Chapter Text
Although Sousuke was perfectly fine surviving an entire week without Makoto, it had been nothing short of excruciatingly lonely after becoming accustomed to seeing Makoto every day, five days a week. As soon as he gets the text message that Makoto’s plane has landed safe and sound, after being delayed a whole two hours no less, he can feel his body buzz with excitement despite it being nearly three in the morning. He stands among a crowd of others awaiting their loved ones, and has a bag of warm pastry he picked up on the way to the airport, ready for Makoto to eat on the way home.
Sousuke feels a small wave of disappointment each time someone comes through the doors and turns out to not be Makoto, but he’s still hopeful despite the happy reunions that go on around him. It wouldn’t be difficult at all to spot someone so tall among the crowd, to immediately pinpoint that mess of brown hair and those green eyes and trademark smile that Sousuke has spent just the past few weeks steadily memorizing.
Only, when the last few passengers walk out and make their way to the baggage claim, Sousuke can’t help but feel like something is off. Makoto did text him just twenty minutes ago that the plane had landed, and it shouldn’t take him so long just to get off. Just as he sets his food down and fishes his phone out of his pocket, it begins to ring and flashes a picture of Makoto asleep across the screen.
“Hello? Where are you?” he asks as soon as he picks up.
“Ah – where are you?” Makoto asks back. “I’m still in the arrivals area, right beside the baggage claims.”
“Right. Me too. I’m in front of baggage claim three.” He searches the area as though he hasn’t already pored over every inch of the place twenty times in the past five minutes.
“But Sousuke, I can see baggage claim three, and there’s no one around but me and a few other people.”
“A few other people? There are still a ton of people around,” says Sousuke, glancing around the area overflown with the next batch of arrivals. Makoto is quiet on the other end of the line for a long time, and just as he speaks up, realization hits Sousuke’s weary mind like a ton of bricks. “Fuck. I’m in the wrong terminal, aren’t I?”
“Probably,” Makoto agrees, his voice tired but not at all angry.
“Shit, I’m sorry – just wait there, okay?”
“Hold on, hold on! Are you sure you don’t want me to find you? Just tell me what terminal you’re at right now.” There’s no mistaking the worry in Makoto’s tone, which makes Sousuke feel even worse about having kept him waiting this whole time.
“No, don’t worry about it, you’re in terminal one, right? It won’t be hard to find, so stay put,” he insists. He’s not the same little kid from high school anymore, after all, he’s a grown up college man and finding someone in an airport shouldn’t be the most difficult task in the world, he tells himself. Before Makoto can argue further, he ends the call and immediately follows the signs that lead him to the first terminal.
Makoto knows that Sousuke means well, and that his stubbornness means he’ll have his way sooner or later, so he relents. He’s tired after such a late flight as well, so he sits down atop his luggage and keeps his eyes peeled in both directions for the sight of a six foot tall man running towards him.
Forty minutes later, when Makoto’s eyes begin to droop shut and he nearly falls off his luggage, he realizes that allowing Sousuke to have his way wasn’t such a good idea. When he checks his phone, his chest seizes at the sight of eight missed calls. Makoto has flashbacks of the few instances he’s lost Sousuke in the past, such as the day Sousuke lost his phone and couldn’t be found in the park until nightfall, and the time he and Rin had to listen to an intercom say ‘Will the parents of the boy Yamazaki Sousuke please pick him up from the service desk’ when they’d gone to an unfamiliar mall together.
“Makoto!” Sousuke picks up before even the first ring finishes, and he sounds breathless. “Uh – are you – you know, still waiting there? Because I’ve been walking for a while now and—“
“Sousuke, please just stay where you are. Can you do that for me?” Makoto says, speaking calm enough for the both of them.
“Y-yeah, I can – I’ll – fuck!”
“What’s wrong?!”
This time, it’s Sousuke’s turn to be quiet. It takes a while before he’s able to shamefully say, “… I bought you a brownie and coffee cake but I think I left it at the wrong terminal I was at a while back.”
“Sou – it’s fine, really,” Makoto assures him, suppressing a huge sigh of relief. He can’t help but even laugh a little as he says, “Just send me a picture of where you are and I’ll get there as soon as I can, okay?”
“Yeah, okay…”
It turns out that Sousuke was rather close to finding Makoto, since it’s not too far a walk for Makoto before he finds Sousuke sitting dejectedly in front of quiet coffee shop. His face is in his hands and he’s sitting hunched over, but as soon as Makoto calls out his name, his head snaps up and relief floods his tired eyes.
“Thank god, you found me,” he says, standing up and charging towards him. Makoto only has enough time to let go of the handle of his suitcase before he’s enveloped in a crushing, one-armed embrace that he returns just as enthusiastically. “Welcome home, Makoto.”
“I’m home,” he answers, very quietly, because there isn’t much air left in his lungs at this point. Sousuke releases him just long enough to stand back and look him in the eye before he pulls Makoto back towards his chest.
“Did you miss me that much?” asks Makoto, his tone just a little teasing.
“What?” Sousuke lets go of him and raises an eyebrow. “No way. C’mon, I was pretty glad to have a whole week to myself, you know.”
“Is that so?” Makoto does a terrible job of hiding just how much those words affect him since he’s so exhausted, but he still manages a smile as he says with a heart-wrenchingly genuine tone, “Well, I missed you very much while I was gone.”
Suddenly, Sousuke feels like a giant asshole for trying to play it cool and he rubs the back of his neck as he admits, “Well, I did miss you. Kind of. A hell of a lot, actually.”
Makoto’s forlorn expression brightens as though Sousuke had just flipped a switch and he says, with a teasing smile, “I know.”
Sousuke merely shakes his head and laughs as he slips the backpack from Makoto’s shoulder and slings it over his good one. “Do you want to eat at my place?” he asks, also taking Makoto’s suitcase before he can reach for it himself. By now, it’s nearly four thirty and Makoto finds he doesn’t quite have the energy to protest Sousuke’s kind action.
“Mm. I have missed your cooking most of all,” says Makoto, still smiling sweetly as ever as he begins to follow Sousuke’s lead. Before they can get very far, though, Makoto pauses and tugs on Sousuke’s sleeve, asking him, “Do you know the way out of here?”
Sousuke stares back at him, his thought process a little slower and more muddled than usual at this time and hour, but he lets out a sigh and concedes, “No, I don’t…”
Makoto let’s out another laugh, this time a little more unrestrained, as he hooks his arm through Sousuke’s free one and tugs him in the right direction. “I’m curious: how exactly did you make it to the airport in the first place?”
“Hey, watch it, Tachibana,” Sousuke warns, leaning into Makoto’s side as a tired smile begins to form on his own lips.
“Kidding, kidding." Makoto covers his mouth as he fills the air again with his laughter, the sound that Sousuke has second-to-most missed all week.