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"Oiii. Nikaaaidooou."
Yamato doesn't open his eyes as he bats at the hand pawing at his side.
"Shut up," he grouses. "I wanna sleep."
“What, already?” The hand does not stop poking him. “It's not even sunset!”
“We’ve been walking around the city all day, Yaotome. I'm fucking tired." He finally cracks open one eye to shoot Gaku a Look. "Actually, how are you still so full of energy, huh?”
Gaku grins as he withdraws his hand. “Must be my youthful vitality.”
“We’re the same age now! You can't make that joke again.”
“Then cheer up!" Gaku switches to playfully ruffling Yamato's hair, like he's petting a cat. Yamato grumbles and glowers at this, but he can't be bothered to push him away this time. "You can’t MC tomorrow with that kind of energy.”
“That's tomorrow. That's a whole 24 hours away."
"I thought you're the one who wanted to—"
"Eugh, no, stop, don't you dare remind me." Yamato rolls onto his side, turning his back to him. "Jus' let me be sleepy in peace.”
Gaku laughs, but he eventually complies and pulls his hand out of Yamato's hair.
(Yamato does not mourn the loss of contact. He does not.)
This day probably makes the record for the longest time he's spent with Yaotome Gaku so far. They'd gone out for lunch after arriving in Hiroshima, intending to hash out some kind of script for their MC act, or at least a rough plan for the next two days; but lunch turned into wandering around the city, and several hours later they've somehow made it to Saka and ended up stopping here at the Bayside Beach to rest.
They haven't gotten anything productive done. But the sun is warm and the ocean breeze is nice and refreshing and the waves rumble like a lullaby in the background and Yamato's feet hurt.
If only he could actually get a nap in with this guy around.
("How are you just lying on the sand like that? Isn't it uncomfortable?"
Yamato bites back the instinct to quip and just says, "Actually, it's pretty soft. You should try it, lie down with me."
"Nah. Thanks, but I'll pass."
Gaku gingerly lies next to him ten minutes later. He barely stands it for a minute before he's getting up and brushing sand out of his hair and off of his shoulders. Yamato delights in calling him a delicate flower about it, and Gaku retorts with, "Yeah, well, good luck getting sand out of your hair later," which has Yamato turning away quickly to hide his grimace because yeah that won't be fun.)
Gaku eventually seems to get bored of trying to get a rise out of Yamato, and they settle into a neutral sort of silence. Yamato still has his back turned to Gaku, so he doesn't know what the guy is doing now; so instead, he starts looking around what he can see on his side.
Their spot is close to the edge of the beach where there's less people, close enough to the shore but still out of reach of the tide. Coincidentally, this area is littered with rocks of various shapes and sizes.
He’d disregarded the rocks initially, but now that he's looking, one of them catches his eye. It’s small and gray and unremarkable just like all the others—except for the pale line going straight down the center.
Yamato gets up and crawls over to it without thinking.
The rock fits comfortably into his palm when he picks it up, rounded and smoothed by the ocean and warmed by the sunlight. When he turns it around in his hands, he finds the white stripe runs all the way around the surface, unbroken, perfectly straight and stark against the pale gray of the rest of the rock. It looks like it's been drawn in chalk, but it doesn’t fade at all when he touches it, and its texture doesn't feel unusual under his fingertips.
None of the other rocks seem to have a marking like this one does. How odd.
He nearly startles when he hears Gaku behind him.
“Mrrh—” Gaku's laid down again, this time with his white jacket spread out beneath him like a makeshift beach mat. He blinks up at Yamato and reaches out a hand. “Nikaidou, come baack.”
Yamato grins. “Who’s the sleepy one now, huh?” He teases, scooting back towards him. He even parrots Gaku's words back at him for good measure: "It's not even sunset!"
Gaku doesn’t respond to that—because he's abruptly sitting up, with wide, curious eyes zeroed in on the rock in Yamato's hand. “Yooo, what’s that? It looks sick, where’d you find it?”
“…it’s a rock? I literally just saw it over there and picked it up.” Yamato shrugs. He's not sure what else to say, so he adds, "The line goes all the way around too, look.”
Gaku perks up at that. Yamato passes him the rock, and he too starts to turn it around and around to follow the line.
"Hey, it does! That's so cool," he cheers, tracing the line with a finger. "How'd it get like this, you think? Like, what's the line made of?"
“I wouldn't know. I mean, I'm not a geologist."
“I wonder if Tenn's read anything about it. Or Natsume, that guy seems like he knows everything.”
Yamato, who has heard Minami talk about tarot cards, flightless birds, and different kinds of noodles among other things, snorts. “Yeah, I wouldn't put it past him."
Gaku nods, but he's gone back to examining the rock. Honestly, Yamato hadn't expected him to get this excited about a slightly unusual-looking beach rock, to inspect it so closely from every angle.
It's kind of cute.
(—no. No. Scratch that thought.)
Gaku turns the rock over around one more time, before holding it out to Yamato. "Here, you can have it back now."
Yamato reaches out to take it back, but he looks at Gaku's smiling face and pauses.
“…actually, nah." He shakes his head. "You can keep it.”
“Eh?" Gaku's eyes widen. "Really?”
“Yeah. You have it, it’s the same color as your eyes.”
Steel-gray with a slightly blueish tint. Now that Yamato's looking it's uncanny how similar it is to Gaku's eyes. There's even these lighter streaks around his pupils that match the rock's white stripe.
As soon as he says it though, Yamato realizes just how stupid it sounds, and he winces and hurriedly backpedals.
“Fuck, shit, that sounds so stupid it just slipped out of me I'm sorry—"
Gaku doesn't say anything. He slowly pulls back his hand to examine the rock again.
"Are they really the same color?" He asks.
Yamato winces. "…you don't actually have to keep it just because of that."
Gaku shakes his head. He wordlessly pockets the rock.
Then, suddenly, he's pushing himself to his feet.
“Wait here.”
Yamato frowns as he starts to walk away. “Hey, where are you going?”
Gaku stops and turns to him, with a determined smile. “I’m gonna find a cool rock for you, too.”
“Wha—" Yamato gapes. "You don’t have to! Sit down!”
“It’s fine! You gave me a cool rock that's the same color as my eyes, so I'm gonna get one for you!"
“It’s a rock! I literally picked it up off the—there's rocks everywhere here!”
“Good! I’ll find the coolest one for you, then!”
He's even pumping his fists. When he gets excited about something like this, there's no stopping him. (Was the stupid rock really that important for him?)
Yamato gives up. "You know what—sure, okay." He splays his hands behind him and leans on them with a sigh. "Go ahead. Good luck finding a mildew green rock anywhere here, but if you wanna try I’m not gonna stop you.”
He half-expects Gaku to whoop and immediately run off on his little personal quest.
He doesn't.
When Yamato looks, Gaku's just staring at him. He's no longer smiling.
“Dude.”
“What?" Yamato stares right back. "Why are you looking at me like tha—”
Gaku leans down and flicks him, dead in the center of his forehead.
Yamato yelps and reels backward while cursing him.
“You asshole, what was that for?!”
Gaku plants a hand on his hip. “What do you mean, ‘mildew green’?”
“It's true, isn't it?” Yamato glares at him from under the hand he’s pressing over his forehead. Fucking ow. “Look into my eyes and tell me they aren't mold-colored.”
“But they aren't!"
"They definitely are!"
"They're not! They’re just grayish-green!”
“Yeah, exactly!" Yamato huffs. "I think you need your eyes checked.”
“I'm not the one wearing glasses here." Gaku crosses his arms. "And they're not mold-colored!”
This is going nowhere. Yamato throws his arms up. “You know what, fine—prove it to me then if you’re so sure they’re not!”
Gaku stamps his foot. “Fine! I fucking will!”
"Good fucking luck!"
"I won't fucking need it!"
And with that, Gaku turns on his heel and storms off towards the shoreline.
Yamato has to move his hand over his mouth to muffle his laughter.
It's dumb. It's childish. They were petty squabbling over a rock.
He doesn't think Gaku will actually find a rock in the color of his eyes here. There's lots of rocks, but rocks of any shade of green aren't exactly common, especially one in the same dull color as Yamato's eyes.
But he got Gaku to leave on a wild goose chase. Finally, some peace.
He lies back down, intent on finally getting a well-deserved nap.
…but now he can't seem to feel sleepy at all. It’s a little too quiet, now that Gaku’s left. Which is stupid, because it isn't quiet at all, there's the wind and the waves, and they hadn't even been talking that much earlier. But still, the wind and waves and even the warm sunlight don't feel nearly as comforting as they did earlier.
Yamato tosses and turns a couple more times, keeping his eyes stubbornly closed the whole time. No dice. Reluctantly, he gives up and sits.
(Ugh. Gaku was right, there's so much sand in his hair now. He takes a minute to shake off as much of it as he can, but either way he'll definitely need to wash it when they get back to the hotel later.)
Yamato doesn't know how much time has passed already. Gaku is a good distance away, wandering the shoreline while looking to the ground. He's easily recognizable, even from a distance, because he's so fair he practically glitters. Earlier he'd had to apply a metric fuck ton of sunscreen so he wouldn't burn and turn into a cooked lobster before their live tomorrow; he'd even gotten Yamato to help him with it.
He doesn't look like he'll be giving up anytime soon. Yamato watches him for a little longer, before taking out his phone.
He hasn't actually used it all day, except to take a few photos. (He has a pretty good one from lunch earlier, of Gaku very enthusiastically trying a Hiroshima-yaki piled high with soba, but Yamato doubts he can upload it online without risking Gaku's cool guy reputation. Maybe he'll just keep it for possible future blackmail.) So, he's surprised when he turns it on and is greeted by a lot of RabbiChat notifications, all from the ZRTI groupchat.
The reason for the high activity becomes apparent once he opens the chat and starts scrolling. Everyone else is out exploring Hiroshima too, each in their own groups, and they're all using the ZRTI groupchat as a photo dumping ground. Sou is out with Touma and Minami, Ichi and Tama are with Haruka, Nagi is with the twins; the largest group is Re:vale and Mitsu and Ryuu and Torao, though from their photos it looks like they'd been two separate groups that ran into each other and merged into one group after that.
Yamato finds himself grinning as he scrolls through everyone's photos. (Some of them he has to raise his eyebrows at, though—there is no way Momo can upload that photo of Mitsu on Ryuu's shoulders and Torao frowning up at them both.) They all look like they're having a lot of fun.
It hits him, then, that he and Gaku are the only two people who are hanging out in a pair. Everyone else is in groups of at least three. Well, there's Re:vale, but they're always going out as a pair, in typical old married couple fashion.
A vague, heavy feeling pools in his gut at the thought. He closes out of RabbiChat.
When he looks up, Gaku is a bit further away. He's still looking. As Yamato watches, he has to stop and shield his eyes against a particularly sharp gust of wind; it messes up his hair something fierce. It still looks infuriatingly good on him.
Yamato switches to his gallery and looking through the photos he'd taken today. He's never been a selfie person, so his photos are all of other things besides himself. A photo of his seatmates on their flight to Hiroshima this morning (they hadn't even taken off yet, and poor Tama already had Ichi's hand in a death grip). A few shots through the car window on the way to their hotel. Some photos at the okonomiyaki restaurant where he and Gaku had lunch. Random photos wandering around the city, of interesting shop displays and the handsome stray cat they ran into on a street corner. A panorama of the Bayside Beach when they arrived.
Gaku is in a lot of these photos. There's the aforementioned sneak-pic of him eating his yakisoba. There's two photos and a video of him trying and failing to beckon the stray cat. A photo of him checking out a Koi Castle miniature and a curtain of tiny paper cranes in a shop display. In the corner of the beach panorama, making a silly face.
He knows Gaku took more pictures than he did, and more selfies too, because Yamato distinctly remembers being pulled into a lot of them. But there were none of them in the photo dumping ground on the ZRTI groupchat. Neither of them have been on their phones all day.
Over in the distance, Gaku's rolled his pants up to his knees and is up to his lower calves in the water, still looking. He's fair already, but the typically covered parts of him are downright snow-pale.
(No. Stop. Stop looking.)
Yamato switches to Rabbitter and scrolls randomly for a bit, but he doesn't see anything particularly noteworthy or interesting. Some of the photos from the main chat have already been put online, but they're all from earlier in the afternoon, so he doubts there will be any more for the time being.
Gaku is now too far away to properly see.
There's not much to see on Insta, either. A few fans have had run-ins with the other groups and posted selfies with them. Ichi doesn't have a Rabbitter, so his photos are posted here instead. And—
Yamato's heart drops.
He forgot that Gaku uses Insta more than Rabbitter, too. He hasn't been active here either—but an hour ago he posted a 6-second video that must have been taken when they first arrived at the beach.
It's of Yamato himself, recorded from behind as he stands and watches the horizon.
Watching recordings of yourself is horribly embarrassing. Yamato thinks he'll probably never get used to it.
Gaku must have edited the video somehow. Enhanced it, put some kind of filter on. Or maybe it's the phone camera quality, and it's leagues better than Yamato's own. There is no way he naturally looks like that.
The caption just says "mesmerizing".
Yamato closes out of Insta and has to take a second to breathe.
“Nikaidou!”
And suddenly Gaku's here, dropping to his knees at Yamato's side.
Yamato nearly chokes.
“Bitch, I could've had a heart attack—”
“Nikaidou look!" Gaku's grinning wildly, his eyes sparkling with excitement; he's almost too blinding to look at directly. "See, I did find a cool rock for you! Well, it’s not really a rock, but it’s very cool and it’s the color of your eyes!”
And he tugs at Yamato's hand and drops a sea glass into his palm.
It’s roughly the same size and even the same shape as the rock, albeit more pointed on the top that it’s nearly triangular. The texture is frosty rather than glossy-smooth like he’d been expecting.
The glass is also a dark gray-ish green, with tiny white speckles all over its surface.
“That’s not all!” Then Gaku’s grabbing his wrist and guiding it upwards; Yamato nearly fumbles the sea glass, but he manages to not drop it. “Here, hold it up to the light.”
The sun is beginning to set, tinting the sky and the sea a fiery orange. Yamato wordlessly obliges, shaking off Gaku's hand and lifting the glass to his eye—
And finds his breath stolen away when it lights up, illuminated just so by the sun and turning a warm, almost golden olive brown.
“That’s what color your eyes are,” Gaku murmurs. Yamato isn’t looking at him, but he can hear the way he’s smiling. “You called it 'mold' green like it's an ugly color, but it's not—and the thing is they're not even just grayish-green, y'know that? Because they look like white gold at high noon and like olives at sunset and like flint in a dark room, and even this one sea glass doesn't cover all of them! There's so many different colors in your eyes! And they're all really pretty—!"
"Okay, okay, I get it!" Yamato squawks, hunching his shoulders and covering his face to hide his blush. Gaku's voice rises the more passionate he gets, and if he keeps going he might end up shouting poetic about Yamato's eyes to the entire Bayside Beach. Thankfully, Gaku does quiet down, and Yamato gets a chance to catch his breath.
He's still holding the sea glass in one hand. It feels curiously warm to the touch. Like someone had been holding it for a long time before giving it to him—turning it over and over to inspect it from every angle.
He probably should say thank you. Or at least say something else. Gaku's probably waiting for some kind of response.
What comes out of his mouth next is this:
“Shit, now I feel kind of bad.”
Gaku makes a confused noise. "What for?”
Yamato lowers his hands, but doesn't look at Gaku. (He doesn't think he can look directly at him yet, not without spontaneously combusting.) “Sea glass is like, incredibly rare? At least I think it is. And all I got you was a random rock—”
"Nope!"
He nearly flinches when Gaku holds out a finger very close to his mouth in a shushing gesture.
"No feeling bad! I will not allow it!"
"But—"
"I'm not hearing it! It might be a random rock to you, but it's a very cool rock so we're even."
His voice lilts upwards as he speaks—a very familiar tone. He's inviting Yamato to banter with him. To petty-squabble about some dumb, childish thing, as they can only do with each other.
So Yamato smiles and raises an eyebrow, and follows along.
"Oh yeah? Says who?"
"Says me. Hey, no, I see that face you're making at me, you gave me the rock so I get to decide what I think about it, and I think it's cool as hell so you can stuff it!"
"Okay, okay, fine. You seven year old."
"Hey!"
They end up arguing like this for the rest of the evening, through the sunset (which they can't even see because Hiroshima is on the east coast, a fact neither of them realized for way too long), and the whole way back to the hotel. When they finally get there, Yamato's cheeks hurt from grinning and laughing so much.
They probably didn't have to worry about creating a script for their MC sessions at all. They will have to be careful not to break character too much on stage, but they can probably do it.
The sea glass burns a hole in his pocket over dinner with everyone else. Yamato and Gaku sit with their respective groups this time, and Yamato silently wonders if Gaku is holding onto his beach rock the whole time, too.
He doesn't take out the sea glass until hours later, in the safety of his bedroom and long after Sou, who he's sharing a room with, is asleep. (He probably shouldn't staying up so late considering tomorrow's liveshow, but he just can't bring himself to go to sleep.)
In the artificial lighting, the sea glass is so dark it's nearly black. Yamato wonders what color his eyes look in this lighting.
There's so many different colors in your eyes! And they're all really pretty—
The glass isn't warm to the touch anymore.
He puts the sea glass into his bag, careful so it doesn't get lost or buried under anything.
Then he grabs his pillow and buries his face into it to muffle his scream.
