Work Text:
Kojiro had given up on waiting for a response after the first 15 minutes of Kaoru’s silence, locking his cursedly quiet phone in favor of closing his eyes and turning his face into his pillow.
Kaoru must’ve been annoyed, he figured, remembering how quickly he’d put an end to Kojiro’s verbal moping the last time he’d been dumped. Kojiro got the message—Kaoru didn’t want to hear about his heartache woes, of which there’d been increasingly many since middle school—but it wasn’t that simple. Maybe Kojiro just wanted someone to talk to. Maybe he needed the comforting familiarity of his best friend.
Kojiro had almost completely sunken himself into his sorrows when the window past the foot of his bed began to rattle fiercely.It jolted him out of his sleepy state in an instant, fear filling his ears with static.
He sat up wide-eyed on his bed, only to see Kaoru looking at him expectantly through the glass. Dumbfounded, Kojiro just gaped at him until Kaoru rattled the window again, unamused by Kojiro’s shock.
“Hang on, hang on,” Kojiro hissed, finally scooting to the end of his bed and unlocking the window. “Try not to wake my entire family.”
Kaoru climbed in through the window unprompted, ignoring Kojiro’s disgruntled ‘hey!’ as he nearly smacked him with the backpack slung over his shoulder.
“The one night you decide to sleep with your window shut, I swear,” Kaoru grumbled seemingly to himself, quickly filling up Kojiro’s space by kicking off his shoes and unloading books and clothes from his bag.
Kojiro couldn’t help but sigh, hand rubbing a line of tension in his neck. “What are you doing?”
“Are you sure you don’t need glasses?” Kaoru rebutted. “What does it look like? I’m staying over tonight.”
It wasn’t all that unusual for Kaoru to come over so late, nor was it unusual for him to show up unprompted, but Kojiro hadn’t expected this tonight. He could already feel an ugly knot forming in his gut, and he struggled to bite back the bile on his tongue.
“I was trying to sleep,” he replied, trying to keep his voice even. “I’m not really feeling up to doing anything tonight.”
Kaoru looked up from his unpacking, hands wringing the large shirt he’d brought with him. His scrutinizing gaze felt painfully bright in the dimly moonlit room.
Kojiro waited for him to say something, irritation crawling up through his veins like fire ants as exhaustion took hold of him once more.
Dropping his shirt onto Kojiro’s desk, Kaoru pointed to the bed.
“Lay down.”
Kojiro clenched his teeth before sighing again. “Seriously, Kaoru—“
“Just do it.”
Kojiro closed his eyes, battering back the million little barbs that danced on the tip of his tongue. In that moment, he allowed his anger to give way to a wave of pure misery.
“I can’t deal with this tonight,” he murmured under his breath, flopping down on his bed facing the wall, back turned to Kaoru and eyes shut tight.
He counted his heartbeats to distract himself from the deafening silence that told him that Kaoru was processing his words, that he had probably hurt Kaoru, and that Kaoru was wondering why he ever bothered staying with Kojiro when no one else wanted to.
Eventually, the shuffling of books and fabric picked up again, the sharp snag of the backpack zipper making Kojiro wince.
He expected to hear the window creak in its frame, so much so that his brain must’ve imagined the sound echoing through the room, because instead of climbing back out the window, Kaoru was climbing into his bed, his warm weight pressing against the length of Kojiro’s back.
Kojiro tensed as an arm slid securely across his stomach, Kaoru’s forehead pressing against the nape of his neck. Without thinking, Kojiro slid his arm over Kaoru’s, grabbing and holding his wrist like he was deciding whether or not to push the arm off of him.
“Kaoru…?”
“I didn’t come here to bug you, you big dork,” Kaoru mumbled into his skin. “I just didn’t want you to be alone.”
Kojiro didn’t know what to say, only managing a soft, “Oh.”
“You don’t have to talk about it,” Kaoru said, pausing for a moment. “You deserve better than this… better than girls who think they’re into you just because you’re tall or because you’re class president or whatever.”
That was one way of looking at it. Kojiro didn’t think he was free of fault, but he didn’t have the energy to argue. He was horrified by the pressure growing behind his eyes at Kaoru’s words, and he inhaled slowly, willing himself to calm down enough to respond.
“I guess.”
Kaoru’s arm squeezed around him. Kojiro responded by squeezing Kaoru’s wrist. He loosened his hold on Kaoru, letting his hand fall over top of Kaoru’s, saying nothing when Kaoru immediately twined their fingers.
It was a comforting gesture—one might say a bad habit that they hadn’t managed to shake from childhood—but it only encouraged the persistent stinging in his eyes.
“If you’re gonna cry, do it already,” Kaoru said, harsher than he’d intended, if the curse he hissed under his breath was anything to go by. “I just mean, it’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it. Just. I’m here. I’m not leaving. You can be upset in front of me.”
Kojiro would have chuckled at Kaoru’s characteristic lack of grace if it weren’t for the fact that, as if on command, the first few tears slipped out of the corners of his eyes, streaking across his nose and cheek and soaking into his pillow.
After that, there was no stopping them. Kaoru scooted closer to him as his shoulders shook, unable to do much more than run his thumb soothingly across Kojiro’s fingertips where their hands were still clasped on Kojiro’s stomach.
They lost track of time like that, until sleep overpowered sadness, tension bleeding from their bodies as they relaxed into each other and huffed soft snores into each other’s ears.