Chapter Text
It starts with the text from Sawamura, which Kazuya sees on his way home from work, the reflection of his phone lighting up the rain-dappled window of the train.
MIYUKI KAZUYA!!! DO U WANT 2 GET LUNCH WITH ME TOMORROW?
Kazuya smiles to himself and shakes his head. The kid never did learn to text without caps. One time during senior year, for a laugh, he figured out how to disable caps lock on Sawamura’s phone, watched his eyebrows and fingertips squirm over the surface of his keyboard. He ended up making up for it with an exponential increase in exclamation points, which sometimes ended up cutting his texts in two, and that was more of a hassle than the joke was worth, so Kazuya relented and switched it back, sighing to himself when Sawamura almost cried with relief. Some things were just amusingly difficult for him.
sure, sawamura, no need to shout. when are you free?
The phone buzzes again a few hours later, resting on the counter while he’s sponging the dishes; Sawamura must have just gotten home from practice. Kazuya glances over at it and then looks up at the TV screen, like a larger, louder echo of the same glow. The back of Mei’s head is sticking up over the edge of the couch, silhouetted against the game on the screen, bowl of ice cream in his hand. Mei always liked his sweets, Kazuya remembers all the way back from their youth, strawberry streaked over his mouth when he smiled.
“Hey, I’m going out to lunch tomorrow,” he tells him, setting the last plate on the dry stack and tugging off the rubber gloves.
Mei had smiled even wider when they had signed the lease for the apartment, a summer fresh out of college. It was one of the ideas they had always tossed around back in junior high, one of those childhood dreams Mei delighted in making come true, right up there with a cross-country road trip and a visit to Hollywood. And going to college together, though Kazuya had thrown a wrench in that, despite the amount of overlap in the schools they had been accepted to. The school Mei wanted didn’t have as good of a liberal arts program as he had wanted. But he had been fine with it, with Kazuya’s decision: “We’ll do it after college,” he had said excitedly, a wish, a promise.
“The stuff I bought is in the fridge. You can make whatever you want with it.”
“Yeah, sure, thanks,” Mei answers through a mouthful of vanilla. You might have thought Mei would be difficult to live with, Kazuya muses, grinning to himself, but when it comes to matters around the house, he’s surprisingly relaxed, surprisingly willing to pull his weight and accommodate if he needs to. It’s only on the field that he’s the self-centered beast everyone knows—or maybe Kazuya’s wrong and it’s just the ease of years outside the field and within these rooms, slipping into the crook between them, ocean waves washing a comfortable dip into the bedrock. “Who with?”
“A friend from college,” Kazuya answers, though, he muses, friend might be an odd way to describe it. But he can’t think of another word, and besides, they do go out for lunch every couple of weeks, and in its own way he supposes it might qualify as its own brand of friendship. The thought is one that catches on the edges of his mind and stays, a curtain hung and swelling in the wind; the word isn’t one he’s used to using often. There’s been Mei, and he supposes Kuramochi, maybe Chris, though that’s got a few shades more admiration than friendship in both directions, or at least he hopes, and now, after four years of college, there’s Sawamura.
“Cool,” says Mei, and spoons another scoop into his mouth. A teasing lilt creeps into his voice at his next words: “I’ll miss your cooking!”
~
They’ve done the usual, the catching up, the taunts in place of greetings and Sawamura’s offended yells reverberating through the café and startling the waiter passing by, the same routine even though it’s been almost two months since he last saw him. Sawamura’s team is doing well, gearing up for the next season, which is why the interval between their lunches has lengthened as of late. He looks good, broad and bronzed and full of energy, and Kazuya tells him so, though he receives nothing but a suspicious squint in return.
That’s all well and good, but something seems off. At first Kazuya thinks it’s just him, that maybe he’s forgotten what the passage of time does after leaving college, or just plain forgotten. But he could swear that Sawamura wasn’t always this jumpy, flinching whenever he makes an unexpected movement or leans forward too far across the table or even speaks too loudly, raising his voice or throwing his head back in a laugh.
Kazuya decides he’s had enough after Sawamura nearly knocks over his drink upon being asked if he’s going to finish his fries.
“Sawamura. Is it just nerves from the start of the season, or is something wrong?”
“Yes, sir!” Sawamura yells, shoulders locking, and then seems to realize his mistake; one of them, at least. “I mean—no, sir!”
Kazuya raises an eyebrow, takes a sip of his drink. “I’m not your upperclassman anymore. You haven’t called me that in months.”
“Sorry, sir!”
“Not helping your case.”
But the near-impossible has happened: Sawamura looks all shouted out. His shoulders are slumping, trembling, and suddenly, despite the aforementioned good energy Kazuya had observed, the hollows under his eyes from his current facial expression make it look as if he hasn’t slept in days.
Now Kazuya’s really concerned. He thinks back to old days, sprawled out in his dorm with books and papers laid out between them, him leaning against the side of his bed with a pen in his hand and a coffee in the other, Sawamura taking naps on his own forearms on the desk and crying literal tears onto his worksheets. He channels some of that same patience now, leaning forward—slowly, inch by inch, so as to not startle the Wild Sawamura—and places a hand on the table, gentle but firm.
“You can tell me. Is something bothering you?”
Now Kazuya’s the one to startle as Sawamura pushes back from the table in a single shove, chair groaning across the floor. The table behind them glances over their shoulders, concerned, as he rises to his feet.
“It’s YOU!”
“Me?!” Kazuya exclaims, so genuinely shocked he scoots an inch back in his own chair. It’s been years since he’s pissed Sawamura off this badly. “What did I do?”
“I…I…” Sawamura’s brow is twitching, his teeth gritted. Finally, he clenches his hands into fists at his sides and bows his chin, his voice a low, dramatic whisper. “The truth is…I called you here to have lunch with me today f-for a reason.”
With little idea where this is going, Kazuya waits. More people are staring now, and a waitress stops in her tracks, hand outstretched toward Sawamura in an offer of help.
He takes a long inhale.
“Miyuki Kazuya, I…I…I LIKE YOU!”
A moment of silence. The hand drops, and then the crowd erupts, as does the inside of Kazuya’s head, only the eruption around him is one of hushed whispers and giggles while, inside, he rummages around and comes up with nothing but a blank.
“Sawamura…uh.”
But Sawamura is unstoppable. To Kazuya’s bemusement and horror, he’s making this a full-blown speech, not just what he’s still trying to pummel into his mind, not fully convinced, is a confession. His voice, while thunderous as ever, sounds to him, in his daze, like it’s coming from a long way off. “I couldn't hold it in any longer! I—I—I don’t even know why,” he says, voice tightening in frustration. “You’ve always been so annoying, and cocky, and mean—”
“—thank you—”
“—and I’ve tried to tell myself a billion times that it’s the worst idea in the world and that there’s no way I could actually like a jerk like you, but”—and here Sawamura pauses, lifting his head to swallow a huge gulp of air—“but you were always so helpful with all of my classes, and sometimes it’s—it’s like you were actually nice, and you would come to my games back in college whenever you could, and it was like you actually cared, and I guess what I’m saying is that even though you’re still a huge jerk and I don’t like you at all, I’ve—I’ve—I’ve still always really liked you, ever since back then!”
Kazuya can’t do anything but blink at that.
“Sawamura…”
Sawamura bows, an altogether completely inappropriate gesture for the situation, really: an almost spasmodic jerk of his head, down and up again in an instant. “So now that I’ve said everything I wanted to say, that will be all! Thank you for coming out to eat lunch with me!”
“Wait—”
Kazuya isn’t even sure if it’s him or the waitress who says it. But in the next moment, with lightning speed that he hopes to God Sawamura is putting to good use in games, the other boy has whipped his jacket over his shoulders, slung his chunky messenger bag over his shoulder, and is racing out the door, a windmill of long arms and legs and muscles that are way too big for his brain.
He lets out his breath, musters a cheerful grin and waves at the curious eyes still fixed in their direction. “Nothing to see here,” he says, though most of them have already turned away. Back to the usual, a brief interruption in an otherwise peaceful afternoon.
Kazuya looks back down at the table, at the crumbs of his burger and the pile of fries still heaped on Sawamura’s plate, slathered with generous helpings of ketchup.
“Idiot didn’t even pay for his food,” he mutters to himself, and waves the waitress, the only one still looking over at their table, her eyes wide and glistening with something that might be sympathy, over for the check. “I’ll cover it!”
~
Mei must know him well enough by now to catch the strange look on his face when he comes back, swinging the door shut behind him. He instantly snaps to from his spot on the couch, turned over his shoulder, blue eyes all concern and curiosity as the TV blares on in the background.
“What happened? Your friend bail on you?”
“No,” Kazuya answers as he kicks off his shoes, still too stunned to elaborate. Not exactly.
“Well, then what?” Mei demands, a frown knitting his pale eyebrows together. “You look like someone’s dog just died.”
Not that bad, thinks Kazuya, and the thought wrings a wry smile from the corner of his mouth, if not the length across. “It’s nothing,” he insists, unzipping his coat and hanging it on the rack, even though he knows Mei won’t take that for an answer.
Sure enough, his friend stands up from the couch, arms crossed stubbornly over the university logo emblazoned on his sweatshirt, and saunters over to intercept him by the kitchen counter. He tugs open one of the boxes of Pocky they usually leave lying on the table, popping one in his mouth, and lets out a snort after biting down. “Yeah, right. Tell me what’s up, Kazuya.”
The echo of the words hits him harder than it should: Kazuya himself, less than an hour ago, leaning over the table, eyes intent on Sawamura, You can tell me. There’s no harm in telling Mei, of course, technically. But Kazuya has always run his life on a need-to-know basis, and this turn of events falls so low on the need end of things that the mere thought of it makes the back of his throat close with distaste.
But Mei is Mei, and the set of his jaw, the sharp tilt of his pointed chin tells him he won’t give up until he hears it, and Kazuya knows him. Knows him and the slight gleam of vulnerability in his eyes, open and easy and direct—that precarious balance he always strikes between tough and fragile, no-nonsense and hopelessly airheaded—that says Come on, come on, it’s not like I don’t know you too.
Doesn’t mean Kazuya can’t take his sweet time with it, pulling a carton of lemonade out of the fridge and swirling it lazily in his hand, giving ample time for the pulp and the liquid to mix, before pouring himself a glass.
“You remember that Sawamura kid I told you about?”
Mei’s eyes flicker with confusion, then recognition. “The loud one? Oh, yeah.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” Kazuya teases, and dodges Mei’s half-hearted swipe to the shoulder. “Haha, yeah, him. The one who couldn’t solve a first-year algebra equation from high school in a college statistics class. Too bad he needed it for his major.” Sports science, of course, because what else, what else could Sawamura Eijun, who spent over seventy percent of his college career out on the field, probably, care about.
Mei wrinkles his nose, lets an appreciative shudder roll through his shoulders at the thought. “Geez. I mean, I’m no math whiz, but that’s something else entirely.”
“There’s a reason his nickname was Bakamura. I was the reason he passed,” Kazuya laughs, then shakes off the memory. Sweeter memories of simpler times.
“’Course you were, Kazuya,” hums Mei, but his voice is fond. “Anyway, so you were having lunch with this Sawamura kid?”
Never one to be distracted when he had a goal, that Mei.
“Yeah.” This is where things get tricky. Kazuya takes a long sip of his lemonade. It’s not even warm out, not even summer anymore, so why is he drinking lemonade? They’ve already graduated from college, moved on to the next step in their lives, so why a confession now? “No math problems this time, luckily. I may have been good once, but I’m not sure even I could remember enough about derivatives to teach Bakamura this time.”
“That’s what you get for studying philosophy,” Mei chuckles, a gleeful twinkle in his eye. He always loves teasing Kazuya about his choice of major, about Why bother, Kazuya, what are you even gonna do with that, hmm?
“Don’t think I’d remember that anymore either, unfortunately.” Kazuya sets the glass back down on the counter before he can down it all, which would be bad, because then he wouldn’t have any more of an excuse to stall.
But Mei doesn’t even need to speak, having learned a thing or two about the art of silence over the years, his eyes egging him on with their hard-edged light, so he sighs and leans his elbows back against the counter, humoring him.
“Okay. Our conversation wasn’t exactly of an…academic nature at all.”
He hears the soft tch, sees the roll of blue eyes. “Only you would start it off that way, Kazuya.” Mei laughs breathily, sighs with a billowing hint of affection. “But I’m listening.”
“Everything was going pretty normally, or as normal as things ever go with Sawamura—you’d have to meet him, Mei, he’d give you a run for your money”—Kazuya grins and ignores Mei’s yelp of “Hey! What’s that supposed to mean?”—“he was telling me about his team, and I was giving him a hard time, yada yada, the usual. And then…you won’t believe what he did.” I still don’t, Kazuya adds silently, pausing for dramatic effect as he tries to conjure in his mind the light in Sawamura’s eyes.
“What? What’d he do?”
Having Narumiya Mei focused on you completely, eyes burning with curiosity, is a bit like staring directly into the sun, or at least a hundred-watt LED lightbulb shining straight in your face. If Kazuya has to tell anyone this story, he supposes he’s glad that it’s him. Mei’s reactions are always fun to watch, and besides, he thinks, letting a sliver of affection slip out from behind a chink in the steel wall, careful and miles high all around and never anything new to him, he’s the closest thing Kazuya has to a best friend, if he could even consider himself qualified to use those words.
He takes a breath, slides his gaze to the side, lets the corner of his mouth quirk up like it was nothing.
“He confessed to me.”
Kazuya turns his eyes back forward, a seed of a smirk already planted in the curve of his lip, a seed that shrivels and buries itself deep into the ground when what he sees there isn’t what he expected to see at all.
Mei has always been easy to read, and not only to him; there’s not much reading involved at all, one could say. He doesn’t bother to hide much, all crackling electricity and energy ready to spark, to ignite. In that respect, Kazuya supposes, he’s similar to Sawamura, though he would never have thought to compare them, two people from two different eras of his life, different worlds altogether.
Not until now.
Kazuya watches his face cycle through several emotions in sequence, and he can practically trace the trajectory with his finger: first surprise, of course, but then a shadow flits across his forehead, eyebrows rising and mouth opening slightly in something that could be worry, or even fear, if Kazuya let his imagination run away with him, and then they angle down until it almost looks like he’s offended, like no one bothered to consult him about something important, something that’s gone all wrong thanks to them.
And then his face snaps closed, shutters coming down and folding their way across, which is strangest of all.
“Oh, really,” he says, and his voice is careful, nonchalant, impersonal. It takes on a hint of that highfalutin quality it has when he’s being insincere, when he’s talking over everybody’s heads at once and, therefore, to nobody at all. He plucks another Pocky from the box and bites into it rather harshly, action at odds with his ballooning tone, keeping his eyes fixed on it and squinting as he pulls it back. “That’s not that weird, is it? People do that sometimes, don’t they? Confess to each other?”
“I guess—”
“I always got a ton of notes in my locker, anyway.” And for a second Kazuya thinks that maybe Mei has gone back to his normal self, but then he turns his gaze on him, and he still sees hazy and clouded where there’s normally lightning-bright. “What did you say back?”
Kazuya blinks. “I didn’t. Sawamura ran out of the café right afterward. He didn’t give me a chance to say anything.”
“Ahhhh,” Mei exhales, like he’s stumbled upon one of the Four Noble Truths, and then lets out a tiny “hmph” and sticks his nose in the air. “So it was that kind of confession.” Sudden derision thickens and stretches out his voice, sweeping it in wide circles through the air. “See, now that’s just cowardice. You have to go all the way through with it if you’re going to do it, that’s what I always say, go big or go home, none of this running away nonsense! If you confess to someone, then you should face! The consequences!”
He’s punctuating his words oddly now, and Kazuya suddenly feels like he blew up a balloon and set it loose, released the fingers pinching at its nape and let it fly across the room, deflating in erratic bursts. Though he doesn’t know where the balloon came from or why he blew it up in the first place, and what exactly he’s supposed to do with the elastic scraps scattered behind on the floor.
“Uh, Mei—”
“What would you have said?” Mei asks, turning toward him, and suddenly his eyes are surprisingly sincere.
Kazuya opens his mouth, then closes it when he realizes he doesn’t know the answer himself. Hm. Should he be worried about that? “I don’t know. I would have to think about it, I mean, I didn’t see this coming at all—”
“So you wouldn’t have said no.”
He suddenly feels like he’s gone on the defensive, though he has no idea what or why he’s defending. “I didn’t say that.”
“You wouldn’t have said no for sure,” Mei corrects, and then he’s oddly calm, eyes ice and blinking. “Okay. Cool.”
Cool?
“You know how Sawamura is,” Kazuya says, forcing a chuckle, if only to fill the awkward silence suddenly hovering between them. “I wouldn’t want him to, I don’t know. Get upset and start crying in the middle of the restaurant or something.”
Whatever the right thing to say would have been, that wasn’t it. Mei stays perfectly still, as if the words don’t register, aside from a strange quiver in his lip.
“All right,” he chirps, like he’s trying to muster his usual perkiness, but the the sound falls flat, as if he’s reading words he recited, though even that would come across ten times more convincingly. Mei always was good at theater, after all, back in the day. But Kazuya can usually tell when he’s acting. “Glad no one’s dog actually died. That’s always good. Good talk, Kazuya.” He jams the half-finished Pocky stick back in the box, then flips it deftly off the table and into his hand in a single motion. “I’m tired, so I’m gonna go take a nap now. See you later.”
Kazuya digs for words in his throat, but in the end he lets him pass by in silence, the old baggy sweatshirt and pale feet padding across their wooden floor suddenly unfamiliar to his eyes.
~
sawamura
hey, sawamura
it’s ok. I’m not gonna be mad or weird or anything, I just want you to answer
want to make sure you’re ok
Kazuya frowns down at his phone. It’s been hours since he sent the last text, and still no buzz, no response. Stupid, stubborn idiot. Leave it to Sawamura to think that it’s perfectly acceptable to shout something like that at someone out of absolutely nowhere, and then promptly disappear out of sight, out of mind before they can respond. There are questions that need to be answered, doesn’t he know, responsibilities that need to be faced.
Though apparently Sawamura isn’t the only stubborn idiot he’s surrounded by, since Mei hasn’t stopped acting weird since earlier, either. He had slouched out of his room hours after their conversation, cheeks sleep-red and soft, a yawn dewy in the corners of his eyes. “I’m going out for dinner,” he informed Kazuya, barely pausing in the living room before heading toward the coat rack. “Itsuki wants to see me.”
“Sure,” Kazuya answered, and with a stretch of his arms and a swing of the door, he was gone.
So it’s just Kazuya sitting at the table, eating food made by and for one.
What a familiar state of being.
It’s not one he isn’t used to and not one he minds, but this entire day has been weird, and his mood right now is about as fresh and clean as the leftover oil lining the bottom of the pan. For a moment, he considers texting Mei, before he realizes how utterly ridiculous and without purpose that would be. What would he even say?
Hey, hope your college buddy is good. Is it just me, or did our conversation earlier feel like the kind that could potentially blow friendships out of the water? Just checking in—see you in, like, less than an hour even though you’re probably less than twenty minutes away from me, travel safely xoxo
Yeah, no thanks.
But Kazuya has nothing better to do at the moment, so he sets down his fork and bends over his phone again, scrolling back up to the most recent message thread. He leans his chin on his hand, typing lazily.
sawamura, heyyyyyy
A grin lights up his face as the idea dawns on him, fingers clacking away devilishly.
I swear if you don’t get back to me I’ll tell everyone about that time you fell asleep in the girls’ bathroom
The response bombards his phone less than a minute later. Score. Of course Sawamura would fall for it; Kazuya could clap himself on the back for, as usual, being such a genius.
DON’T U DARE, MIYUKI KAZUYA
OH SHIT DID U ALREADY DO IT
U DIDN’T DID U
Kazuya sits back, shoulders awash with relief.
hahaha, glad you’re still alive
U DIDN’T DO IT DID U?? I SWEAR I’LL COME OVER THERE, U BETTER NOT HAVE
relax. you got back to me didn’t you? learn to read better bakamura
SHUT UP! U HAVEN’T CALLED ME THAT IN AGES
never too late to start up again is it
Kazuya pauses, fingers hovering over the keyboard. Okay, so Sawamura’s gotten back to him now, check. That just raises another question.
Now what?
He frowns and leans over the screen, pushing his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose. Discomfort bubbles up around the edges of his consciousness. They should at least talk about it, he figures. Feelings aren’t his strong suit, never have been, but trying to respond to Sawamura’s actions over text seems ridiculously inadequate even to him.
He mulls it over for another second or two, then plunges ahead.
hey, so I was thinking. let’s meet up sometime this week
There’s a much longer pause before the next text this time. He can picture Sawamura’s face, scrunched up in concentration, golden eyes intent but soft at the edges, vulnerable, maybe a line of sweat trickling down his cheek. Maybe he should have been more specific. No, he amends, this is the best course of action: one step at a time, proceed carefully, don’t step in any traps and make sure you can always back out if you need to.
Kazuya actually leans back in shock when Sawamura texts back in lowercase, front legs of his chair tipping off the ground.
like, for what?
He’s actually texting like a normal person, the first time any of them have ever seen it, in college and since, an unprecedented phenomenon. Wait until Kuramochi hears about this. Kazuya chuckles under his breath and marvels at the sight of the line of font, tiny-seeming next to the gargantuan metropoli built by Sawamura’s block letters.
It hits him then: Sawamura must really like him.
Well, shit.
He grimaces over the next line of words.
just to talk. which I’d like to do
The response is much faster this time.
yeah, OK, sure!! juST MAKE SURE U AREN’T LATE
Kazuya rubs a hand along his face, smiles a little crookedly. So clearly this is what Sawamura had been waiting for. It’s refreshing to see his transition back into caps, back to his normal self.
It’s less refreshing to think about how he still has no idea exactly what he’s going to tell him in said process of talking.
~
Mei comes sauntering back later that night, much later, the clock ticking a few minutes short of ten. Kazuya’s still awake at the same place at the table, poring over a few progress reports for work, dim light pooling at the edges of his glasses. Work helps him, most of the time, when there are things he can’t figure out—things he doesn’t really care to focus on, not yet, maybe not ever.
The door creaks closed behind him. Kazuya doesn’t look up at the sound of footsteps, soft and slow across carpet and then gliding across wood.
“Hey,” Mei murmurs as he passes by, and his voice is sleepy, a gentle meniscus curved over whatever tension had broken in the waves between them earlier.
The air itself is sleepy, a film stretched translucent over the space and the divider between the table and the living room entrance. As he etches in the rows of graphs and numbers, black ink filling in the empty spaces, Kazuya tells himself he should probably go to bed soon.
“Hey.” He keeps up the scribbling of his pen, rubs his eyebrow briefly with the other hand. “How was Itsuki.” It’s more a statement than a question, a cautious formality, testing the surface tension between them.
“Oh. He was, you know”—a long, halting punctuation of a yawn—“he was fine. Normal. Y’know.”
The numbers don’t quite add up on the sheet before him, a zero or a digit or a decimal point short somewhere along the calculations, and Kazuya frowns at the drowsiness lolling about inside his head like a rogue bowling ball, tipping first from one temple to the other. He finally glances up, catches a flash of the gold from the hanging lamps skimming over the rim of his lenses.
Mei’s cheeks are a shade too pink to have come just from being praised overmuch—though, admittedly, that usually achieves a similar effect. It’s not often that he doesn’t stand somewhere like he owns it, Kazuya knows, like this is high school again and the world is his stage, his mound, and his alone, but his shoulders are soft tonight in the place they do own, rounded beneath the fabric of his hoodie. He’s seen Mei like this before, after he comes down from the initial high—louder and cheekier than ever, throwing arms and pointing fingers in the air—that first time in junior year of high school when Kazuya nicked the bottle from his father’s liquor cabinet (easiest thing he had ever done, that, when his dad was never home and he spent so much time in the kitchen, knowing exactly where everything was). The two of them had holed themselves in Kazuya’s attic, giggles fluting over the rim of the bottle, ricocheting back until they felt—realized—that it was only the two of them there, in the corner of that room, all echoes and empty starlight flung across the floor.
For now, the place they own for now, he corrects, disentangling himself from the memory. Who knows where the future will take us, what’s going to happen, where we’re going with our careers, how long we’ll even be here—
Kazuya traces the thought with steady eyes, lets it trail off into the known and predictable distance. It’s one of the moments where it occurs to him how strange it is that the two of them have come such a long way. Not even strange, perhaps, but something of a feat to marvel at: from playing catch on dewy grass, rolling around and poking each other until they laughed themselves stupid, to filing progress reports and ordering wine at restaurants. With no particular feeling, Kazuya had wondered, as he felt Mei’s arm loop around his neck and pull him in for a selfie at their high school graduation, if it was the last time they’d be grinning side by side, the last picture they would take together. But here they are now, like an extension of childhood, a continuation branching off from the past even after the four-year gaping hole of college, a limb regrown, surreal in its having survived. A constant.
“Kazuya.”
“Hm?”
No wonder it feels strange to him. It’s Kazuya who’s always diverging, who chose a different school, who stamps the not yet on the colorful slips of their childhood dreams. An errant satellite, spinning ever so slightly, occasionally more than slightly, out of orbit. Making sure it stays that way, that he has options—calculating, adjusting, breaking away completely as need be.
He looks up, to where Mei’s eyelids are heavy with sleep and alcohol. He’s strangely unreadable in his most open moments, Kazuya finds, with the brittle glare of the spotlight fallen away.
A smile, sheepish and easy, stretches across his cheeks. “Haha, it’s nothing,” Mei says, followed by a short hiccup. “Don’t stay up too late. You’re too much of a workaholic sometimes, you know that? Just go to bed.” He turns, waving over his shoulder, a sway in the pivot of his foot. “G’night!”
“’Night.”
Kazuya rolls the pen between his fingers, decides, thanks to the bowling ball still bumbling around in his head, that he’ll take Mei up on that and finish the rest of the calculations tomorrow, or even Monday. He’ll text Sawamura back then, too, and schedule a time for their inevitable meeting. In retrospect, he doesn’t know why the afternoon had surprised him so much. This isn’t math, isn’t a nine-to-five job or a calculus class he can teach someone to pass, and constants in the real world are bound to change.
~
Maybe it’s the alcohol or a good night’s sleep or just a mild afterimage of Kazuya’s imagination, but by the next morning, Mei seems back to normal. He marches into the kitchen with his hands shoved in his pockets, pelts Kazuya with a flurry of details about Itsuki’s life—“I told him not to take that job, but does he ever listen to me? Nooo!”—and picks at the fruit and wheat toast arranged on his plate, nose wrinkled delicately, until Kazuya produces the second steaming plate from behind his back and grins as Mei’s entire face lights up.
“Aw, waffles, just for me? You know exactly what I like, Kazuya!”
“Of course I do,” says Kazuya solemnly, almost sagely. He sits down and clasps his hands on the table in front of him. “Only the best for our poor hungover prince.”
“Psh, you know I don’t get hangovers. Besides, I barely drank like anything last night.”
“That’s what they all say,” Sage Kazuya pronounces, an all-knowing gleam in his eye. “Now be good and eat your medicinal remedy, Your Poutiness.”
“Hmph! Now it just sounds like you poisoned them or something.” Mei casts a mock-suspicious glance down at the steaming, buttery mass of gold, but there’s a pleased twist to his mouth as he plays along. “Assassinating royalty become your new favorite hobby recently, Kazuya?”
“I would never! I am a loyal servant to the Fiefdom of the Drunken. Also, you’re making your own breakfast tomorrow,” Kazuya adds without skipping a beat, complete with his most angelic smile. “No special favors for the sober.”
Mei snorts into his food, flashing him a dirty look, but his mouth is already full of waffle, piled high with whipped cream and bananas. An image of fries bathed in ketchup, unfinished, abandoned, suddenly flashes in Kazuya’s mind; he quickly chases it out, leaving a hot taste of discomfort in the back of his throat: no, wrong time, wrong world. He washes that down with a hearty forkful of egg.
The happy silence of chewing and swallowing punctuated by the clang of silverware against china presides over the table for a few minutes, until Mei takes a large gulp of milk and opens his mouth.
“Hey, I was thinking—”
“Don’t.”
“Shut up, Kazuya. I was thinking,” Mei announces, and sets down his glass with an important air, “it’s been a while since we’ve gone down to the old field. And…and I know you’re busy with work, and I’m busy with work, and stuff, but it might be a good time to unwind with a good game of catch, yeah?” He lifts his napkin and wipes his mouth declaratively, primly. Leave it to Mei to make a statement with a napkin. “I get off work early on Wednesday.”
Kazuya is about to raise his head in a nod when he realizes that something about that day sounds very familiar.
Wednesday, that’s…
Ah. Shit.
“Sorry,” he says instead, quick as a razor and just as reluctant to slip, “the boss wants me to stay late for a conference that day.”
“Aw, man.” Mei’s face falls, the beginnings of a real pout working at his lips. “Can’t you get out of it?”
“Nope.” Kazuya shakes his head, letting the corner of mouth slide down in a grimace. “I know, I wish I could too. But the deadline for our new product is coming up soon, and you know that report I’ve been working on for ages. Can’t move it.”
Though his phone at the other end of the room, lying prone on the couch, Kazuya suddenly feels the shape of it searing into his skin, like a fiery brand pressed against the side of his neck, outlining the shape of his lie. It’s not that he’s exactly a stranger to telling lies, but he hates this. There’s no amusement lying at the end of this kind of lie, no point at all, in fact. It rankles him that he has to kick it under the table like something illicit, like he has something to hide when he doesn’t, when there’s absolutely nothing wrong with anything the two of them are doing.
But it was the mention of Sawamura that started off the whole cycle of weirdness, and now that things have finally gone back to normal, Mei his chipper, mouthy self once again, he doesn’t want to spoil it. Even if there’s no reason for that to spoil it, no good reason at all that Mei should fall quiet at hearing Sawamura’s name, the corner of his smile flickering like a glitch in their favorite video games and sinking.
Or so Kazuya tells himself, something he’s been trying to ignore dancing like a flag, a possibility, at the corner of his eye.
It’s the feeling he has when an idea is starting to come to him, an old, familiar feeling, the one all the way back from behind the batter’s box, almost sensing rather than seeing a twitch of fingers, a crucial shift in weight between feet. Usually, he pounces on it instantly, eyes alight with glee, with the killer certainty of triumph. This time, the other half of his mind takes over, the one intent on lines of calculations and deadlines, sweeping in with wings of rationality and, as Sage Kazuya did earlier, guiding his chin away.
Back to the present. Back to the real world. Back to noticing what’s in front of him, taking in facts and details and dealing with those alone. It’s not Kazuya’s main modus operandi, not his favorite, but he can do it. And he can do it well.
Real life’s not all childhood dreams, not all starry fields and roads that go on forever and forever and pieces that fit together like they were made that way to start.
“Hmph. Well, okay.” Mei sighs, shuffles his gaze to the side, rips another piece of the waffle out with just his fork, his knife left lying on the tablecloth. Somehow it feels worse to Kazuya that he doesn’t seem to suspect anything at all, all straightforward disappointment souring his face. “Whatever. Maybe next weekend, then.”
“Maybe then,” Kazuya agrees, wondering why the words taste so hollow in his throat.
~
He arrives early on Wednesday afternoon, because he can, and because it’s never a bad thing to be prepared for situations like this one. It’s a cold, cloudy day, the kind that sporadically dribbles raindrops onto his hair, his arm, spotting the fabric of his jacket, but never opens up completely, a tease. Kazuya ducks underneath the awning and leans against the wall, one foot propped up against the brick.
He had been careful to choose a different place from the one they had eaten at last time—no need for any waiters or regulars to drop by and happen to inconveniently remember them. Besides, it felt right to start the conversation over in new grounds, bereft of any expectations, and there’s no place that says “neutral” quite like your favorite corporate Starbucks.
Kazuya crosses his arms and waits, and no less than seven minutes later, he practically hears Sawamura before he sees him, a seismic vibration in the pavement thundering his way.
The man himself comes barreling down the street across from him an instant later, cheeks puffed out from the cold and a chunky, multi-colored scarf wrapped around his neck. His wide eyes scan the road, and even from a distance, Kazuya can see the exact moment they alight on him. His own eyes narrow in careful observation; Sawamura’s usually not awkward—well, that wouldn’t be the first word Kazuya would use to describe him—but when he is, he’s terrible. There had been one misunderstanding between them in college, about something or other that Sawamura had done or refused to do, and he remembers the nervous chuckling and sweating and turning his head away that had followed for days afterward, until he wanted to slam down his books and yell that he was more pissed off at Sawamura’s ridiculous reactions than at the original problem itself.
Kazuya sees the careful lines draw around his eyes and sighs inwardly, preparing himself for more cringe-worthy antics. But apparently Sawamura’s done some growing up over the years, since the next instant, his chest inflates as he steels himself, inhaling the way he used to before a game, as if he wanted to consume every square inch of air in the space around, and jogs the rest of the way over.
“M-Miyuki Kazuya!” he shouts, as usual, by way of greeting. Maybe a notch quieter than usual, if that’s possible. But Kazuya doesn’t miss the intent look he shoots him through the gaps between his bangs, slowing to a stop in front of him, nor the unexpected knot it twists in the pit of his stomach.
“Sawamura.” He uncrosses his arms, lets the smirk unfurl across his mouth as he turns. Normal, keep things normal. Don’t let the awkwardness get to you; stay afloat; once you fall into the valley, you’re gone. “Wow, I’m impressed. You’re only a minute late.”
“I—shut up!” And just like that, it’s gone, replaced by Sawamura’s bared teeth, the furious scowl crinkling the skin around his eyes. As usual, it makes Kazuya laugh, the sound shot through with relief. “I almost missed the train!”
“Hahaha! And I thought you were the one who told me not to be late.”
Sawamura practically hisses at him as they walk through the door, warm air cocooning them away from the chill, Kazuya’s grin swiveling toward the inside of the building like a searchlight.
They slide into place in line, underwhelming on a late Wednesday afternoon. “Oh yeah, you love coffee, don’t you?” Sawamura pipes up, remembering. “You used to drink a ton whenever we stayed up late.”
Kazuya snickers. “No thanks to you. You used to repay me for helping you study by buying me as much as you could hold. If I ever get addicted to caffeine, I’m holding you responsible.”
“Hey! You never complained back then!”
The line in front of them shortens, and Kazuya steps up to the cash register and orders a cappuccino, his staple. Sawamura, of course, goes for a hot chocolate; unlike Kazuya, he was never the biggest fan of coffee. “This is gross!” he had spluttered when Kazuya offered him a sip during one of their first study sessions. “How do you drink this?”
Blowing enthusiastically into the opening of the cup, Sawamura nods his head now in the direction of the stairs leading up to the second floor. It’s a two-story Starbucks, the largest in the square. “Upstairs?”
Kazuya shakes his head, gesturing toward the door. This isn’t the kind of conversation he wants to have surrounded by people. “Come on. Let’s take a walk, Sawamura.”
That earns him a frustrated howl. “Ugh, you’re as mean as ever! It’s cold outside!”
Kazuya grins all the way out the door, followed by a trail of loud complaints, his own personal entourage. He knows this part of the city pretty well, and he leads Sawamura a block up the main street followed by a left, where a small park spreads before them, tree branches parting to reveal a carpet of green, speckled with dew now in the damp.
“There, there. Not too bad, is it?”
“Fwah,” Sawamura grumbles unintelligibly, mouth wrapped around the edge of his cup.
“We can even sit down if you want,” Kazuya adds enticingly, and with a reluctant nod, his young charge lets himself be led toward a bench tucked behind a little grove of trees that shield them from the worst of the moisture and from the rest of the park, dotted by the colorful jackets and, occasionally, umbrellas of the few people willing to mill about in the cold.
Kazuya takes his time settling down next to him, legs bent cleanly, hands clasped on his lap and around his coffee, aware of his every movement. He draws up the memory of leaning over Sawamura’s notebooks late at night, pencil guiding over the lines, crossing out marks here and there, explaining mistakes, placing the occasional hand on his shoulder: projecting confidence, but more than that, trust, comfort.
Droplets of rain, made audible by the branches, drum a sparse, comfortable rhythm above them, and then Sawamura opens his mouth.
“So…” He sounds shy all of a sudden, his voice small and wary. Kazuya chances a glance out of the corner of his eye: Sawamura’s hands are wrapped tightly around the cup, eyes locked firmly on the ground directly in front of him. He gives one, two kicks of his legs, stretched long after his growth spurt, a late bloomer, in sophomore year. “You said you wanted to talk. What did you want to talk about?”
Kazuya lets out his breath and turns his eyes forward.
“I’m not going to pretend what happened on Saturday didn’t happen, Sawamura,” he starts, his voice careful, steady. “But I want you to know: it’s not going to change anything about the way I act toward you. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“A-anything?”
Sawamura’s voice sounds more than shy now; it shrinks until it’s tiny and his breath catches around it, digs hooks into it and tugs it open like a fresh wound. Kazuya’s eyes flick toward him in surprise, toward where his chin is tucked meekly into his chest, mouth half-covered by his scarf, eyes fixed resolutely on a spot ahead, his entire body slumped almost a foot down on the bench, jeans washed out and coarse around the half-hearted half-spread of his legs.
Oh. Right. Kazuya could kick himself. Right, confessions. People usually expect something from those. Like a response.
Damn it. He raises his cup to his lips to prevent himself from doing something rash, like letting out a sigh or folding forward and burying his face in his hands, which he knows would push Sawamura away once and for all. There are a lot of things he can do, can twist his mind around and find an opening to thread himself through, seeking ways out and ways in and ways around, ways to win. Feelings aren’t one of them. Feelings don’t work that way. And it seems like he’s had to deal with them a lot as of late.
He swallows and opens his mouth, suddenly recalling a similar sensation, of searching for words and swirling lemonade around his tongue. A response—Kazuya doesn’t feel qualified to give a response. His throat is all emptiness, stoppered off by years of barely having friends, let alone anything more, and being perfectly okay with that.
“Sawamura—” he starts, but Sawamura cuts him off, keeping his eyes locked forward as a new, determined note steals into his voice, imbuing it with some of its old boldness.
“Miyuki. Is there someone you like?”
Kazuya blinks in surprise, looks up at Sawamura’s earnest face, its lines hardened and a blaze rekindling in his eyes even while his expression remains the same. Leave it to him to ask a question point-blank like that that anyone else would run away from, far, far down the road and up and down several hills.
But it seems like Sawamura isn’t done, as he presses on, fingers tightening around his cup. His hot chocolate is probably getting cold by now in the rain, but his hands and the force of his devotion keep it warm.
“Because if you don’t—I was thinking—if you wanted to—if you don’t like anyone else, then maybe…you could try out liking me.”
It’s true, it always has been—Sawamura Eijun never ceases to surprise him. He’s dead serious right now, staring down his cup, hands toying with the lid, fingers flicking up at the sides of the lid as a steadfast flush makes his way up his neck and to his cheeks. It’s that look that Kazuya has only seen him carry on the mound, complete focus and ferocious intensity, as if the thing ahead of him is the only thing that matters. Kazuya feels the wind knocked out of him; it’s something else entirely to be the object of all that.
“Sawamura…”
“But if you do like someone else—and if you do, then I understand, I do!—then please!—please forget I ever said anything to you. I’ll be okay. Thank—”
Sawamura is about to make one of his dramatic exits again, Kazuya can feel it. This time he’s prepared—when he stands up to leave, he grabs the edge of his sleeve, dragging him back down to the bench and ignoring his squawk of indignation.
“Nuh-uh, not this time, idiot. You don’t get to run away from that.”
The sheer determination drains from Sawamura’s face, leaving behind the beloved idiot they all know and recognize as his jaw drops open and he lets out a wail. Kazuya can’t help but feel relieved. “Whyyyy!”
“You don’t get to be cool.” Kazuya smirks at him. “Sorry.”
“Aghhhh, why, Miyuki Kazuya! I had it all planned out!”
“It was a great speech,” he agrees, throwing his head back and laughing until his shoulders quake.
Sawamura glowers at him until he quiets down. “Well? What’s your answer?” he demands.
Kazuya smiles back. He can deal with this. He can deal with an angry Sawamura sulking and yelling his head off at him, with none of the unfamiliar softness glowing in his eyes. He reaches out and slings his arm around Sawamura’s shoulders like he always used to do, and as usual, Sawamura fights back, squirming in his grip—and then he doesn’t, letting his shoulders relax and leaning tentatively into Kazuya’s grasp.
That’s new. Kazuya lets go of him like he’s touched fire, pulse hammering uncomfortably in his ears. That’s new, too.
He tries again, take two, this time doing his duty and confronting the question in his mind. He could laugh it off. He would, normally, always. There are a hundred ways and counting to wriggle out of someone’s grip when you don’t want to be held, to shrug an Atlas’s globe of responsibilities off your shoulders with nothing more than a laugh or a flick of your finger. A hundred ways and counting, tallied up meticulously by Miyuki Kazuya, Expert Wriggler and Avoider of Things He Doesn’t Want to Deal With. Except that there’s something wrong with doing that here, with Sawamura glancing away to hide the blush on his cheeks and shrugging his shoulders like that’ll shake off the imprint of Kazuya’s arm around him.
Kazuya can be mean, but not like this.
“I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, turning his palms to the sky. “I really don’t know, Sawamura.”
Sawamura squints at him like he’s looking for the telltale signs of a lie. “How—how do you not know?”
There are dreams, and there are feelings, and there are parallel streams of thought running through Kazuya’s head, he wants to explain, but he can’t. There’s the past and the future and what he needs to focus on, or at any moment he might stop in his tracks and look over his shoulder and, quite possibly, spontaneously implode. There are things he wanted and there are things that have come to be, and a gradually widening crevasse between them that makes his stomach churn when he so much as thinks about leaping over it, makes him swivel forward and keep on walking on the side he’s landed on, trudging forward no matter how numb and meaningless the motion becomes. He’s ten times better at telling a lie than the truth, apparently.
“You’re too stupid,” he teases instead, knowing it’s far from his best zinger. Ah, well. You can’t win ’em all. “You’re rubbing off on me.”
Sawamura’s shout is so outraged it’s almost a growl, choked and guttural in the back of his throat. “What! Shut up! That’s—that’s not even a proper answer to my question! Miyuki Kazuya—”
He chuckles and stands up, waving his now empty cup in Sawamura’s face. “Come on. We should throw these away.”
The other boy leaps up after him, fists beating the air as he tails Kazuya’s heels the entire way to the trash can. “Damn it, and you tried to stop me from leaving! You can’t run away! Answer my question! What do you mean, you don’t know? How is that possible? Tell me!”
“Haha, cut me some slack, will you?” Dropping his cup in while Sawamura chucks his furiously, Kazuya hesitates and then, shrugging to himself, reaches a hand out to ruffle his shaggy hair. He feels Sawamura stiffen, and then relax beneath him. It’s a start. “I’ll let you know when I’ve figured it out, okay? That’s a promise.”
“A…promise?” Golden eyes blink in surprise, and then furrow back into place in his scowl. “Bastard! Aghhh, I hate you!”
“Ah, you’re way too kind!”
“That is not a compliment!”
Sawamura’s not wrong: this time Kazuya is the one to run away, but only for now, he tells himself as they duck their way out from under the trees and start to make their way back toward the square. He might tell his fair share of lies and find ways to slip beneath the radar, but, stretching all the way back to his days on the field, he’s never been one to break his promises. And this one, he knows, calling to mind the vulnerable, resolute light in those eyes and sealing it there, he owes to Sawamura.