptly remembers that skittering is the opposite of what he’s supposed to be doing, then slows to a saunter instead. It looks ridiculous, but at least Rosho’s not looking.
“I ordered a pizza,” Rosho calls over his shoulder, and Sasara bounds over to the low table in delight. He threw his (thankfully recovered) wallet this way before changing; the price of their usual order he knows by heart.
“I’ll pay!”
“We’ll split it!” Rosho insists, rummaging for his own wallet even as Sasara slaps his portion down onto the table, having beaten Rosho to the punch. He makes himself at home at Rosho’s side, ignoring the way Rosho slowly tenses.
“Sasara.”
“Yes?” Sasara very intentionally plays dumb to the reason for Rosho’s glare.
“This isn’t half.”
He glances at Rosho sidelong, as he’s suddenly realized he’s prone to doing. The light of the television catches him in all the right ways, reflecting on his glasses and lighting up his eyes. The tiniest hint of confusion fills them as no reply comes. “Sasara?”
Sasara reaches up and pulls the glasses off his face, collecting the chain and looping it around his own neck, instead. The frames are bent slightly from use, but they’re the same style as Sasara remembers from back then, seared into his memory clear as day.
He holds his breath. He slips the glasses onto his nose. His vision doesn’t blur. He lets out a long, long breath, nerves slipping from him only to be replaced with a different sort of tension. He ignores it, shoving it back down into the box it came from.
“Sasara. What are you doing?”
“I’ve been thinking, y’know? Might be time to mix it up a little. Glasses are pretty spect acular, dontcha think?”
“That’s terrible,” Rosho replies, reaching over to snatch the glasses back. But Sasara won’t let him. He leans backwards and shoves a finger in Rosho’s face, waggling it wildly.
“Nonono, you just can’t see where I’m going with this,” Sasara replies. Rosho shoots him an unimpressed glare.
“I have perfect vision. And I wouldn’t need it to see where this is going,” he says, and Sasara isn’t exactly sure if he should puff up in indignation or pride that Rosho actually seems willing to humor him.
He clicks his tongue instead, too committed to break character now. “I don’t think we’re seeing eye to eye,” he says, tapping the side of the frames playfully.
“Then take off my glasses,” Rosho deadpans, and Sasara has to hold himself back from chuckling.
“Why? Don’t you think that’s gonna be a big oversight?”
“Not on my watch,” Rosho says, making a valiant swing for the chain. But Sasara’s just that much faster, used to slipping away from Rosho like this from years of practice. He scoots back as Rosho lunges forwards, throwing the cushions wild out from under them.
“What, you mean you don’t got the time on your hands?”
“Unfortunately, I’m not as free as you are.”
“So,” says Sasara, cracking himself up as he taps at the glasses, “You’re saying your sights are pretty chained down?”
Finally, finally, Rosho takes the bait. “Fine,” he says, exasperated, “What in the world do you need my glasses for that badly?”
Sasara giggles to himself, unable to hide his joy in his victory. “They help with my di-vision?”
“I knew it. My students make that joke at me,” Rosho sighs. Or… No, Sasara realizes—Rosho laughs. Not the full-body heaves he does when they’re all drunk and losing their minds over something they won’t remember come morning, or the wry little chuckles he makes when recounting the newest shenanigans his students have gotten into. This is something softer, just an exhale on the edge of a smile. It’s fond, and it’s amused, and it’s only for the two of them.
Something in Sasara aches, wondering how he can have all this and still want more. Why is it so hard to make you laugh? Hey, why can’t I ever just…
Rosho leans forwards to finally pull his glasses off Sasara’s nose, and Sasara freezes at the contact. He’s not sure when they got so close. It’s never been something he’s been conscious of before, with Rosho. Others, he keeps an unspoken, unbroken distance with. Very few have been able to close it. But it’s never mattered, with Rosho. Not when the lack of it unsettles Sasara more than the warmth of it.
“Really, Sasara, I don’t know how you—“
The glasses dangle from Rosho’s fingers. One of his hands still lingers, stuck where it had been making sure the chain didn’t catch on Sasara’s hair. It’s a touch that’s not quite a touch, frozen by sudden realization of what could be if they moved just a hair. It’s permission. It’s hesitation. Every bit of breath has been stolen from him, and Sasara doesn’t know how to get it back.
“Sasara…?”
Nothing can change. Everything should change. Hadn't Rosho wanted the weight of his expectations? Hadn’t Sasara promised? If not to himself, then at least to Rosho?
“I…”
The words catch in his throat. His body feels disconnected from his brain. Distantly, Sasara realizes that this is the most terrifying thing he’s ever done.
He swallows hard.
The words remain.
He forces himself to look up, to meet Rosho’s gaze, to match the expectations there, and lets the words tumble from him, frantic and fumbling—
“I’ve gotta go!”
He shoves Rosho away, skittering towards the door and slipping on his shoes without any regard for how he’s half-trampling over the heels in his haste. “Sasara!” Rosho calls after him, but Sasara hardly hears over the rush of his own heart in his ears, drowning out all sound, all reasonable thought. He’s out the door without time to even grab his jacket, not that it would have helped anyway. It’s still soaked through, just like he’s about to be.
The moonlight is soft over glowing Osaka, though the freezing rain still falls like mist over Sasara’s shoulders, a miracle from a cloudless sky. It’s beautiful, thinks the part of Sasara that’s determined to focus on anything but the situation at hand. Not the rain, but the way the moonlight plays through it, a thousand little crystals glittering in the sky above. If every storm was like this, maybe Sasara wouldn’t hate the rain quite so much.
He doesn’t know where he’s going. He has no plan, but he knows the area around Rosho’s apartment just as well as he knows his own and his feet carry him to the little park a few streets down, deserted with both the weather and the hour. Left all on his own, Sasara slows down. He’s left everything in Rosho’s apartment—his wallet, his phone, even his keys. He can’t run all the way home. There’s no point even if he does.
So Rei’s, then, Sasara thinks, knowing not if Rei is home and not particularly caring. He knows Rei could break into his place at any time he chooses; Rei should at least have the decency to leave a window cracked for emergencies in return.
“Sasara!”
The call comes from close—too close. Sasara doesn’t look back. He just throws himself into frantic motion, scrambling to be away, to be anywhere but here—
A hand catches on his wrist, jerking him backwards like a rubber band snapping back into place. Sasara whirls on his heel and stumbles like a fool, trying not to crash into his captor only to be frozen at the sight of him instead.
“I know I have no right to say this,” says Rosho, straddling the border between shame and desperation and yet still looking so much more composed than Sasara feels, “But don’t run away from me, Sasara. Not this time. Not when it matters.”
It’s that look, Sasara thinks. It’s that soft, proud determination, that look in his eyes daring Sasara to meet him halfway. Because Rosho isn’t taking a step closer. Not this time.
Do it, he dares his leaden feet, go. You can’t ruin it. Not this time. Not again. Rosho won’t ever come back if we mess up now.
(It’s not his feet that make the move, though.)
“I love you.”
It falls out before Sasara can stop it, cleaving through the air between them and shattering the gentle night.
“Sasara—“
His heart feels like it’s about to explode, or maybe freeze and fall straight out of his chest, or maybe both at once and he knows the logical thing to do is joke, make light of it, pretend he hasn’t just changed everything—but it’s all out in the open, now, and Sasara can’t stop even if he wants to.
“Rosho, I love you. And it’s just fine if you don’t love me back, y’know? Just… Just as long as you stay. I… I—“
“Sasara.” Sasara stops. He looks up at Rosho, and the thumb trailing gentle across his wrist brings him back down to earth, just a little. “Do you trust me?”
Sasara can’t help his bitter little laugh. That’s cruel, Rosho. Have they come far enough that he can say yes? He’s certainly not allowed to say no.
“Sasara. Do you trust me?”
Sasara nods. Any word he could put to it would cheapen the feeling. And then, surely, he thinks, he’ll have his answer. Either Rosho will tell him this feeling is love, or—
Rosho leans down to kiss him. Just a press of lips against lips, and it’s nothing like Sasara had imagined it to be. It’s not passionate, or dramatic, or long enough to make his skin crawl. It just… is.
It’s practically nice, even.
Rosho draws away slightly as Sasara processes the kiss—but there’s no time for that, not when Rosho’s speaking again.
“Are we equals?” Rosho asks, and Sasara can’t help but wonder how his lips can be so gentle when his words are so cruel. “I can’t do this, Sasara. Not if we’re not equal.”
He can hardly be more than whispering. To Sasara, it feels like the loudest sound on earth. “I…”
It’s supposed to be a good thing, love. Not something so big and terrible that it feels like it’s about to swallow him whole.
Rosho gives him that look. The one that says, please don’t cry, Sasara, I don’t know what to do when you cry.
Is he crying? He's not sure. He certainly feels like he wants to. Because this wasn’t the way it was supposed to go, not at all. Not that he knows what a confession is supposed to be, except perhaps a thank you to a person that can’t hear it.
(…He should’ve asked Rei for his proposal story, while he was at it.)
“I…” He’s thinking just fine, but the words are still stuck, bottled up somewhere that even he can’t reach. It’s a miserable feeling. Sasara’s forgotten just how much so.
Rosho finally takes pity on him and draws him into an embrace. It’s easier, somehow, when he’s not staring Rosho in the eyes. And it would be simple, now, to just melt into the warmth of him, to let Rosho soothe everything away.
But it wouldn’t be fair.
“I want to give you everything,” he admits, not knowing if it’s even really possible. He’s never done it before. Not for mother, or for father, or for any friends he’s ever known. Even Rosho himself hadn’t been allowed to know the depths of him. Sasara can’t promise he ever really will.
“And I don’t want everything,” says Rosho, like it’s the easiest thing on Earth, “I just want you.”
And oh, Sasara wonders, has the answer always been right in front of him? Of course it has. He’d just had his sights set on his dream, instead of Rosho’s.
The last thing to shift. The final bit of resistance left to give. Sasara takes a breath and softly, sweetly, lets it go.
Rosho lifts a hand to run fingers through his damp hair, and Sasara lets his eyes slip closed, just for a moment. It’s wet and cold and Rosho’s touch is everything, the only thing keeping the rain from swallowing him whole.
“I loved you,” Rosho says, and he has to feel the way Sasara stiffens, the sharpness of his breath against his neck. But Rosho continues on, undaunted—“You were the brightest person I’d ever seen. I’d never met anyone like you. I still haven’t. I loved you before I knew what love even was, Sasara. And once I saw it, all I could see was how I’d bring you down.”
I know, Sasara thinks. He pulls back, just a touch desperate, too afraid they’re about to leave everything in past tense all over again. “You never brought me down. Not once. As long as you were by my side, I—“
Ah. He doesn’t need to meet Rosho’s eyes to know he’s made a mistake. Fallen straight back into old habits. But he meets them anyway. He has to.
“I want to try,” says Sasara, meaning, wholeheartedly— I want to make you happy. “I want to be your equal, too.”
“My--?” Rosho starts, then stops, realization sparking in his eyes. There are a thousand things that Sasara wants to say to him then. That he’s a gullible fool who needs to stop giving random scams his name and phone number. That he wears his heart on his sleeve, and one day, that’s going to get him hurt. That he’s too kind to people that won’t ever return it. That Sasara loves all of that, admires it in a way that still feels too fearsome to touch. He can’t quite manage it, though. Not yet. Not quite.
“Yours,” he says instead, and from the way Rosho watches him, then, like Sasara’s just stunned him with all the wonders of the world--Rosho understands he’s serious. It’s his turn to try.
“Your notebook is still on my table,” Rosho says, and Sasara can see it for the invitation it is.
“And my phone,” Sasara adds, “and my wallet.”
Rosho huffs at him fondly. “A whole mess. Why don’t you ever leave your messes in your own house, for once?”
“I do!” Sasara chirps, feeling suddenly weightless, as if he could kick off the pavement and fly them right back home.
“Of course you do.”
He doesn’t get it. Not yet. That’s okay though, Sasara thinks—he will. Just like how one day Sasara will figure out how to tell him how he’s the only one that can make him lost for words.
At some point the rain has turned to snow, melting soft into Rosho’s hair. Sasara reaches up to brush away the most stubborn flakes, pleased at how Rosho leans into the touch. Rosho catches his hand on the way down and twines their fingers together, and that split second of contact is all Sasara needs to realize he really, really loves this. Everything else, he’ll—they’ll—have to figure out along the way. But this, at least, is simple.
“Let’s go,” says Rosho, tugging him gently towards the apartment. Sasara follows along with a spring in his step, swinging their arms like they’re children marching down the street. The streetlight catches him in profile, and Sasara is struck by him, in the way he so often is. And then, because he suddenly realizes he can--he bumps Rosho’s shoulder. And then Rosho ignores him, so he does it again, and again and again--
“Will you behave?” Rosho turns to him and asks, but he can’t hide the way he’s laughing, drunk on that same, manic comfort Sasara is. Sasara squeezes his hand just a little bit harder. Rosho returns it in just the right way.
“I don’t know what a have is, but I bet it’s gonna be having a lotta fun!”
“Go home.”
“I thought that’s where we were going?”
“Knock it off.”
Rosho bumps him in the shoulder right back. He doesn’t let go of Sasara’s hand, though. As much as Sasara misses Rosho’s punchlines, he could get used to this. Sasara doesn’t let him escape, their wet shoulders brushing as they walk. They’re going home.
"Hey, Rosho?" Quiet, at ease. He can't quite remember the last time he called Rosho's name like this in a place where he could hear.
"Sasara?" Rosho glances down at him curious. There's snowflakes melting in his hair again. When they get back, Sasara thinks, he'll have to brush them all off again.
"I love you."
Sasara knows he doesn't imagine the flush on Rosho's cheeks, then. The streetlights don't hide anything, not from his watchful eye. "I love you too," he says, more to Sasara's forehead than his eyes and what, now he's getting embarrassed? Sasara laughs again, leaving nothing back. Leave it to Rosho. Sasara squeezes his hand again, and Rosho huffs at him, a merry like you did any better.
And that's probably true, Sasara thinks, the both of them have a long way to go. But for right now, they’re going home. And, if only just for the day-- that’s more than enough.