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When Chifuyu drinks, he smiles more.
This is always what Kazutora notices first— an easy grin, a little lopsided from the liquor. Then, inevitably, the flush that travels across his cheeks and down his neck— and his neck, visible from the way his collar is tugged open, careless and relaxed.
He sees it now as he walks through the door of their shared apartment. Chifuyu, still wearing his name tag from the pet store, though it’s been knocked askance by the creases in his shirt, tipping the last dregs from his glass. As expected, his mouth quirks up at Kazutora’s entrance.
It must have been a very good day or a very bad one, judging by the two bottles open on the table. When he says as much, Chifuyu pours himself another. That’s answer enough for him.
Kazutora makes his way over and steals it from his grasp. “What are we drinking to tonight?”
Chifuyu turns his face up towards him, deflection and incredulity matched in his expression. “Are we drinking?”
The alternative is to talk about their days, the possibility of which seems rendered useless by Chifuyu’s subliminal mood. Kazutora thinks on it for all of a moment and empties the glass in response, the amber liquid harsh as it hits his throat. He’s not much of a drinker— a fact that Chifuyu is well aware of— but the swoop in his stomach is worth the look on his face and the laugh that follows. Sober or not, Chifuyu yields easily to his graceless efforts to distract him. Kazutora is glad he takes them in stride without overthinking it.
Licking the last of it from his lips, he settles onto the couch and pulls his legs up under him. Warmth has already begun to creep through his body, and Chifuyu takes the opportunity to fill the glass again.
“Something sweeter,” he teases. “You should’ve seen your face.”
The evening passes loose-limbed and comfortable, their knees knocking into each other as they chase the bottom of the bottle. Kazutora observes him as he sips. Tired eyes, face tight around the edges. Good-looking in a way that is impossible not to notice. He knows his cataloging of Chifuyu’s sleeplessness to be a consequence of his own. The rest he blames on his lowered inhibitions. Nearly a year learning to live with each other and he still finds himself unsure of how to do, how to be. So much exists between them that they have yet to navigate. There are only unspoken indulgences. Allowances. He is so careful with the lines he draws in his head, only to toe them anyway. In rare moments like this, there is almost permission in the way Chifuyu looks back at him.
He feels thoroughly sloshed in a way that has little to do with the alcohol. Many years ago, he framed any sentiment he knew through sweaty palms and bloody noses and sacrifice— but that kind of rush started and ended with Baji Keisuke’s life. It started again on a page. Chifuyu and his forgiveness, gentle like a flower and as consuming as a weed. Forcing his hand, showing up that day, and tilting Kazutora’s perspective on its axis every day he wakes up in this place he calls home. It’s a dirty thing and he’s a stray dog being fed by the hand he tore clean off, but he is loyal to Chifuyu to the point of betraying himself. Betraying memories.
This is why he rarely drinks. Introspection only leads him places he does not wish to revisit.
Chifuyu seems contemplative in his own right, letting the silence stretch as Kazutora spirals, finger tracing the condensation on the rim. He tops them off for the sake of something to do. Kazutora matches his action only minutes later. He’s lost count of how many it’s been when Chifuyu asks him: “Do you want to know something?”
“Sure,” he allows. Chifuyu hums, well past tipsy by the way he’s draped over the sofa. The air in the room feels heady as he reaches up to finger a strand of Kazutora’s hair. No more excuses to knock back now— their well is dry.
“You look just like him like this,” he says. “Like Keisuke.” The warmth in his stomach curdles into faint, fucked up excitement. “Kazutora, Keisuke,” Chifuyu laughs under his breath. “Your names start the same way too. That’s tricky.”
Something behind his eyes darkens. The feeling blooms. He feels so sick in the head.
“Who are you trying to be? Because sometimes, I look at you and I see him.” Kazutora dares not speak as Chifuyu leans further into him, pupils blown to the point where he barely can see the blue. “Do you do that on purpose?”
He does. They both know he does, though not for where it has led him in this moment. He feels hyper-aware of the way he shakes on his next exhale, the way Chifuyu’s gaze shifts to his parted lips and back. A soft blur.
He could say anything. He should. And yet— it is too much to ask of him in the closing space between them.
The taste of whiskey and wine. Chifuyu’s mouth, so warm and wet against his own. His head feels fuzzy. It is so easy to succumb, arms clutching at his shoulders to pull him closer, closer, closer, against the hard planes of his body, the soft plush of his tongue. For a moment, they are more than two bodies. Kazutora is a live wire. Chifuyu is an ocean.
The moon watches on as the waves overwhelm.
A low moan reverberates in the back of Chifuyu’s throat and he sighs, “Keisuke.”
And Kazutora can do that. Tonight, he can be that— be him— for Chifuyu, who has done so much for him, who deserves so much more. If he is nothing more than a means to an end for him, he can live with it. He thinks he deserves this: the pain of not being enough and the opportunity to make up for it. More than that, he wants— he wants. How selfish.
There’s a hand in his hair that pulls his head back and then teeth attach to a tender part of his neck, and Kazutora burns, hips lifting to meet Chifuyu’s as they grind down against him. The tangible desire has his chest constricting, little noises escaping the back of his throat, mouthing around Keisuke’s name himself.
He lets himself get lost in it, kissing Chifuyu. Or rather, being Keisuke kissing Chifuyu. Kissing Keisuke. Kissing Chifuyu. Chifuyu kissing Kazutora because Kazutora killed Keisuke. Chifuyu killing Kazutora. Kissing. Killing—
Something damp touches the corner of his lips and he pulls back, breathless. Chifuyu’s face is flushed and his lips are swollen, but his eyes are dry. Kazutora reaches up to touch his face and to his horror feels tears flooding over his own cheeks.
They both sober up in an instant: the haze clearing and in its wake, disaster.
Chifuyu reaches out, “Kei— Kazutora,” and then recoils at his own slip-up. “Fuck. Shit, no, Kazutora—”
And then he’s scrambling back, socked feet skidding across the wood floor as he moves back to the safety of anywhere, anywhere but here where Chifuyu can see him. The bathroom door is open, a refuge that he throws himself behind and locks for good measure.
The sound of it echoes. A moment passes, then another. He hears footsteps come up to the door and watches Chifuyu’s shadow hover for a moment before moving away.
He lets out a breath he doesn’t remember holding, and then it crashes over him in waves: the panic, the hurt, and the sickening feeling that his body is rejecting itself. His white-knuckled grip on the porcelain of the toilet bowl does nothing to relieve him of the burning in his throat and nose, the bile choking him as it comes up—
And the tears. The shame. Hope, however fickle. Heartbreak, damningly absolute. A combination that leaves a stranger aftertaste on his tongue.
He paints an ugly picture in the mirror as he mechanically washes his face of it. Nothing in his reflection suggests anyone but himself.
-
Kazutora wakes up hollow.
The morning is quiet. He thinks about what to do and comes up empty.
Chifuyu is already on the couch when he emerges from his room. The bottles have been cleaned up, leaving no trace of last night’s scene. Only an untouched cup of coffee sits on the table before him— the suggestion of a blank slate. Still, after all this, Chifuyu tries. Admitting the futility would be salt in the wound. Their relationship is punctuated with befores and afters. Points of no return.
Kazutora hates himself. He loves him. Two coexisting truths that should be so far out of the scope of probability, and yet exist right in the region of incriminating fact. He suspects that, in cruel parallel, Chifuyu understands. His eyes are red, but his lips twist in a bitter smile like he recognizes what Kazutora’s thinking. Just one more something between them. Kazutora wishes he could stop knowing anything.
“I am so sorry,” Chifuyu says, monotone with the burden of blame. “I’m a monster.”
If Chifuyu thought himself a monster today, Kazutora was loath to find out what he thought of him. He might as well have spit on Keisuke’s grave doing what he did. A masochistic excuse for connection, the sense memory haunting under his skin, and Chifuyu. Chifuyu in front of him, distant, hurting, because of his weakness. Chifuyu, who has become everything to him. What they were— whatever they were— stopped being about Baji Keisuke so long ago and he still desecrated it.
He shakes his head, searching, denying. Words fail, and he falls back on history as they know it. What else is there to say? What else have they ever said?
“He’s everywhere.” It comes out hoarse. Defeated. He can’t even muster up the energy to cry.
“Not everywhere.”
Kazutora looks up, stunned. Chifuyu pauses as if hearing his own words for the first time, and then his face falls nothing short of devastation. It makes him look thirteen again.
“Not…everywhere,” his voice breaks. He moves, clutching Kazutora’s fingers between his own. “Do you understand? I can’t go on like this with you. Always having to rip it open again, and again, and again. I want—”
Kazutora knows the curse of wanting. He knows what it means. He feels lightheaded, a strange cocktail of guilt and relief. More than the kiss, this seems to breach the boundaries of what is allowed. Kazutora can’t find the words but he nods— grips Chifuyu’s hand tighter as it trembles, as he cries. Unsaid goes the plea of don’t make me say it again, but he hears it anyway.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispers back. “So sorry, so sorry.” And he is sorry. Always sorry. With Chifuyu, he doesn’t know how to stop.
In the comedown, his head finds its way to Chifuyu’s shoulder. They pass their regrets back and forth and back again. The sun begins to make itself well known through the windows and Kazutora counts each breath they share in tandem, a secondhand practice from every other fight they have had. Drained. Worn. Heavy with grief. Still holding hands.
Still holding hands.
He squeezes. He lets go.
“Good morning.”
Chifuyu swallows around a wet laugh. “Good morning.”
Then he looks at him like he really sees him, and it’s the same way he always has. Kazutora has the fleeting sense that they were always going to end up here. The mere concept once seemed unfathomable.
He picks up the cold mug. “Coffee?”
Chifuyu nods and follows him into the kitchen. Kazutora dumps the brew into the sink. Chifuyu opens the fridge. They set the table. Routine familiarity, with a side of something new within reach.
There will be time for more, later.