Work Text:
The day after the getaway in a luxury hotel in Okinawa was placed under the sign of recovery, and general relief. Some were exhausted by the disease revealed as benign, and others by their physical prowess of the past night.
Taisei had woken up at dawn, remains of a habit of a student with a hard-to-shake-off rhythm. By his side was Takuya, with whom he was a roomate, as the latter needed, a few hours ago, a careful look towards his condition...
Or, moreso, it was what Taisei had found to establish their chamber-sharing, unable to push his concern - or his gaze on his ailing friend - away so early.
Seeing everyone at the lowest was so real, and so stressful, that he still lived through the aftermath of it, while the glows of the ocher sunrise of the paradise island embroidered the room, by its bay window. He had assured of the well-being of Hara, Hazama and this secretive idiot that was Terasaka before, but to see Muramatsu, there, in a bed, recovering...
Had he not been exhausted by the getaway and the emotional roller coaster, he would have found in him the ability to keep himself awake all night so as not to lose sight of him. This same momentum prevented him from falling back, even if it could pass time faster.
It was different for reasons that were abstract to him. He had already seen him do well, his friend, but it was more than a descent of too many remains to be thrown at once, or of a too-tiring P.E. class. It was another, unchanging force, which could have swept all his friends without being him able to do anything about it.
"Oh, what is making you all like that?"
Yoshida turned around, discovering a Hazama back on foot. But the goth did not have the plan to discuss her convalescence.
"I, who had my bet on Kanzaki,.. I may have put my eggs in the wrong basket."
"Immediately, the big words."
"Surprising it went past me for so long, though."
"Don't go and laugh at me, you're imagining stuff, Hazama."
"Ah yes? Is it delusions, or is it the advent of the intrinsic truth, oppressed for years by your social blinders?"
"It's nothing, really. Nothing to report, go back to your books, you'll find something to dig your entertainement from."
"You're no less troubled. We can discuss it, if you want."
"I obviously trust you more than other pals, but the damn Octopus might as well be on our case, eavedropping.
"I would be as quiet as a tomb."
The saying corresponded to her funny well.
"And if Sir Koro turns out to tumble..." A threatening aura, (or, more threatening than usual,) embellished with an anti-sensei knife in a hand and a plethora of teacher-phobic hunting accessories in the other, had the merit of proving her good faith.
"It's still weird that it falls on me like that, right? I have never been the type to know emotions, all that..."
"Being in sync with feelings, maybe, but with this case of Muramatsu, you know how to do, and not half as bad! Serious, you almost equalize with Rinka and Chiba."
"Exaggeration."
"Not at all. Everyone sees it, your harmonization. Afterwards, what it contains beyond physical operations... "
“Tch. Go rest, you must still have a fever. ”
"You're free to see for yourself. I wouldn't say. I would not dare! You will thank your mother, by the way. Its edition of Cent Ans de Solitude is great. ”
“It’s not surprising that you are connected to such gloomy stuff. But hey, seen as I got broke my back to bring you this brick, so much the better as this depressing great tome is to your taste. ”
“It can be used, if you have to find yourself breaking a window.”
Yoshida had a start of dread by thinking back to Grip, and the glass tile broken by his murderer's hands; But he didn't let anything appear. The least he can do, he thought, is to save these sordid memories to his friends. Their health had taken a hit, it was best not to abuse their mind.
His eyes were found on the other friend, Takuya, still relaxed on a bed. Without being completely grounded in the present time, reflections invaded him; To say that, at something close, his room would be empty, lonely, and the Colombian novel would be abandoned, an elegant bookmark slipped inside, forever.
The bed, which had previously caught his attention, quickly found itself deserted. In a return of view, it was that of Muramatsu that geared up to observe the other.
"You don't look good." he observed, crouching in front of his aforementioned friend who was seated at the end of his own bed.
"Eh? Hazama went out?”
"Yes." He turned his head towards the door, to his right. “Over time, we are supposed to be used to her discretion, but despite everything…”
"She is an ace in the field, we gotta admit."
Taisei says that just in time; From then on, Takuya came to sit down by his side, still not leaving his eyes. It cut his voice.
"Do you want to tell me? I woke up, and I saw you, you didn't look good. ”
"Thank you for saying that I'm ugly." rolled his eyes the other, taken aback.
"You know that it is not that I meant, dumbass, and normally you would have understood without having to open my mouth. But I still want to reassure you, you are really handsome for someone who was all worked up yesterday."
"I was all worked up? And you then, you think you were fresh, with your high as hell fever?!”
Their common concern, towards their best friend, couldn't be tamed, and got along in their still pasty voices. The precision brought about the front temperature proved a certain degree of added involvement.
"I don't say that. But as long as we're at it, you didn't compliment me yourself..." The blonde smile seemed to illuminate the room.
This is what the brown-haired thought, at least, which was an exemplary example of objectivity towards his super best friend of life.
"You're not too disgusting," He got into the game. "Is it fine, squash?"
"What is this nickname, again?"
"Dunno who made the comparison, but between you and a sponge squash, there is something. Hidden parenting, or something.”
“Please, it looks like the trashy soap opera series of two thousand episodes that my mother is watching. So much plot twists, it breaks the brain.”
"Are you sure it's not just that you are not in the hype?"
"Ah, but I don't know. Once, I procrastinated a biology homework, and went to watch the thing to stop trying to get the whole mitosis thing, and it was like..."
He took great inspiration, dramatic but concentrated.
“The owner of the bar was the ex-husband of the daughter of the real estate agent of a ruined hotel, which was undermined by the maneuver of the cousin of the neighbor of the sister of the hidden grandfather of the butcher who had the dog of the hairdresser who had hidden her pregnancy and the father was the brother of the father of the cousin of the neighbor of the teacher's boyfriend ... ”
“In short, very convoluted.” he sighed out, out of breath.
"Just that!" Yoshida retained himself during the monologue, but he went on to burst out laughing. "It's precise, your memory, when it is not for arithmetic secondary functions."
"Ah no, but it was just too much, it had to saturate the little gray matter that I have!"
Their laughs continued.
"Especially since this is what's kept in my forehead, it is the funniest thing, despite the fact that it boiled yesterday."
The atmosphere fell, and Yoshida could not hide its bitterness what it was referring to. Muramatsu realized this, and hastened to heal the gloom of his friend.
"I assure you that I'm fine. I was just goofing around. ”
"You better be! I was worried, y'know. ”
He thought back to his past frenzy. In the blink of an eye, everything seemed to be on top below, without being able to do anything. His friends were sick, in danger, all because of this damn trip. If he had known, he would never have so much worked to have that as a reward!
What a poisoned gift it was.
The idea that all of his dearest friends could be withdrawn from him, the prospect that is an after, a future without Hazama, Hara, Muramatsu ... It had stung him, enraged. He was not the only one, but it is as if a certainty well installed in his heart it was released in a new light.
Mechanically, his arms intertwined Takuya, still by his side, at the edge of the bed.
"I really thought I lost you, shit." He formulated, on the verge of tears.
"I know." He replied, no less turned upside down.
"What?"
“I still had a little conscience. Especially for you. I may have been groggy, but I made sense of your panic. I heard you lose your means. Oh, damn, if only I had been able to reassure you..."
"You do it now." Their embrace tightened - they tightened their embrace; They were closer than ever.
“So I'm happy. I'm so happy to be with you, Taisei. ”
"You know, cogitating - psychotizing - on yesterday's events, I thought of something." He said, his eyes turned on a floor detail to match his thoughts and express himself distinctly. In a caress at the bottom of his back, he knew he was heard by an intrigued ear.
"I ended up thinking, despite everything, of our future, my life, and your life, and my life with you, and in our life, and..."
He extricated himself a little from the hug, to look at Muramatsu, albeit always physically linked.
“And I want a future with you. And I thought, why not a joint business for us two! ” He had started to explain, with the brilliance of his characteristic eyes with which he explained everything on everything by contribution to motorcycles, or mechanics, or both.
This adorable glow, in the dark of his iris; Takuya was sure, he couldn't do without it. He would do everything and anything to protect it.
"Imagine." He continued, enthusiastic in his project, waving his hands to represent his staging."There would be your restaurant, that you would have saved the grip of your father, and I could manage motorcycle models to exhibit."
“Like, something themed?”
"Maybe! Shall we do it?"
The biker had not remarked, at first, but the cook had slipped his hands into his. By noticing, a funny feeling travelled through his spine.
"Yes. You have good ideas, when you put yourself in it..." he gently roasted.
“Always breaking the impactful moments! You are not believable. "
"This is why you love me, huh?" He continued his joke. “My bullshit, you would really miss it too much.”
“Yes, and yes.”
It was the turn of the jokester at being speechless. He didn't expect to be taken seriously. But be appreciated, and knowing your own... affectionate certainties returned to him by the object of his own? He didn't say no.
Takuya was not the type to look at the future with an air full of a prioris, or even, on account of this, with the slightest touch of conviction. Having a wife, kids, and a shabby restaurant, it hardly made dream the middleschoolder. It was perhaps that, his impulse in the non-ambition, which had posed him, by a passade of fate, to be in the orbit of Terasaka.
But for that, he was anything but ungrateful; From this fortuitous friendship, he had come to know Taisei. And from there, the rest is in history, and constitutes their present. Looking in the eyes of Yoshida, he could only imagine a future, woven in two.
It was a certainty that was built and that strengthened every day that his heart was beating alongside his. He could override his doubts, his fears, and find himself reassured by the one who knew him best; And that he knew the same, at his fingertips.
“Eh! It’s you who find yourself in the clouds, I point out to you. ” The brunet took revenge, smiling. He had lost so much in his reminiscences?!
"I... I make my part to imagine what life we will have, that the future has in store for us."
“Not only good things, but…”
"Great, optimism." The blond winked, faking offense.
“But,” said the one who did not allow himself to be cut down. “When I see you … er, and, when I am with you, I know I can face it. I know it.”
It doesn't matter how much he reformulated, his slip had caused the biker cheeks to take colors, even if he was trying to be solemn.
‘Me too, bellhead.” The cook initiated physical contact again, resting his head on the other's shoulder, their backs resting against the end of the bed.
They could have stayed like that forever, if it was just upon them. Yoshida looked at the hands of Takuya, the memory of them trembling, sweating and reddened only starting to fade. He wanted to give way to happy memories, and he knew his acolyte capable of offering him this. Takuya, a little more contorted, his temple stuck with the collarbone of the other.
"We have to build better memories than this damn virus and everything that followed." He had said aloud what they were thinking both.
"You're right. This is a wonderful decor that we have, and we weren't lazy earnin' it! We have to take advantage of it. "
“It’s true that it’s beautiful. It was worth the blow that you harped my ears 'bout Home Economics. ”
"Stop, haven't you loved my revision sessions?" smiled the brunet.
"Yeah, you were cool... compared to this pest of Hazama. "
"Ah well, awesome, I'll tell her that."
The blond was piqued, and sprung up his head out of where he was so, so comfortable... to reply with fervor.
"You wouldn't do that!"
To protest, rather.
"Don't you worry, I won't. But you are right," Yoshida followed his friend with the look, fulfilled. "We have to do something. Shall we wait for the others?” He did not know if he referred to the class, or to their small group.
“No, do you think? Me, I would like to spend a little time face to face - well, as a rendezvous of sort-! I mean, with you! ...You got me."
Muramatsu was touched by the same electric shiver, caused by a tongue that slipped, words that get tangled.
The two boys, their hands limply in the other, descended the stairs of the hotel. When the glow of a calm afternoon, a pink sky served as a backdrop, when they removed their shoes on the beach.
“Our kicks will be filled with sand!”
“Meh. This is a problem for later. " shrugged Muramatsu, seated on the golden floor.
Yoshida offered him his hand, and they went to venture, gradually walking towards the horizon, leaving their feet, then their legs, and so on, immerse in the water.
Finally, in their bubble, far from the rest; it is the sea that will keep a memory of their first kisses, confined in their own little moment, with the calm waves as company. It was the original, but surely not the last, of these kinds of intimate moments.
Their comrades may have unraveled their emotions during the courage test, but they were content; they knew the other, and had laid their feelings flat for the other to reach. They decided they were ready to wait together for what the future held for them. More together than ever.
The memories of Okinawa would no longer be marked by panic, but rather by a bond that is transformed, hands that are found and lips that are discovered, now.
The destination of their honeymoon, many years later, was no doubt. The remains of sand, housed in their shoesoles, would forever be invaluable.