Work Text:
On a mild spring night in a quiet Tokyo apartment complex there burns one lone bedside lamp. It's a worn out thing, flickering every now and then. Its light reflects off of the window glass, giving Kurosawa a good look at the eye bags currently marring his face. It’s an uncommon sight for him.
On any other day his sleep is so deep not even his alarm can break through it, forcing him to set up multiple so as to not miss work. And yet he had already lost sleep the night prior, albeit for different reasons. He was hoping to recover some of it tonight but things just don’t seem to go his way lately.
From his perch near the window facing the main street he can make out some lights that are still on in the far distance. The sight is a little comforting, he’s not alone in his nightly troubles. They could also just be neon lights for an advertisement or a dimly lit storefront, he can’t really tell. The further he looks, the more the different light sources all swim together into an indistinguishable glare. His contact lenses are safely tucked away in their case for tomorrow, yet another reminder that he really should be in bed right now.
In the silence he can hear his sister snoring from the living room. He can’t help but feel jealous of her, being able to drop dead like that feels like a luxury as of late. To him life in general has always looked like a breeze for Mari. Traveling from one exotic location to the next, dropping men when they rub her the wrong way and always, always prioritizing her own happiness. It’s rebellious of her, something like radical self love, and he would never admit it out loud but he has always admired that about her. Or maybe that’s just the side of herself she chooses to put on display. Who is he to judge?
Right now though she’s just her usual annoying self, having crashed at his place without prior notice the day before. She would usually demand the bed for her coveted beauty sleep, appalled at the mere suggestion of letting his dearest big sister sleep on the floor, but today she accepted the futon without comment. She was even kind enough to cook them both dinner. It was uncharacteristically nice of her. She probably took pity on him after seeing the pathetic face he must have made when he burst through the door and promptly shut himself in his bedroom. And if she heard some very ugly noises she didn't mention it.
Point is, they're both heavy sleepers. It runs in the family, he supposes.
Not tonight, though. Tonight Kurosawa is tormented by his surroundings. Namely…
The boxes under his bed full of clothes no one's ever going to wear.
A tiny, polished Kirishima pin on his desk that will never see its twin.
The many cook books on his shelf on Japanese cuisine never to be truly enjoyed.
The guitar he used to write embarrassing songs dedicated to a man whose ears they won't reach.
A drawer chock full of intimate data compiled by an obsessive creep.
And a scarf long overdue for a wash.
In the middle of all this, Kurosawa sits. He stares out of the window into the starless sky and asks no one: What should I do with it? What do you do with a love so unwieldy it clutters up your own four walls?
He briefly wonders if all of it would fit in the burnable trash container downstairs. Push it all down as far as it will go, jam the lid shut and never look at it again. He ought to cut his heart out of his chest and throw it in too, just to be thorough.
Ah no, the pin is made of metal, it would go into the non-burnable trash. And the folders have some plastic in them, they should go into recycling.
… He knows he's being dramatic. The logical part of him knows that the object of his delusions is too kind to break off all contact with him. He clearly still enjoyed the time they spent together and who would Kurosawa be to deny him that? It wouldn't be easy, but with time he could grow to be content in their platonic bond. They might even laugh about it all in a few years.
With time, he might be something vaguely resembling happy again.
But it's 2:26 AM on a work night and just a few hours ago he foolishly confessed his feelings to the only person he's ever fallen in love with. And so he is forced to sit here with his thoughts and ruminate, turn the events over and over in his head.
It was too impulsive , he berates himself. He should have done it on a weekend, somewhere quiet where they can talk without being subjected to car horns and onlookers. He should have done damage control to raise his chances of a friendship after. He should have made his feelings more manageable for him. He should have shut up.
Instead he had lingered. The traffic light had turned red and he had pulled Adachi from the busy street a moment before he would’ve gotten hit. It was a quick, desperate motion and he had lingered. He thought of what would’ve happened if he hadn’t been here. The picture of Adachi’s mangled corpse left to bleed out on the concrete flashed his mind. He felt nauseous and relieved in equal measure. It brought on a wave of affection so violent and overflowing that he felt like it was going to choke him if he didn’t gracelessly hurl it all from his mouth onto the pavement in front of him. And there it had laid in an unsightly heap between them, neither of them knowing what to do with it.
He should have choked on it.
At some point he couldn’t bear looking into Adachi’s confused face anymore and hurried back to his own apartment. For a split second his room is plunged in darkness. Kurosawa makes a mental note to replace the lightbulb soon, he’s been putting it off for a while now.
The thing is, he knew this was going to happen. He knew that sooner or later his self indulgent daydreams had to end. He just didn’t think it was going to be so soon. Not when he had finally managed to get Adachi to notice him. It was so much easier to get lost in his fantasies now that Adachi actually spoke more than a few sentences with him. They are so much closer than they ever were before, he wanted to enjoy this valuable, fleeting time for a little bit longer. Just a little more of his passionate ramblings on military aircraft, the way he ate everything Kurosawa cooked with such relish, his heartfelt compliments, the tiny laughs that seemed to come out of nowhere, his adorable smiles, rare and precious and just for him… Why couldn’t it have lasted longer, just a little more, just a little bit more time, maybe a month is too much to ask, but a week, maybe even just a day, I would give up anything for this god please, please I lo-
His eyes start to burn again and he stops himself from spiraling by banging his head against the nearest surface, which unfortunately turns out to be the window. The dull thunk reverberates around him and he quietly hopes his neighbors don’t wake up from it. The resulting pain seems to bring him some clarity, he comes to realize that his light is still on and anyone passing by could’ve seen that pathetic attempt at self control. He left it on because he had planned on getting through a bit of work he brought home from the office. He thought it might exhaust his mind into sleeping but he had let it wander instead. He figures he might as well move away to lie in his bed if he’s not going to do anything productive.
All of this is so mind-numbingly futile. How much he loves him won’t change how Adachi feels about him. He could pull the stars out of the sky for him and it would still not change anything about his situation. What he wants is someone dainty, someone cute and easy to talk to, someone…
Every time he catches glimpses of the casual way Adachi talks with Fujisaki he feels a surge of jealousy claw at him. It’s an ugly, seething feeling and he hates himself for it, but he finds he can’t suppress it. He and Fujisaki are worlds apart in every conceivable metric. Every time he sees the way Adachi gets so excited to interact with her, whereas the reactions towards him range from indifference to jittery unease, that fact sears itself into his very core and burns him alive. It’s clear that he makes him actively uncomfortable more times than not. Maybe if he were a bit more like her, and a whole lot less like himself…
Or maybe Kurosawa doesn’t even really know what exactly it is that Adachi wants. Maybe he sees something in Fujisaki that’s beyond what anyone can perceive, something deep and intrinsic about her, and whatever that is he finds it lacking in Kurosawa. He has always been very observant, maybe he knows something about Kurosawa that reaches beneath the surface of perfection he has created, and maybe he doesn’t like what he finds. If that’s true then there really isn’t anything he can do about it.
But he wants to do something about it. He wants to so badly it has consumed almost all of his waking hours. He has learned how to cook Adachi’s preferred cuisine, he has memorized all his interests, his routines, he helps him out every chance he gets, he stays behind at work so he doesn’t have to stay as late… He would do this and so, so much more, even if it breaks him he would not care.
If he could, he would break himself into a million pieces, grind them all to fine dust and hand it over to Adachi for him to shape into something he can love.
But he can't. All he has to offer is himself, and that has never been enough for anyone. Sooner or later his previous partners had always left. Their commitment had started and ended at the idealized version of himself in their minds. Whatever lies beyond that seemed to not be worth exploring any further. That’s why he needs to change, needs to not be himself, but…
Adachi wouldn’t agree to it anyway. Those soft, gentle hands would carefully glue him back together just the way he was, because Adachi is kind and he would never want Kurosawa to hurt himself on his behalf. And herein lies the problem, the end and start of the loop: Adachi doesn’t want him to change, but the way he is right now is not what Adachi wants. It’s an impossible problem with no solution.
Well, there is one solution to it. And he has already accidentally initiated it, although that had always been his plan. He was always going to confess to feel the rejection, so he could ultimately get over him. In the end it doesn’t really matter if it was too soon, maybe this was fate telling him he didn’t deserve any more time. He has certainly wasted about a year of dancing around Adachi, trying and failing to get his attention. At least he can find some solace in the fact that it didn’t cause Adachi any real issues. He hopes this confession is at least a flattering compliment to him, he should get a lot more of those anyway.
Tomorrow he’s going to go to work and be a functioning adult again. Tomorrow he will get rejected and move on from this section of his life, back to his normal. Tomorrow he will be himself again.
He stands up one last time to go to the bathroom. On the way there he takes the scarf and dumps it in the laundry basket. The rest will be dealt with later.
He crawls back to bed and as he goes to turn off the light it gives one last flicker.
He’ll make a stop at the electronics store tomorrow.