Work Text:
Akito isn’t used to being the last one awake.
Normally, Ena is awake until at least 3 in the morning, if not later. He’s walked past her room before, waking up early for a run and seeing her still awake from the night prior rifling through the fridge.
She doesn’t explain. He doesn’t ask.
Tonight, however, seems to be different. He stands in the hallway, ear pressed to Ena’s door, and finds only silence. Further still, when he cracks open her door, the hallway light illuminates the fact that she’s fully asleep.
Rare. Not unwelcome, though.
Akito shuts the door with a soft click, glancing at the clock on the wall. 1:34 in the morning, and he’s barely even tired. He’s done all he needed to- showered, changed into pyjamas, even laid in bed trying to sleep for an hour, to no avail. Absently, he scratches at his jaw, before padding down the hallway to the living room.
Maybe a change of scenery will help his case. It’s worked before , he muses, stepping into the darkness of the empty living room. Family photos adorn the walls, and for a moment, they feel oppressive.
He sinks into the couch, laying his head back on top of the cushions and sighing, squeezing his eyes shut. At least it’s comfortable. Even if it’s not getting me anywhere.
Right as he’s finally starting to feel a little more like he can actually fall asleep for the night, he’s torn from his half-dreaming state by a soft knock at the door.
Abnormal for almost two in the morning.
He hesitates for a moment, listening to see if Ena or his parents have woken up. Finding no change in the silent night air, he deems that he has to handle this himself. It could be anyone, really- one of the members of his sister’s music circle, maybe, or a very confused door-to-door salesman.
Who he finds on the other side of the door is probably the last person he’d expect, despite all of his best guesses. As much as he’d like to be able to see the future, no amount of clairvoyance could prepare him for the sight of Airi standing on his doorstep on the verge of tears.
Akito panics for a moment. He’s not exactly good at the whole “comforting crying people” thing, especially outside of his group. Sure, he’s okay at comforting, but crying… well, he’s a bit out of his depth. His breath catches in his throat when Airi looks up at him, her eyes wide and red-rimmed with tears and exhaustion. She looks like she’s been sobbing, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Akito can see that she’s trembling pretty badly, and he knows it’s not from the night air.
She looks so fragile in the orange glow from the porch light, her body hunched in on itself. They had gotten closer over the last while, after his trip to America led to him sending her texts daily about what he was up to. He had just texted her a few hours prior, in fact, sending her a simple “goodnight” (after lamenting for 15 minutes on if it was appropriate to send a heart emoji after it).
He’d never admit it, but he’s grown quite fond of the idol, and he can only hope she feels the same. He rubs the back of his neck as he speaks, keeping his voice as low as possible.
“Do you want me to go get Ena? She’s asleep, but I can… wake her up.”
Really, the idea of waking up his sister right now is the last thing he wants to do. She tends to get a little aggressive when she’s woken up, and he’s been on the receiving end of it far too many times for it to be at all worth it.
He knows he’d move mountains for Airi, though. If she even so much as implied it, he would give her every star in the sky. He briefly considers this as a way to return the light to her eyes.
Airi sniffs, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand before grimacing. She’s silent for a minute, before she meets Akito’s gaze again. The shake in her voice makes his heart twist in his chest, and it seems to take her considerable effort to string words together with how slowly she’s speaking.
“No, I… can I talk to you , actually?”
After only a couple moments of hesitation, Akito steps aside, gesturing for Airi to enter. His voice is gentle, almost like he’s handling a fragile relic. “Okay. Come on.”
This is how Airi ended up sitting on the chair in the centre of his bedroom, with Akito sitting on the ground beside it. She seemed to visibly deflate a little when she walked into the warmly-lit space, and her hiccups have slowed to the occasional sniffle as she sits in silence.
Akito waits.
The Shinonomes are good at patience, after all.
He waits for her to open up first, and tries not to think too hard about how this is the first time she’s been in his room. How she seems so comfortable in the space, how the light reflecting off her eyes makes them glimmer like rubies.
After five or ten minutes of this silent routine, Airi finally speaks.
“Do you ever feel stuck, Akito?”
A loaded question. Akito rests his head on the arm of the chair, considering it, before he speaks.
“Pretty often. Why? Didn’t think you’d be feeling stuck now that you’re out of the whole reality show business.”
From what he can see, Airi is trembling. The shake to her hands and the weariness in her eyes isn’t something he’s seen for a long time. After a bitter chuckle at his words, she speaks again. Her voice is quieter than before, as if she’s afraid to admit what she has to say.
Akito can’t tell if she’s more afraid to say it to him, or if she’s more afraid to say it to herself.
“I don’t know. It feels like I’m going nowhere with all of this some days. I love what I do, I love my group, I love my friends and family, but… god, do they love me ?”
Her voice breaks on the last word, and Akito wants to reach out, to wipe her tears away and pull her into his arms. He doesn’t want to push his boundaries, though, so he stays firmly beside her. He’s not even sure what he’d say if he had the chance to.
“I feel like I break everything I touch. I keep thinking about all the times I’ve snapped, all the times I’ve hurt people by being so… so stupid , and it makes me wonder if I even deserve their forgiveness. Like, really, what have I done to de-“
It clicks then that she’s spiralling a bit, and Akito decides this simply won’t do. He reaches out, and lays a hand on her knee. She’s still cold from the outdoors, and he can feel it through the fabric of her pants, making a mental note to get her something warm to drink once they address the problem at hand.
“Airi. Why are you so insistent that you have to deserve good things?”
That seems to leave her speechless. Normally, he’d feel a little guilty talking like that to his sister’s friend (and someone who he respects and admires greatly), but Airi is his friend too. He squeezes her knee, before he continues.
“You’re your own worst critic. You’ve gotta stop being so cruel to yourself all the time, or you’re never gonna get better.”
Airi curls into herself a little, and Akito briefly worries that he went too far. He decides to push a little further, though, and he comes to kneel in front of the chair. “Hey, look at me. What happened? And why did you come to us?”
Airi doesn’t look at him, but he doesn’t push her to. He moves his hand to take both of hers, and waits for her breathing to slow again. Finally, she speaks once more.
“I had a nightmare. I… I don’t know why I came here. I left my house and started walking. Maybe I just didn’t want to let my family see me like this. It would just burden them.”
Akito thinks back to his moment in the living room earlier. The eyes of his parents in every framed photo, how he felt like he was being watched, almost scrutinized by each image. He understands Airi’s plight intimately, and his words are as much for her as they are for himself.
“You’re not burdening me right now.”
Neither of them speak for a long while after that. Akito runs his thumb over Airi’s knuckles, over and over, tracing every ridge and valley. Old scars from her childhood adorn her hands, and he traces each and every one with reverence. In his eyes, Airi isn’t fragile, he realizes- just wounded. As she sighs and sinks into the chair further, he decides he wants to be the place she can heal.
Finally, she looks at him, meeting his eyes. To his surprise, she smiles weakly. “I guess this whole mess brought me to you, huh?”
Akito feels his face heat up, but he doesn’t move away. He tries to give her a smile in return, finding his eyes trained on her lips for a moment past where it could be passed off as a simple glance.
“I guess it did. I’m…” He hesitates, before he finds his words, his eyes finally drifting back up to her face. “...glad.”
Giving an affirmative nod, Airi stands on shaky legs, looking towards the door in the same moment that Akito glances over at his bed. It looks warm and inviting, but he knows Airi needs warmth and comfort even more than he does right now. He’d stay up forever if it meant she was comfortable and safe.
“You can use my bed if you want to stay the night. I can sleep on the couch.”
Airi looks down at him, before squeezing his hands. Her manicured nails prick his skin ever so slightly. “...won’t you stay with me?”
Akito says yes before he can even fully think about his decision. Not that he’d ever reconsider, regardless of time, place, or space. It leads him to a new situation he hadn’t expected to be in- laying in his bed, under the covers, Airi (who is dressed in some spare clothes of his) curled at his side.
Her leg rests over his thighs, and her head is on his chest, just over his heart. She’s soft beside him, and warmer than when she first stepped in out of the cold. A nagging part of Akito’s brain reminds him that they haven’t really talked about what their relationship is, just that they’ve been walking the line between platonic and romantic for months on end. He pushes the thought aside, deeming it a morning conversation.
He can feel her hand tracing patterns in the fabric of his shirt, and he runs a hand through her thick hair in turn, which causes her to hum and lean into his touch. The contact is nice, even in the silence, and when she moves to sit a little closer to him (despite the scant space between them already), he can smell her shampoo. Floral and sweet, much like her. He can feel her humming against his chest, and it reminds him of a cat purring. This leads him to scratch her scalp, something she seems to greatly appreciate given how she presses further into his hand.
The adrenaline seems to have worn off for her, for the most part. It’s worn off for him, too, and he feels more exhausted than ever before. He’s pulled from his half-asleep state by an equally drowsy Airi moving to press a soft kiss to his cheek. This gesture clears all doubts from his brain.
“Thank you for everything, Akito. Really.”
“I… you’re welcome. It’s nothing, though. I care about you a lot, and I’d hate to be left in a spot like yours all alone.”
She kisses the corner of his mouth, next, her hand splayed across his chest. “I know.”
He can feel his heart rate pick up, and he searches her eyes for any hints of hesitation. However, his search comes up empty, and he finally allows his eyes to fall shut as her lips meet his.
It’s warm. It’s sweet. It’s everything Akito has ever wanted and more, as he rubs the back of her neck to encourage her to kiss him again and again. She tastes like strawberries and peaches and the sun, and Akito has never been more in love. Her hands tangle in his hair as he rolls both of them onto their sides, keeping his free hand securely on her lower back.
When Airi finally pulls back, he barely lets her, keeping their foreheads pressed close together.
Despite how patient he likes to think he is, he can’t stop himself from blurting out the first thing on his mind.
“I love you, Airi.”
Airi laughs for the first time that night, and Akito’s heart flutters in his chest. He can feel how her breath ghosts against his lips as she brushes noses with him. “I know. I love you too.”
There’s a lot that they need to deal with, both together and separately. Not all of their problems can be fixed in one night. But as Airi curls into his chest, tucking her head under his chin and kissing the pulse point of his neck, Akito decides none of that matters right now.
They can do better in the morning.