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It is one of those scenes in some shoujo manga where both of you reach out for an item on a shelf.
His last shred of alertness kicks off, and the marine biologist backs away before the other’s bare fingers can touch his chemical-laced gloves that he almost forgets about. There goes the last body spray, Kaoru yawns, turning on his heels to head to the coffee aisle. Not a big deal, truly—he can always come back tomorrow.
Where he would expect a “thank you” at best enters an “excuse me”. Kaoru looks over his shoulder.
“Thank you, sir, but you can have it! I can get something else—”
Unlike in shoujo mangas where you are warmly entranced when your eyes meet, Kaoru’s breath frigidly sticks in his throat. The rambling police officer, too, widens his eyes. His mouth gapes open, closes, and opens again like a fish. That dumb look stings the biologist’s heart in every way it shouldn’t.
“…Hakaze?”
“Moricchi…”
What are the chances of running into your ex at midnight in a 24/7 convenience store?
Kaoru somehow saw (hoped for) the impossible possibility of Chiaki calling it a night and just take the body spray with him and leave. Of course, to his dismay and the tiniest bit of joy, Chiaki chooses to be horribly Chiaki, ignoring the patrons’ curious stare and persisting on offering the item to the man who broke up with him.
“I really don’t need it,” the brunette shakes his head. Kaoru dares to bet his toe that there is a strain to the annoyingly lovely brilliant smile. “It’s just fair that you take it, Kao- Hakaze! You’ve come for it first, after all.”
“We reached for it at the same time, Moricchi,” the blonde sighs and waves his hand dismissively, almost biting his in regret when the other’s expression shift into that of a kicked puppy, “Look, how about we put it back on the shelf and pretend that neither of us saw it. We both don’t get it. Now that’s fair, yeah?”
He tries to ignore the look on the cashier’s face. Kaoru promises that he, too, is questioning his late night brain cells.
Chiaki puts the body spray back to where it was.
A compromise is reached. They can now go back to their respective places and perhaps Chiaki can sleep the encounter off. Kaoru, though, will stay up until morning to convince himself that the jolts in his chest are nothing more than his exhaustion toying with his mind.
“How about I drive you home, Hakaze? You don’t look like you can really drive.”
Kaoru stifles his umpteenth yawn at the proposal.
Indeed, he can fall asleep at any moment now, but he isn’t planning to drive back. His apartment is only a ten-minute walk away from the store. Something selfish in him prevents the information from being disclosed. For the moment, at least.
The biologist follows Chiaki out of the store, pondering over his options. The other male quietly looks at him with his lips slightly gaped, seemingly holding himself back from delivering a full-fledged persuasive speech.
(You can be really overbearing, Moricchi.)
Tonight is absurdly windy. The biologist, almost out of habit, takes his lab coat off and puts it over the police officer’s shoulders. He purposefully averts his eyes from perceiving how the other might have reacted to the gesture.
“Yeah, sounds good. I’d be in your care then.”
Only because he’s tired. Well, maybe it’s also because he doesn’t want to dim the moon reflected in those chocolate-colored eyes. He has sworn to never distinguish that light ever again.
Maybe he hopes that Chiaki still sees him, at least, as a friend and sees this as a chance to re-establish what they have had before.
Chiaki doesn’t reply immediately. When their gazes meet again, the brunette simply nods with a small smile. Kaoru wants to scream.
The last time Kaoru can recall Chiaki being such a quiet driver is after a visit to his mother. He vividly remembers the overflowing fondness when he catches a glimpse of the other’s red-rimmed eye. Echoing through the car is the exact song the car stereo had put on during that time. Nostalgia suffocates the blonde, forcing its way inside and touching his weakest part.
Kaoru steals a glance. Other than the dark circles beneath the other’s eyes, Chiaki appears to be doing just fine.
Their parting has been anticlimactic—no insults were thrown around, no hands were thrown, nothing Kaoru was used to and would have preferred—marked by a single confession that holds at its core months, years, of unwanted yet habitual dishonesty, hence the weight of unintentionally inflicted pain. The first few days (or weeks) after the biologist packed up his things and left were utterly hellish, haunted by his ex-lover’s tearstained complexion and the apologies under his breath. Neither of them takes the initiative to block the other’s number and social media. There were times Kaoru just stared at his screen, contemplating if he should do something to the contact. Anything.
Give it a call? (Hell no.)
Deleting it? (He can’t.)
He had eventually gotten over it one way or another. Or so he would like to claim. Listening to their old playlist and revisiting their date spots on days he feels particularly lonely can probably be counted as pining behavior.
(Chiaki’s number is still on his phone.)
Kaoru looks out the window at the city lights. This is definitely not the way to his home.
“Moricchi, do you need GPS?”
“I, uh,” Chiaki’s shoulders jump. Red dusts his cheeks.
“...Um, my phone died?”
The blonde blinks at the suspicious response. He doesn’t dislike this.
“Oh, mine too,” the lie escapes before he realizes it, “Too bad. It’s fine, though. Take your time.”
It takes them half an hour to finally arrive at Kaoru’s place.
He lets out the biggest sigh of relief the moment he steps out of Chiaki’s car. The ride wasn’t exactly tense for they did end up exchanging a few words, but, oh boy, was it emotionally taxing. They passed by the town aquarium, the themed park, the souvenir shop, as well as the first restaurant they visited—making it incredibly hard for Kaoru to think of it as a mere coincidence.
So, it is either the biologist being delusional or it is sir officer here that has really grown to be unreasonably cunning. For now, he goes with the former.
The car hasn’t left even after Kaoru has taken a quick shower, changed into his indoor clothes, and walked out the balcony for a smoke.
Chiaki lowers the window, clearly not expecting the blonde to knock on his car with only T-shirts, shorts, and slippers on.
“Hey, it wouldn’t be good if they find mister police officer acting suspiciously at this hour,” Kaoru wryly smiles, “Did something happen?”
The biologist follows the other’s gaze to find that, what the fuck is happening, the vehicle has run out of gas.
“Don’t worry, Hakaze! I’ll be fine here! I’d just—”
“You’re coming with me, Moricchi.”
His heart is knocking so loudly against his chest it feels like it will jump straight out at any moment.
Kaoru’s apartment is, as expected, much tidier than his. There is a faint scent of closet freshener—something the blonde has urged him to use since their first day of cohabitation—on the change of clothes given to him. Chiaki feels the slightest sense of envy at how well the biologist had kept his life together after their relationship fell apart. With the help of Kanata and Izumi, his place at least doesn’t look like a dumpster all the time, but it is still pretty bad compared to when Kaoru was there.
The officer sighs. That extended route he had impulsively taken against his better judgment sure cost him quite a lot. Though his phone dying is but a lie, Chiaki would hate to bother anyone else when it’s barely over midnight. So, the initial plan was to wait until the sun rises to dial an early bird.
“Moricchi,” Kaoru calls from the other side of the bathroom door. The brunette’s heart skips a beat yet again at the nickname that he once did not pay a second thought to. “Are you hungry?”
Well. He kinda only ate rice balls for dinner.
“I’m good, Hakaze!”
There is a deafening pause.
“Too bad, I’ve made ramen for you either way. Don’t spend too much time under the water or your skin will go dry and you’ll catch a cold.”
Footsteps move away from the door before Chiaki can answer. The resemblance to the old days stirs the mix of pleasant relief and stinging loss into an unnameable hot mess. He turns the shower off, hastily dries himself up, and puts Kaoru’s clothes on. His feelings can be sorted out after he finishes up the best ramen in the world.
“I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“I will, Hakaze. You’ve helped me so much—”
“You’re the guest here, Moricchi. I treat my guests with hospitality.”
“But because I’m the guest that I should be on the couch?”
“And I, as the master of the house, say that you will sleep on the bed.”
“That’s power abuse, Hakaze!”
“Take it or leave it, Moricchi.”
“Hey, how about we crack a few cans of beer open and put something on the TV? Does Tokusatsu sound good?”
Chiaki blinks at the blonde’s illegally handsome grin.
“I don’t feel like sleeping anyways,” Kaoru makes a beeline for the kitchen, “And it has been quite a while since we last hung out, y’know? If we can’t settle where to sleep, then might as well stay up all night. We both have a day off tomorrow, right?”
“If you don’t want to, feel free to take the bed, Moricchi.”
This is what they would do together on the weekends before. One Saturday it would be a Tokusatsu marathon, another would be whatever Kaoru is feeling up to. They would cuddle on the sofa with a blanket over them as the movie goes on. Rarely can their attention stay on the TV until the very end, however. Not when Chiaki is unable to just stay still in Kaoru’s embrace.
Chiaki’s schedule has drastically changed since that day. The fact that he has no one to cling to in bed kept him up at night, so he started accepting later shifts. It would be early morning when he finally arrives home, and he would sleep away the realization that nobody would prepare breakfast for him anymore until noon when he has to prepare for the next day of work.
The nocturnal schedule has him absolutely exhausted when weekends come by, but it’s fine. Beer and TV aren’t that great without the person you love the most in the entire universe.
Needless to say, he misses this dearly. Even if they can no longer do this as lovers…
“Thank you, Hakaze! You’re the best!”
The overflowing joy makes him lightheaded. He makes a mental note to thank the colleague who offered to take his shift instead for the night after he has covered for them in the morning. Suddenly, he is brimming with energy all over again.
“I love you!”
Kaoru slumps over the wall to catch his breath after carrying a sleeping sixty-kilograms fully-grown man to his bed. Fine, it’s his fault for suggesting that they should do anything else but sleeping, but it’s definitely none of his responsibility that the other doesn’t know his limits.
Morisawa Chiaki, blissfully unaware of his ex’s suffering, mumbles something unintelligible before very ungracefully setting into a more comfortable position over the mattress.
The biologist considers a closer look, but stays where he’s at in the end. The brunette’s slightly parted lips appear torturously tantalizing under the white streetlight, yet Kaoru cannot risk it—not when he thinks they have finally put the rough framework of what it will be between them back together. They need more time for their respective wounds to perfectly heal. It is then, and only then, that, just maybe…
They can give each other another chance?
Kaoru extends his hand and gives the disheveled, auburn hair a light pet. His resolve almost crumbles when Chiaki snuggles into his touch with a thin smile on his lips. With a shaky breath, he carefully drapes the blanket over the other male and adjusts the air conditioner before retreating back to the hallway, shutting the bedroom door close behind him.
In a few hours, perhaps Chiaki would let him know if he can, once again, call them friends.