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Kazutora stares up at the sky and finds it to be darker than he’d been expecting.
When he’d first arrived at the abandoned car lot, pressing along beside an obnoxiously-grinning Hanma and a stony-faced Baji, it had been—bright. Brighter than what it’s been like as of late, at least, and Kazutora had allowed himself a quiet moment to glance upwards.
The sun wasn’t exactly beating down on them, it was still the tail end of a chilly October, after all, but it was there all the same, glinting towards Kazutora’s twitchy gaze like it wanted him to stare towards it for the rest of time and never look away. Bright, and yellow, and warm - too warm for somebody like Kazutora, though, who was only used to cold hands, frosty words, and that glacial feeling of loss that spreads, and spreads, and spreads.
He’d looked away only a second later.
But now he looks back again, back towards the sky, back towards the sun’s tumultuous abode, and finds himself unable to locate that bright star. His brows furrow somewhat, pinching together on his sheet-white face. His fingers twist as much as they can, but he doesn’t find himself grasping onto all that much.
Baji is ever-quick to notice his unease, and gently soothes a thumb over Kazutora’s cooling cheek. He repeats the motion when Kazutora blinks, and his voice is strangely, impossibly tight as he asks, “what’s up, ‘Tora?”
It takes a long moment for Kazutora to respond. He smacks his lips together, and realises that they taste—metallic, almost. It’s not exactly unfamiliar, but it’s still displeasing.
“The sun,” Kazutora finally says, and his voice is a choppy croak.
“The sun?”
“Is it—” Kazutora has to swallow. His mouth is filling with something thick and unpleasant, and it’s making it hard for his syllables to properly form. “—Is it—gone?”
“Gone?”
“I,” a thin breath, “can’t see it.”
Baji goes quiet for a moment. His lips close, and his body shudders. He doesn’t stop stroking at Kazutora’s cheek, though, almost like the motion is soothing for the both of them. “Well–” He glances up momentarily at the still-bright sky. It hasn’t changed at all, really, since an hour or so ago when this whole mess had started. Everything is still blue. The sun is still there, like it’s mocking him.
The world hasn’t collapsed in on itself even though Baji feels like it definitely has.
Baji returns his gaze back to Kazutora, and finds his heart to be an open wound. “Well,” he repeats. “It’s—” And what is he supposed to say? Does he tell him the truth—is Baji willing to be so cruel by letting Kazutora lay there in his confusion, scared, and upset, and left wondering why the sun has abandoned only him? Is he supposed to let Kazutora feel as if he’s been deserted all over again?
No.
No, he’s not willing to do any of that.
“Yeah, ’s gone, ‘Tora,” Baji says, and he tugs his friend a little closer towards him. He tries not to jostle him too much.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
Kazutora's movements are slow and sluggish, but he manages to turn his head somewhat all the same, pushing a little further into Baji’s lap. Where Kazutora feels impossibly cold, snowflakes dancing over his cheeks, frost crawling along the expanse of his exposed skin, Baji is practically burning.
He doesn’t know why they’re such opposites, but Kazutora can’t really complain. It’s how they’ve always been. Baji has been brash, and loud, and so outspoken, and Kazutora has been meek—quiet, and a little too reserved for a gang member at times. Baji has been brave, and stubborn, and firm whereas Kazutora has been cowardly. Baji has been good, and Kazutora’s hands have been stained a deep red.
They say opposites attract, and it might just be true.
“I miss the sun,” Kazutora admits. His chest feels heavy, and so do his eyes. If the sun was here, maybe they wouldn’t.
Baji already misses the sun, too. He doesn’t think he’s ever going to be able to look at it the same after this. He’s never going to wake up in the morning and think that a bright day means a good day. He’s never going to watch a sunrise and think of all of the new opportunities. He’s never going to feel hot rays against his skin and think of love.
He swallows, and raises a shaky hand.
“But look—look,” he says, “the sun is already here, ‘Tora.” Baji twists his free hand into Kazutora’s hair, gently tugging on the strands. “You’ve got it caught in your hair, see? Bright yellow. It’s warm.”
Kazutora’s laugh is wet. Something splatters against his chin, and then begins to trickle down. It leaves a stark contrast against his paling skin. It’s so red that Baji could cry. “I want long—hair. Long hair. Longer. Like yours. When—when ‘m older.”
Baji feels sick. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” Kazutora says, and he glances back as best he can, tilting so that his gaze meets with Baji’s.
Baji thinks that Kazutora’s golden eyes have never looked so dull.
“Yeah,” he breathes out as Kazutora’s eyelids flutter. “Yeah, we’ll have matching hair. Matching long hair. I promise. You just gotta hold on, okay, ‘Tora?” His voice takes on a more desperate note, now. Baji can’t stop shaking. “Cause—cause we, cause we gotta make it out of here. We gotta make it out of this delinquent shit, we gotta—you gotta get better, and you can’t leave me. You can’t.”
“Baji—”
“I can’t do this without you,” Baji trickles on, a hitch in his breath as he tries to swallow back a sob. He’s only fourteen, after all. He might be some stupid delinquent who enjoys back-talk, and setting things on fire, and punching people until they’re begging for release, but—but beneath that, he’s still fourteen, and he’s still a child, and he still doesn’t know how to deal with—this. All of this. Any of it. “I can’t do it alone. I don’t want to—”
The hand that Kazutora lifts is blood-stained, and weak, and thin, but he lifts it all the same, reaching to grip onto the hand that Baji has in his hair. He twists their fingers together as best he can, dull, dull, dull eyes flashing with something that almost screams of acknowledgement. Like he knows what’s happening. Like he’s aware.
Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t.
Maybe they both like to pretend that everything’s going to be okay.
“Not alone,” Kazutora refutes when Baji’s eyes settle against his own again, as unfocused and blurry as they may be. “Toman,” he adds underneath the mild scrutiny. “Mikey—Mikey. Draken. Mit—Mitsuya. Pah—”
“But they’re not you!” Baji shouts. He feels hot with embarrassment and sick with mortification the moment that the words leave his mouth, but he can’t take them back now. He quietens at least, when he speaks next. “They’re not you, ‘Tora. They’re not you.” The ‘and they never will be’, goes kindly unsaid.
“..Kei.”
Baji squeezes at Kazutora’s hand. Squeezes until his knuckles turn white. Kazutora can’t even feel it anymore, so he doesn’t comment. He lets his friend do whatever he may need.
“You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?” Baji whispers, tone taking on a note of forlorn defeat. “Finally gettin’ out of juvie only to—to go bat shit crazy. To join another gang knowing I’d follow you across the Earth. Doing this to me. To us.”
You could do it again, and I’d still be a single step behind you all the same.
Kazutora’s eyes are slipping shut all over again, and Baji rakes in a shaky breath.
“I mean—seriously. Seriously. Jumping in front of a fuckin’ knife. What were you thinkin’, ‘Tora?”
Baji asks like he doesn’t already know. He asks like he isn’t already aware of what had gone down - how Kazutora had been unstable, and crazed, and half-way towards losing it, but he still hadn’t been able to take Baji out; how Kisaki had gotten frustrated, and irritated, and rushed down to finish the job himself, snatching the knife from Kazutora’s twitchy grip; how Kisaki had tried, and Baji’s eyes had widened, and Kazutora had thrown himself in front of the fatal blow instead.
Baji still remembers the way that Kazutora had babbled, blood staining his hands, body shaking, eyes wild but somehow seeing Baji more clearly than he has done in years.
‘I couldn’t do it,’ he had said. ‘I couldn’t do it. I was scared. I’m scared. Baji, I’m so scared. Please don’t let go of me. Please don’t go. Please. It hurts, it hurts. Why won’t it stop hurting? It hurts. I’m scared—’
Baji can’t help his sniffle. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. This isn’t how it was supposed to go at all.
Kazutora was meant to get out of juvie and come to Baji. He was meant to walk right out into his arms, come back to him again so that they could have dinner with Baji’s mother and bond over a rekindled friendship. He was meant to meet Chifuyu, and reconcile as best he could with Mikey. He was meant to join Toman again, to find his footing after his time away. He was meant to thrive as a new person.
He was meant to come home.
And now he’s laying in Baji’s arms, growing colder as the seconds tick by. He’s splattered in red, and his eyes won’t open anymore, and Baji can’t keep his gaze away from the slow, slow, slow rising and falling of Kazutora’s chest. It’s getting slower. His breaths are getting fainter. He’s fading and Baji doesn’t know what to do.
“‘Tora. Kazutora. ‘Tora.”
“Mm.”
“Kazutora.”
A wet gasp. Kazutora can barely swallow. There’s no sun now that everything’s completely dark. He wants to open his eyes again to at least look at Baji one last time, but he finds himself unable to. He’s just so—tired.
He’s so tired of everything.
Baji’s tone is upset—thin and trembling. His voice is barely there at all. “Please don’t go.”
“Won’t,” Kazutora tries, and his following huff is a pathetic attempt at laughter.
Baji bites his lip hard enough for it to bleed. “Okay.”
“‘Kay.”
Kazutora goes relatively quiet after that. His breathing is laboured, and his heart is faltering, and he makes no move to stop the trail of blood that trickles down the side of his face. He’s impossibly cold within Baji’s grip, all cold, and frail, and so unlike the boy that Baji had once laughed with.
Baji remembers bright giggles and warm eyes. He remembers a heavy arm being slung over his shoulders and the familiar tinkle of a bell. He remembers squishing himself next to Kazutora on his single bed, watching some shitty foreign movie that doesn’t have subtitles, and he remembers scoffing down a chocolate sundae together before Mikey can rush over and demand a bite.
Baji remembers a lot about Kazutora. Almost everything, he’s sure.
It hurts to know that figure laying still, head cushioned in his lap, is a mere shell of the boy he used to be. It hurts in ways that Baji can barely begin to explain. It just—stings.
“Baji?”
Baji’s half-surprised by the quiet murmur. He hadn’t expected Kazutora to say anything more at all, even if he’d definitely wished for it. It’s nice to hear his voice, as distorted as it may be. At this point, he’ll take anything he can get.
Baji sniffs, and reaches a hand up to gently smooth over the side of his friend’s face once more. Kazutora is so cold. “Yeah?”
Kazutora’s voice is faint, and small, and it tapers off at the end into something lost. “I think it might be raining, Baji,” he admits around a morbid wheeze. The droplets that fall on his lips taste like salt.
Baji’s eyes are wet, and red-rimmed, and his lower lip wobbles desperately with each sob he swallows down.
“Yeah,” he whispers minutes later, when Kazutora’s hand has slipped from his own, and his chest has come to a still, and his body is made of ice. “I think it might be, ‘Tora.”