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The sun has always called to Kaoru like love songs in languages he doesn’t speak.
It sings to him in dulcet tones with backing strings and warms him from the outside in, but he doesn’t understand it. He never has. Like color theory to a mathematician, it sits just on this side of comprehensible: bright, beautiful, and entirely out of his wheelhouse.
If he could, he would take it apart. Break it down. Master it in the way he masters everything else of interest in his life, alas — the sun is hot, and he is human.
C’est la vie.
Kaoru has never been a firm believer in purpose — at least, to the extent that you have one beyond your control — but he has found meaning in the act of appreciation, especially of the things he cannot fully grasp, and indulges in it regularly. A fine wine. A warm body. A sunrise in a place he’s never been before. He watches the oranges bleed into the sky, bit by bit, and breathes in, fascinated by the fact that no two mornings have ever looked the same.
It’s a tradition of his: on every trip to a new locale, he makes sure to watch the sunrise over the skyline at least once, just to see what it’s like.
He may not know the sun the way he knows the feel of a brush in his hand, but he knows it the way a reader knows a poet, and that’s enough for him.
Kaoru leans over the edge of a balcony in Taormina, Italy — one that belongs to a friend of Kojiro’s, conveniently out of town — and watches the sun climb its way slowly into the sky. Isola Bella sits, comfortable, in the pinks and golds of the early morning, and someone shuts a door somewhere below.
A car starts. A bird sings. A train chugs along in the distance. Kaoru breathes in, and the day fills his lungs with crisp, cool potential.
This is enough.
A light buzzing sound grabs his attention — an alarm, he thinks — and he wonders what the day has in store for whoever is getting up along with it. A work day, probably, but maybe not. Perhaps they’re picking someone up from the train station, and there’s a reunion in their future. Perhaps a vacation for which they have to finish packing. Perhaps an early breakfast with a friend.
The alarm continues to buzz, though, and Kaoru chuckles, picturing whoever it is snoring soundly as it vibrates beside their head. Maybe a cup of coffee before anything else.
Kojiro is like that — he always has been. He could sleep through almost anything, including hurricanes, earthquakes, probably a kaiju attack. The earth could collapse beneath his sleeping body and he’d fall with it, dreaming soundly of sinking into a cloud.
Kaoru could probably hear his snores coming from the second bedroom if he listened hard enough, even from out here.
He smiles, thinking back to their adolescence. Kojiro falling asleep on Kaoru’s shoulder the moment they’d get in the car. Whoever’s parents were driving them wherever that day would glance in the rearview mirror and laugh, and Kaoru would have to put a finger to his lips to keep them from startling Kojiro awake.
He never fell asleep while they were skating, but it was a near-thing.
Kaoru sighs. This trip has been… difficult. Kojiro has been extra touchy, extra considerate, and it’s driving Kaoru up the wall. Not that he isn’t always — Kojiro is a wonderful travel partner, always keeping Kaoru’s preferences and restrictions in mind — but something is different, this time. It’s been different since Kaoru’s injury, if he’s being honest. Kojiro had been the one to care for him while he was recovering from being brained with a fucking skateboard, even going as far as to stay with Kaoru for a few weeks at the worst of it, and while Kojiro had been a bit too present for Kaoru’s sanity, he’d gotten used to having him around.
Though he’d never admit it to anyone but himself, there’s been a sort of emptiness in his apartment since Kojiro left, and being here — sharing a space again, sharing a life — has only served to remind Kaoru of how much he wishes it had been a permanent thing.
The door behind him slides open, and Kaoru almost falls over the railing.
He whips his head around. “Kojiro?”
“Who else?” Kojiro asks, his voice rough, as he slides the door closed again.
“I’m–” Kaoru stutters. “Did I… wake you?” He’d thought he’d been quiet enough.
Kojiro shakes his head, coming up to lean over the balcony to Kaoru’s left.
“Then why are you up?”
Kojiro chuckles, glancing at Kaoru out of the corner of his eye and pushing his hair back off his face. “What, I’m not allowed to wake up early?” he asks, and his voice cracks on the uptick.
Kaoru narrows his eyes. “It’s never happened before.”
It’s too early to have his guard up like this. These mornings are usually peaceful, quiet. Just for him. There’s never an unknown, never this sense of ambiguity regarding the way these minutes will pass. Kojiro is a wild card in his carefully-constructed tower, threatening to disrupt his balance.
If he’s not careful, he’ll falter and say something he regrets.
“Yeah, you got me,” Kojiro admits, looking almost sheepish. “I just thought I’d join you for this little ritual of yours for once. See what all the hype is about.”
Kaoru blinks, surprised.
“Is that… okay?”
“Of course,” Kaoru blurts, then curses himself for slipping and scoffs, “it’s not like I have custody of the sun.”
Kojiro rolls his eyes. “Thanks, four-eyes, I feel so welcomed.”
Kaoru huffs, turning back to the sky, but he can’t stop glancing at Kojiro in his peripheral vision. It’s like he’s magnetic. A star, bright and bold, and Kaoru is a planet caught in his orbit. A planet with a complete lack of self-control in the mornings, it seems, if his of course was any indication.
Kojiro is clearly still half-asleep, rumpled and soft around the edges, but he’s smiling like there’s nowhere he’d rather be. He’s shirtless, as always. Relaxed. He’s glowing gold under a yellowing sky, and Kaoru thinks he’s absolutely beautiful.
“How did you know?” Kaoru asks before he can think better of it, letting the uncertainty of the morning fuel his recklessness.
“How did I know what?”
“That I do this.”
Kojiro smirks. “I’ve got you all figured out, Pinky. You should know that by now.”
Kaoru rolls his eyes.
“No, really,” Kojiro continues. “We’ve been traveling together for years, and we’ve known each other even longer than that. You think I haven’t picked up a thing or two?”
Kaoru huffs. He’d been trying to be vulnerable, for once, but if Kojiro wants to bicker, so be it. “I didn’t realize you paid so much attention,” he teases. “Normally, you only remember the things about people that will get you laid.”
Kojiro is quiet, for a moment, and Kaoru feels a weight start to settle in his chest. He thinks he might have gone too far, that the barbs at the tops of his walls had been too sharp, but then Kojiro rolls his eyes and pushes off the railing, stepping away. “Alright, grumpy,” he mutters. “Let’s get some coffee in you before you bite someone’s head off.”
He starts to turn back towards the door, and — panicked — Kaoru grabs him by the wrist, surprising them both.
“Kaoru–”
“Stay,” Kaoru whispers, his eyes wide, and Kojiro’s eyes soften. “Please.”
He’s terrified of the possibility that Kojiro will walk away, again, even when Kaoru is laying himself bare, but Kojiro only nods. “Okay,” he mutters back, and settles back into his place next to Kaoru. “Whatever you want.”
You can’t say things like that, Kaoru wants to scream. Not when Kojiro turns corners with a hand on Kaoru’s lower back. Not when Kojiro orders for them and Kaoru’s favorite meals show up in front of him fifteen minutes later. Not when Kaoru has been hopelessly in love for years, and Kojiro still acts like it isn’t brutally obvious.
This is his life, though. This is how it’s always been.
“I don’t do that so much anymore, you know,” Kojiro says quietly, after a few seconds of silence. “Sleep around.”
Kaoru closes his eyes. “I know.”
“So why did you–”
“I don’t know,” Kaoru admits. “Habit, perhaps.”
“You haven’t brought it up in a while.”
Kaoru inhales deeply, carefully considering his next words, then lets it all out in a single breath. “I haven’t,” he agrees. “I haven’t felt the need.”
He can hear the cogs turning in Kojiro’s mind, can feel him tense up as he tries to read between the lines. “Why?” he asks carefully, and Kaoru doesn’t respond. He can’t. Not now. Not on a fucking balcony in Taormina during sunrise, for fuck’s sake.
He just isn’t that brave.
Maybe one day, in the doorway of Sia la Luce with his bike in spitting distance — at S, on the way out, or at a work event where he can escape on ‘business’ — he might strike up the nerve to say something. Address this. Tell Kojiro that the weeks they spent together were some of the best in Kaoru’s recent memory, that he wants him all to himself.
Now, though, the sky is too pink and the sun is too orange, and sunrises mean too much to him to risk losing his oldest friend in the low light of his most reliable haven.
Wine alters his memory in large quantities, after all, and warm bodies leave as soon as the warmth dissipates. Sunrises are constant. Cyclical. Dependable. The sun always comes back up.
Kojiro shifts, and his tattoo ripples with the muscle underneath.
It’s funny, how often the sun has become an omen of something important in Kaoru’s life: yellows and oranges peeking into an indigo sky as Kaoru rests his chin on his palm, looking for permission to exist. Tendrils of black reaching down Kojiro’s arm and taunting Kaoru from just too far away, begging him to touch. Even the name of Kojiro’s restaurant: Sia la Luce — let there be light.
It’s been minutes, now, and neither of them has said a word. Kojiro picks at the skin around his thumbnail and shifts his weight to his other foot, inching him closer to Kaoru in the process.
Stop, Kaoru wants to say. Stay away.
It isn’t what he means, of course, but if Kojiro steps any closer, Kaoru might fall apart.
It’s odd, though, that he’s here in the first place, isn’t it? Kaoru has been doing this particular ritual since they were practically kids, and Kojiro has never joined him before. It isn’t what they do. Kaoru has his mornings and Kojiro has his middle-of-the-nights, and they have the rest of their days together out of convenience more than anything else.
That’s what Kaoru thought, anyway.
He wants to ask. He wants to know why Kojiro chose today, of all days, to break the pattern. Test their limits. Give Kaoru a sense of hope that he’s never allowed before, and make him think maybe something is changing, more than it already has. He wants to know why Kojiro woke up this morning and–
“Kojiro,” Kaoru mutters, a thought suddenly occurring to him. “How did you know I would be out here?”
“I told you–”
“How did you know I would be out here today?”
Kojiro stills. His eyes flick sideways to meet Kaoru’s for less than a second, and then he looks down at his hands. “I didn’t,” he murmurs.
Kaoru’s eyebrows pull together in confusion. “But you’re here,” he says dully.
“I am.”
Kaoru stares at Kojiro, his grip tightening on the railing. “So you had to know.”
“I, um,” Kojiro starts. “I set an alarm. Every day. To see if you were up already.”
Kaoru blinks. “Why?”
Kojiro groans, carding a hand through his hair and looking pleadingly at Kaoru, but Kaoru stands steadfast.
“Why, Kojiro?”
“I want to know you.”
Kaoru shakes his head slightly. “Bullshit. You do know me. Better than anyone else, I’d argue.”
Kojiro smiles sadly. “Not as well as I’d like to.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Kaoru insists. “You don’t get to know people like that. Not usually.”
Kojiro’s eyebrows shoot up. “What does that mean?” he asks, offense clear in his tone of voice.
“Come on, Kojiro,” Kaoru says, his voice quieter now. “You know you don’t keep people around long enough to… know them. Not like that.”
“I keep you around.”
It’s barely audible, but Kojiro sounds serious, all of a sudden. Kaoru frowns.
“Sometimes, I look at the people I used to… date,” Kojiro says with a wince, and Kaoru’s eyes narrow, “and I watch them do these little things that used to fascinate me. Like the way Michiko taps her fingers against her forearm when she’s nervous, or the way Hisoka keeps a to-do list and a pencil on her literally all the time. I used to love those little things, you know? And it’s weird to not care about them anymore.”
Kaoru leans back slightly, but Kojiro catches him by the elbow, keeping him in place.
“I watch myself lose interest in people through their habits,” he continues. “But, fuck, Kaoru, the way you twirl your hair around your pointer finger when you can’t show how pissed off you really are still makes my heart go crazy.”
Kaoru blinks. “What?”
Kojiro lets out a manic sort of laugh, but presses on. “You always toe off your left shoe before your right. You reach up to adjust your glasses when you’re uncomfortable, even when you’re wearing contacts. You hit me with the back of your hand when you don’t mean it and your palm when you do, and you know that one lullaby puts you to sleep faster than any of the other ones, but you insist on mixing it up because you’re afraid of getting bored.”
“What are you saying, Kojiro?”
“That I know people are on their way out of my life when their little things aren’t endearing anymore, but it’s been fifteen years, Kaoru, and everything you do still makes me smile.” Kojiro steps forward a bit, into Kaoru’s space, and Kaoru lets him. “I don’t think I’m ever getting tired of you.”
I want to know you. The words echo in Kaoru’s head. “It sounds like you do,” he chokes out, then clarifies as Kojiro’s expression falters. “Know me. You do know me.”
Kojiro’s eyes graze over Kaoru’s face as he reaches up towards Kaoru’s face. “Not as well as I’d like to,” he says softly.
He brushes a hair behind Kaoru’s ear, and Kaoru shivers.
“Is that clear enough, Pinky?”
“Yes,” Kaoru breathes, and then he’s standing on his toes and Kojiro’s hands are in his hair. There’s a moment — a brief one, though it feels like an eternity — where they stop. Hover. They breathe each other’s air and look for answers in each other’s eyes, and, as Kaoru falls back onto his heels, Kojiro chases him down.
Their lips meet hungrily, after that. Kaoru has never understood the concept of forgetting to breathe, and he still thinks that forgetting an automatic bodily function is absurd, but as Kojiro kisses him — as Kojiro kisses him — he thinks he’d rather die than pull away, even for a second.
One of Kojiro’s hands moves down Kaoru’s face to cradle his jaw, softening their kiss into something less desperate, less frantic. He slows it down, and Kaoru can't tell if he’s grateful or annoyed, wanting nothing more than to consume. This is something out of his wildest dreams, and he’s not quite sure that it’s real. It feels real. Kojiro feels real. He’s warm and solid and — fuck — shirtless, and Kaoru rakes his fingertips over the swell of Kojiro’s pectorals, taking what he’s wanted for as long as he can remember.
“Easy,” Kojiro mumbles against Kaoru’s lips. “We’re in public.”
“We’ve on private property,” Kaoru retorts.
“In full view of the entire town.”
Kaoru huffs, smacking Kojiro with the back of his hand, and Kojiro chuckles.
“I didn’t peg you for an exhibitionist.”
“Kojiro.”
Kojiro grins wildly, pulling Kaoru in for another kiss, and Kaoru goes willingly. How could he not? Kojiro is bright and solid and here, and Kaoru is never letting him go.
Kojiro breaks away, though, and Kaoru scowls. “We’re missing the show,” Kojiro mutters, tilting his head slightly towards the horizon.
“There will be others,” Kaoru says, lurching forward, but Kojiro catches him, spinning him around and wrapping his arms around Kaoru’s waist from the back.
“You’ll never let me live it down if you miss a good one,” he mutters in Kaoru’s ear.
Kaoru struggles, but Kojiro’s embrace only tightens as he hooks his chin over Kaoru’s shoulder, caging him in completely.
“Come on,” he says quietly. “Watch the sunrise with me. We can make out for the rest of our lives.”
Kaoru sighs, but he melts easily into Kojiro’s chest at the thought of forever. It’s warm. Comforting. Brilliant. Kojiro presses a kiss into the side of Kaoru’s neck, and Kaoru could swear that it burns.
So, no, Kaoru doesn’t understand the sun. He might never understand it completely, never know it the way he knows himself, but with Kojiro ablaze behind him and with a promise of a future, Kaoru thinks he might finally get the chance to try.