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The first time Enji’s fingers graze against his back in the middle of the night, he thinks it’s a warning.
He learned to sleep lightly. His dreams have never been anything to write home about anyway, if one has a place to write to, so it’s not like he was missing much.
He rolls over and sits up in the same motion. Split-seconds count. The adrenaline ricochets through his brain like a billion tiny rubber-band balls. He can just make out the shape of Enji’s shoulders in the dark, which gives him approximate face coordinates to direct the question to.
“What’s wrong?”
Enji stirs. Sleeping light.
Then Enji draws his hand back, wedging it underneath himself to raise his head and half of his torso. His breathing accelerates. “What?”
Way too bleary. A fragment of light catches on the gleam of his eyes as he blinks.
Huh.
Keigo reaches out and scratches at the rust-colored stubble, because Enji can’t bat his hand away and stay upright at the same time. “Sorry. Nothing. Guess I woke myself up.”
Enji tries to dodge his hand and spectacularly fails. “Knock it off.”
“I don’t know how,” Keigo says, but he does have a merciful bone or two in his body somewhere. Probably part of a toe. He lays his palm against the side of Enji’s neck instead and nudges him, which makes Enji start settling back down.
Creating the perfect opportunity to lean in and start kissing all over his face.
“Hawks,” Enji says, and the tiny little spurt of flame off the curve of his ear—redirected there so that it’ll miss Keigo’s hair, a hard-earned lesson that neither of them would care to review—is positively adorable.
“Can’t help it,” Keigo says. Browbone, nose bridge, forehead, cheekbone, mouth, mouth, jaw, mouth, chin, mouth, mouth, mouth— “Look at you.”
“It’s dark.”
“Look at you, figuratively, in excruciating detail in my mind’s eye.”
Enji’s hand finds him again, although this time it’s to plant a very warm palm in the center of his chest and shove gently. “Go to sleep.”
Admittedly, it’s painfully ironic, in a way—how much of life you have to spend unconscious and unappreciative. Keigo used to look forward to passing out and making the world disappear for a couple hours. These days, he’s never quite sure he wants to. These days, he wants to dig his fingers into every last damn minute, and God help anyone who tries to pry them away.
But he can hear the ring of weariness in Enji’s voice, and Enji gets what he asks for, here. Here, with him, Enji will get the whole fucking world, if he wants it—if he ever so much as breathes the word.
“Okay, okay,” Keigo says. He pulls the sheets back up over Enji’s shoulder, then drops to the mattress—starfishing it this time instead of curling up on his side with an eye to the window. He folds the little wings over his back. He can just see the rise and fall of Enji’s shoulder when he squints. “Goodnight. Again.”
Enji’s arm extends across the space, and his fingertips brush Keigo’s cheek. Then his arm retracts, and his breathing slows, and the hush sinks in.
Keigo smiles to himself, and closes his eyes.
The days scrape him out until he’s empty, and the nights blur together.
Life’s a bitch, and then you bite it, so you might as well bite off more than you can chew. You have to do what you can with what you have.
And he has a lot, these days. He has a lot.
He’s never had this much before.
He’s never had this much to lose.
The second time Enji’s touch to his side wakes him at some godawful fuckoff hour of the midnight-morning, he opens his eyes, blinks a couple times, and considers the inputs more carefully.
Enji is still sleep-breathing. He doesn’t even have to extend his arm all the way to reach across the mattress. His hand is as warm as always—tiny firebrand fingerprints on Keigo’s skin.
Interesting.
Keigo stays still for a few seconds, tracking the rhythm of Enji’s breath. Enji doesn’t fidget, doesn’t shift, doesn’t move at all.
So—experimentally—Keigo does.
He slides over just far enough to pull himself away from Enji’s hand, letting Enji’s loosely-curled fingers drop onto the sheet.
They curl a little tighter, and then Enji’s hand rests where it lies.
Keigo watches it for another second, squinting hard in the dark. Cloudier night tonight. He can make out the pale shapes of Enji’s fingers against the white sheet.
He waits. Enji keeps breathing steadily. He still doesn’t move.
Keigo gives it precisely ninety seconds and then scoots back over to his previous spot, nudging his ribs against Enji’s knuckles.
Enji’s fingers uncurl. They lay themselves against his skin again. They don’t seem to be seeking anything else, or doing anything—just pressing very, very gently. Just verifying him.
Huh.
Well, Keigo has slept in spite of much bigger distractions. And in a way, it’s kind of nice—a pleasant faint pressure, and a small outlet of Enji’s perpetual warmth.
He closes his eyes and breathes deep.
The time runs like a nose—quickly and quietly, unmourned, easy to deprioritize but impossible to stop. It oozes through his fingers like snot.
He wants to cling on to it tighter. He wants to savor every second. But he’s tired. And it’s gooey. And he doesn’t know if there are chunks of coagulated phlegm.
He shares this sophisticated metaphor with Enji.
Enji asks him if he’s sick.
He says “Only lovesick!”, complete with batted eyelashes and pursed lips.
Enji pushes him off the couch.
The third time is different.
The third time, he wakes up when Enji’s hand grasps his shoulder and starts to shake him gently.
He grapples on instinct, scrambling to get his hands around Enji’s wrist, blinking faster to try to convince his eyes to focus.
Moonlight and shadow drape in dramatic bands across Enji’s face, pooling in its sharp angles and authoritative lines. Flawless. No notes.
He doesn’t look especially grim or particularly scared. Just… concerned, maybe. Intent. Like he’s waiting for something.
“You okay?” Keigo asks, pretending not to notice the way his voice scratches.
“Are you?” Enji asks.
Keigo blinks at him some more. Enji’s beautiful eyes stay narrowed.
Keigo blinks down at himself instead—what little of himself he can see around the bedsheets, anyway. They’re slightly tangled around him. Now that he’s taking stock, he does feel a little clammy-sweaty. And groggy as hell, but he’s gradually getting used to that part.
“You were talking in your sleep,” Enji says, very slowly.
Ah.
Fuck.
His heart still hangs in the back of his throat—a knot of cardiac muscle pulsing too hard, too fast, trying to shake itself loose.
Enji would let him disentangle it. Enji would help him unravel it, one snarled thread at a time. Enji would sit up with him as long as it took.
Keigo’s not about to do that to him.
But knowing it—believing it, trusting that he’d stay—helps a little on its own.
“Let me guess,” Keigo says. “I was telling knock-knock jokes, and they were so funny that you just couldn’t stop laughing, and you had to wake me up so that you could get back to sleep.”
Enji looks at him for a long moment, clearly weighing the merits of telling the truth and ruining the moment, or just letting it go.
He always will, though.
Tell the truth, that is.
And ruin the moment, a lot of the time.
Keigo loves him for both.
Enji searches Keigo’s eyes for a few more seconds before breathing deep.
“You were saying ‘Please’,” Enji says. “Over and over.”
Keigo steamrolls the prickle of trepidation. “Asking for a third helping of ice cream, probably.”
Enji eyes him. “It didn’t sound like it.” He hesitates, hesitates, and then lifts his hand and brushes his fingertips over Keigo’s collarbones. “Moot point. Go back to sleep.”
“Man,” Keigo says, making a point of dropping like a sack of potatoes. The pillow’s too warm. “I gotta step up my sleep-talking comedy routine. Need to tailor it for my audience. I’m exclusively doing dad jokes next time.”
In the silence, he wonders what he always does, what he can’t help, what he can’t change.
Too far this time, right? Too much. He’s always been too much. He’s always going to run up against the limits of people’s patience, use up their tolerance, wear out his welcome, wear them thin.
Enji sighs.
“Hi, exclusively doing dad jokes next time,” he says, indescribably wearily. “I’m Dad.”
The laugh jackknifes up Keigo’s throat so jaggedly that he chokes on his own spit.
Enji whacks his back a couple of times.
“You’re doing a number on my beauty rest, babe,” Keigo wheezes out when he has, unfortunately for all involved parties, recovered the ability to speak. “When I start getting withered and ugly, I know who to blame.”
Enji looks at him.
He looks back.
“That’s going on the color-coded list of Dumbest Shit I’ve Ever Said,” Keigo says. “Isn’t it?”
Enji reaches out and messes up his hair. “Near the top.” Keigo gazes at him until he arches his right eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothin’,” Keigo says. “Just can’t believe you’re stealing my comedy material in my hour of need.”
“Need for what?” Enji mutters, but then he’s shifting, and then he’s leaning, and then he’s slinging his warm arm across Keigo’s waist, wrapping it around him, and effortlessly tugging him over.
Keigo can’t remember what the dream was about. Doesn’t make much difference, given the spinning prize wheel of mediocre possibilities.
And it’s done, anyway. Now is more important. Now is way better.
“Undermining my ambitious new career choice before I’ve even made it out of the gate,” Keigo mumbles into Enji’s chest. “What kind of supportive boyfriend are you?”
“Sorry,” Enji says.
Keigo snuggles in. Bliss. “No, you’re not.”
Enji’s heartbeat thuds steadily against his skin, and Enji’s fingers slide through his hair. “No, I’m not.”
The time runs like a broken faucet, and Keigo’s never been much good at fixing shit.
It goes too fast. Ain’t that a knee-slapper? The days flicker by him, petals falling from the sky, swept past him by a sharp breeze, and their color has already faded by the time they hit the ground. It feels like half of his own life is happening while his back is turned. It feels like he’s always going to miss the best parts—like he’s always going to look in the right direction a little bit too late.
There just isn’t enough of it—life, time, lifetime. Not enough heartbeats. Not enough to count.
But they didn’t ask him, before they designed this shitty thrill ride. They didn’t consult him on the safety features or warn him where the track would go. They just strapped him in and hit the gas. That’s what you get.
All you can do is make the best of it, and the most of it, and love as hard as you can fucking stand.
All you can do is hold on tight and try.
Which isn’t so bad, when you dig right down to it.
It’s not so bad at all.
The fourth time Enji’s touch draws him out of dreamland, Keigo is sleeping on his front again—he’s gotten used to that. It’s easier on the wings, more or less, although sometimes it strains his shoulders. It’s better than curling up like a shrimp, though, which was his go-to for long enough that he’s convinced he made the scoliosis worse.
Enji’s fingertips settle like a spotlight from a sunbeam, just above his hip.
Keigo seems to have trained his brain to recognize that this specific sensation isn’t a threat—at least to the extent that he wakes up slower, without a single spike of panic this time.
He lets himself just enjoy it for a couple of seconds—the easy intimacy of it. He’s figured out by now that nothing like this has ever been easy for Enji before. Obviously that’s not entirely to his credit, but he does think he should get a pat on the back for smoothing the ride a little bit.
Or a pat on the side, apparently.
It’s nicer than he expected—being touched, gently, offhandedly, by someone you love, who loves you back. Recognizing the way that the warmth of every physical connection—no matter how small or brief or casual—reinforces the feeling that motivated the movement. Every second Enji’s hand rests on him means something. Every second matters.
He doesn’t even have to do anything. He doesn’t have to earn it, doesn’t have to fight for it, doesn’t have to prove his worth. He doesn’t have to do anything more than what he’s doing already—doesn’t have to do anything other than exist—and Enji reaches for him in his sleep.
It’s too dark again tonight to see much, but watching Enji’s shoulder rise and fall, a deeper dark against the gray of the room beyond, is weirdly comforting.
Keigo used to be afraid of the dark even though he was the worst thing in it. He still tenses walking past alleyways, still avoids anyplace the city lights don’t sink their searing teeth. He still keeps one eye on the shadows and holds his breath to listen hard to every single silence.
Keigo used to be afraid of the dark, but Enji makes his own light.
Enji, for his part, used to be afraid of losing.
Now he’s only afraid of losing people.
Keigo unfolds his right arm from underneath the pillow and reaches down to slip his hand into Enji’s, nudging it away from his side just far enough to settle on the sheet.
Enji doesn’t move, and his breathing pattern doesn’t change, but his fingers curl in around Keigo’s—not too tight. Close enough to cradle them, but not to cage him.
The time runs like the water in the stream near his parents’ house—swift and cool and uncontrollable, liberating in its endlessness, sparkling in the sunlight, far too quick to keep up with.
Keigo squeezes very gently.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, the words tiptoeing over the soft, pale curve of the mattress. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Enji’s next breath leaves a little slower, the humid heat unfurling out across the sheet to kiss at Keigo’s face.
“I know,” Keigo says. He strokes the pad of his thumb over Enji’s knuckles and then leaves their joined hands resting in between them. “I love you, too.”
His hand is going to be all sweaty in the morning.
Worth it, though.
He closes his eyes and lets Enji’s steady breathing lull him back to sleep.