Work Text:
“I know we’ll never grow old together…’cause you’ll never grow old to me….”
Moonlight pours through the open window, a cool breeze tugging at the parted curtains. Silvery light, dim as it may be, sets the bedroom aglow. Renji’s hair, fanned out over the pillow, gleams like dew in the first morning light. His chest rises and falls in a steady rhythm, the soft sounds of his snoring barely masking the musical hum filling the space.
He looks so much younger like this, Uta muses—face slack, lines smoothed out by sleep. There’s a tiny splotch of dark, drying blood crusting in the corner of his mouth, but Uta dares not reach up to wipe it away. This is already a risk, as is.
This being Renji’s arm stretched across Uta’s lap, coat sleeve gently clasped between his fingers. The moonlight glints off the sewing needle in Uta’s fingers as practiced movements guide it back and forth through the thick fabric.
It’s been a long time since he’s sewn by hand. He’d almost forgotten how nice it feels, the careful precision of it.
“You’re the pink in my cheeks, and I’m scared ‘cause that that means I’m a little bit soft….” Soft. Like the wool of Renji’s coat, worn but clean —mostly clean. That last little spar had been, admittedly, rougher than anticipated. Not that Uta would ever say that out loud.
It hadn’t even been intentional, really. Uta knows better than to feel bad, and knows that Renji isn’t upset at him for it.
Still, there’s a guilty twinge in his gut at the memory of the split-second panic in Renji’s eyes as kagune caught fabric instead of skin.
So here Uta sits, a few hours from dawn, stitching a ragged tear in his best friend’s armor while he sleeps. “And I grew tough, ‘cause love, it only hurt me back, but loving you’s a good problem to have….”
He lets his eyes wander when he can, drifting around the mostly-empty bedroom of Renji’s new apartment. It makes his chest ache, a little—the meager handful of plain shirts that hang in the open closet; the small, weathered stack of books and notebooks on the desk by the window; the open but still-packed box of personal items in the opposite corner. A pair of glassy, dark eyes peer back at him from the top of said box, and if Uta squints, he can just make out the rest of the mask…as well as a few places where the stitching is beginning to fray. He can fix it tomorrow, if Renji wishes.
“Yeah I’m used to that, but I could get used to th—” The song chokes itself out as his gaze falls back to his work…and the glittering silver eyes staring at him in drowsy confusion.
Uta’s face flames hot as half a dozen different explanations leap to his tongue at once and get tangled. The only result that successfully leaves his lips is a weak, “I, uh….”
Renji merely looks from his face to the freshly-stitched tear and back again. He sighs through his nose, eyes closing once again.
“I think…I’m just gonna go back to sleep now,” he mutters, voice gravelly.
Uta clears his throat. “You, ah,” his voice warbles around a disbelieving laugh, “you do that.”
“You should join me, you know.”
Uta feels some of the tension leave his shoulders. “Can’t,” he shrugs, grabbing the small pair of scissors on his knee and cutting the thread. “Why else would I still be up?”
“Uta.”
He shudders at the way his name sounds in that soft, gruff voice. “Renji,” he replies, trying for teasing (and failing rather miserably).
Renji cracks an eye open. “Please. Come to bed.”
Uta’s hands freeze, the needle halfway back in its designated pouch. Renji’s stare is paralyzing, rooting him squarely in place and stilling the frantic spin in his head.
“Okay,” he manages quietly.
The corner of Renji’s mouth twitches up in the faintest of smiles, and that alone settles the last of the anxiety in Uta’s chest. Impulsively he reaches down and finally, finally wipes away that irritating splotch of dried blood, his thumb catching on Renji’s lower lip for an instant as he does. Renji stiffens, both eyes flashing open, but after a second realization flickers through his gaze and he relaxes yet again.
Uta, trying valiantly to ignore the fluttering in his stomach, finishes putting his sewing kit back together and drops it carelessly on the floor next to the bed. Renji stretches his arm and admires the new stitching on his sleeve as he wraps it around Uta’s shoulders and pulls him down.
“Looks nice,” he mumbles.
Uta’s face flushes again. “Thanks,” he whispers.
Renji hums. “Sleep now, okay?”
This close, Renji smells vaguely of dirt and stale blood—though Uta’s pretty sure he doesn’t smell much better. They both could use a shower, and the bed is most definitely going to need clean sheets in the morning. He presses his closer to the comfortable warmth that is Renji Yomo and is rewarded with Renji’s arm tightening around him. His bicep serves as a familiar pillow, the faint pound of his heartbeat a familiar lullaby.
“I’ll try,” he concedes.
Renji merely grunts, breathing already evening out once again. Uta smiles and allows his tired, burning eyes to drift shut.
It doesn’t take long for sleep to find him at all.