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Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Uenoyama squeezed his eyes shut, knowing damn well he wasn’t going to fall asleep anytime soon. What was I thinking, impulsively inviting him over like that?
The tension in the room seemed to creak and crackle. The silence quaked.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
He stole a look over his shoulder. Mafuyu was still sitting up, in one of his reveries. Space cadet. What was he even doing now?
Ue turned back to the wall. What was he doing? Lying here all tense and anxious over… what? What did he expect out of this relationship? Out of being with a guy? It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought about it before. He had, plenty of times — in this exact spot — but not with the object of his affection and angst in the room with him.
So often in Mafuyu’s presence he found himself swallowed by dual tidal waves of frustration and impatience. The night he’d chased him through the streets was one of those moments he’d nearly drowned in them. That time, Mafuyu’s voice had dragged him back up to the surface. But at the live, it’d had the opposite effect; it sent him spiraling into the depths, and he’d fully succumbed.
This… urge… that left his fingers itching and his throat tight. Like bubbling anger, searing him from the inside but with no potent edge to it. He didn’t want to hurt him, obviously. But something deep within Ue wanted to unravel that boy at the seams, crack him like a vase held too tight, break him open to find the thoughts that died as half-finished sentences or with the starting breath of a question. Everything he left unsaid.
Tick. Tick.
But… did Mafuyu feel that way? Where was his mind, right now, as he sat there, drifting? Had he been… hoping? For something? Was he waiting on Uenoyama? Was… was he the reason Mafuyu couldn’t finish the lyrics? What missing piece was he holding that he couldn’t see?
Tick.
“That clock…”
Ue surged up and over, startled out of his own reverie by Mafuyu’s quiet voice.
“…Yuki had one just like it in his room.” He was only a few feet from him, so close he could reach out and touch him without leaving the bed, if he wanted. And yet his words were miles away, in a dark house with an empty room, memories leaking from under the door to haunt him in moments he least expected it.
All of Uenoyama’s thoughts evaporated. The tension in the air crumbled and fell like the sands of an hourglass, gathering around Ue as he reached for him. Without even meaning to, Mafuyu had cut straight to the heart of the matter, as he always did.
Time, from an external perspective, does not change. But to Uenoyama, wading through an ever-filling pool of sand, seconds were minutes. He did not feel himself moving at all, but surely he must have been. The bed creaked, and Mafuyu turned, his eyes dry, tight, strained.
It felt like he was being tested. That the universe was asking him, “Do you love him enough to put those worries aside and be there for him?” Like this moment was crafted specifically for him to see that this wasn’t about him.
He finally, finally landed in front of Mafuyu and pulled him into a crushing hug. Shit, he’s got that look like he’s about to cry.
“Hey, listen —”
“Sorry, that was a weird thing… to say,” Mafuyu said, still distant.
“No, that’s not it!” Uenoyama scrunched up his face and squeezed him, hands twisting in his shirt. Why would he think that? “I don’t know that much… about your past. But when you’re with me, I don’t want you to feel like you have to sit there and suffer on your own.” If he squeezed hard enough, could he banish the fog behind his eyes, even if just for a second?
A hand bunched in the back of his shirt; so Mafuyu had at least heard him. Silence stretched again, and Uenoyama let it. He didn’t really have any more words, anyway. His chest was tight, heavy. He wanted to be the one Mafuyu relied on, and yet… it seemed almost one-sided. Like he relied more on Mafuyu than Mafuyu relied on him.
It hurt, watching grief catch him unawares and freeze him solid. Like someone unplugged an amp just as the solo started. It made his own doubts and insecurities feel… insignificant. Distant. While he had been agonizing over whether he was disappointing him, Mafuyu had gone still as cold, ghostly fingers clamped around his heart. Mafuyu probably didn’t know what he wanted or needed, either.
Uenoyama was being asked to grow — in ways that sheer stubborn determination and hours of repetition wouldn’t solve. There would be no instruction books, no examples to pick apart and mimic. He would need a different kind of blister and callus to come out stronger on the other side, playing Mafuyu’s tune.
How can I reach out to him? Ue thought as he clung to this boy that both baffled and enamored him. He knew so little about grief, and mourning, but watching this ghost muffle Mafuyu’s soul when it had just started to unfurl from a long, deep winter… he couldn’t help but feel a tinge of the loneliness that radiated from it — like reaching for a frosted window pane.
Facing a love, and loss, so deep, he was surprised he’d been able to react at all. Now, sitting here holding Mafuyu — who was still sitting fully upright and tensed — he swore he had stage fright.
He didn’t need the details. If he never knew more about Yuki than his name and that he had played a guitar far too expensive for a high schooler, he didn’t care. But how was he supposed to pull Mafuyu back from his own depths if he didn’t rely on him more?
How do I explain these feelings?
They stayed there, hugging in an awkward position on the floor, for what could have been an hour. It was probably a minute or two at most. Eventually, Mafuyu’s body softened and his hand unclenched from Ue’s shirt. Without releasing him, Uenoyama pulled back just enough to check his expression.
Mafuyu was still silent. He hadn’t said a word since the clock and wouldn’t meet his eyes. At least it didn’t look like he was about to cry anymore.
“Are you okay?” He could have smacked himself. What a stupid question. He can’t answer it and you know that.
Mafuyu stared up at him. But then he blinked, and, to both their surprise, shook his head.
Before he realized what he was doing, Ue pressed a long, lingering kiss to Mafuyu’s forehead. “Then I’ll stay here until you do,” he said, and pulled him close, a hand guiding his head to his shoulder.
He may have imagined it, but he could have sworn he felt wetness there as Mafuyu relaxed into him.
~
Sharp, bright chimes blared, then faded, then blared again — though they seemed distant considering Uenoyama normally woke with a startled jolt rather than a sense of calm and comfort. He opened his eyes slowly; crust pulled at one of his lashes. He shifted to rub at it and frowned as his right arm faced resistance. Peeking with one bleary eye, he found a mop of red hair directly on his extended bicep.
His stomach fell out of his body and halfway through the earth. He’d never gone back to his own bed. They’d… slept together? His heart rate soared as he pushed down the alternate connotation of that phrase. No. No no. They had literally just slept on the floor together.
But the alarm was still going off. Shit, if it went too long, Yayoi would storm in here and—
He swallowed a horrified squeak.
How did one go about waking up a person they’d unintentionally slept next to? What was safe? What was normal? Could he reach his phone from here so he had more time to figure this out?
Shit, shit, shit! The default alarm sound continued to loop. How was Mafuyu not awake yet?
His free hand hovered, shaking, over the other boy’s hair. Then his shoulder. His waist. At his back. How the hell was he supposed to wake up a sleeping person who wasn’t his obnoxious sister? Someone he, in fact, very much wanted to touch. That made it so much worse.
He probably looked insane, reaching out, drawing back, reaching out to a different place — over and over again. Chimes still sounded from his nightstand. He might explode at this rate. Popping out of existence sounded easier than continuing to flounder like this.
Running out of his imagined time, Ue forced himself to make a decision. Just as his trembling fingers brushed the tips of tangled, messy hair — god, and soft , too — Mafuyu rolled over.
If there had been anything left of his stomach from the first time it fell through the world, there certainly wasn’t now. Mafuyu stared through Ue’s fingers with barely open eyes, blinking unevenly.
“Ue…no…yama-kun?” he mumbled. His morning voice sounded how crushed velvet feels — soft, with a hint of scratchy texture.
Ue’s hammering heart slammed to a stop. He’d really needed him to wake up, but now that he had, his brain was totally empty. And how had his voice gotten more attractive? It certainly wasn’t helping his ability to think.
Mafuyu stared at Uenoyama. Uenoyama stared at Mafuyu. The alarm continued to blare.
Precious seconds passed before Mafuyu said, “Should we… turn that off?”
Ue tried to form words — to explain why he hadn’t, why his hand had been hovering over Mafuyu’s head, why he was next to him at all — but nothing but sputtering half-sounds came out of his mouth. Mafuyu just squinted sleepily.
“Uh, um…I…” Uenoyama stammered as he pointed to his arm, still trapped. Mafuyu grunted and raised his head, allowing Ue to rescue it before flopping down again and nearly falling back asleep.
The return of circulation sent tingles all the way to Uenoyama’s fingers, though he had no spare time for relief before scrambling up to finally kill the goddamn alarm.
Having sufficiently slapped the hell out of his phone, he collapsed into a draped heap, limbs spread out between nightstand, bed, and floor. His immediate problem solved, he now had to reckon with the fact that he’d slept on the same futon as Mafuyu — cuddling, no less.
A soft snore drifted up from his left. Oh, so that’s how it is, huh? I freak the hell out and he goes back to sleep? He sighed, then moved to sit on his bed — both for safety in the case of a Yayoi-jumpscare and his own sanity. He would let Mafuyu sleep for five more minutes; he needed the time to breathe, anyway. Now that he had some distance from the source of his panic, he remembered how they’d wound up in such a… compromising position this morning.
He had in fact stayed there, holding Mafuyu, until he felt better. Though how that had come about was more along the lines of him falling asleep against Ue’s shoulder than declaring, “I’m okay now, you can go back to bed.”
Having no clue how to extricate himself, he’d just slowly maneuvered them both to lie down, thinking he’d stay a few extra minutes to make sure he hadn’t woken him. That’d been his downfall, apparently.
He couldn’t lie, though; he’d been so comfortable. The weight of Mafuyu’s body was soothing, and despite being on the floor, he’d gotten better sleep than usual. A blush rose to his cheeks as his mind drifted toward hoping to be able to do that again someday.
With one more deep breath to settle his very raw nerves, he stood and grabbed his clothes to change while he used the bathroom. No way was he risking Mafuyu waking up while he had his pants down.
As he stepped back into his room — now mostly in his school uniform — Mafuyu was sitting up and rubbing his eyes. The boy looked as if he’d slept for 15 hours, not barely six; his hair stuck up at wild angles and there was a distinct flat section on his right side — specifically where he’d been laying on Ue.
“M-morning,” Uenoyama said as he shut the door behind him.
“Mmph…”
Ah, so Mafuyu was not a morning person. Noted. “Bathroom is free,” he said. Mafuyu just nodded.
Ue milled around the small space, collecting his things and haphazardly throwing them in his backpack. There hadn’t been time to really prepare the night before. He made sure to give Mafuyu time and space — he had no read on how he was feeling right now. Well, other than half asleep, that is.
Eventually, they made their way downstairs, grabbed some spare melon pan from Uenoyama’s combini gig, and headed for the station. Shortly after leaving, Mafuyu spoke up, finally awake enough for coherent thought, apparently.
“I’m sorry I made you sleep on the floor.”
Ue blinked, then furrowed his brows. “You didn’t make me do anything,” he grumbled to the pavement.
Mafuyu shot him a quick glance. “Mm. Well… thank you, anyway. It was nice.”
Uenoyama choked slightly, cleared his throat, and then gave a grunt of agreement without meeting his eyes.
The rest of the walk was quiet; Mafuyu took his hand, knowing they didn’t have long before they’d have to untangle their fingers and board the train for school. Uenoyama’s insistence on sitting with him had been an unexpected, steady ray of sunlight amidst the frigid grip of grief. He squeezed the warm hand in his. Maybe dawn wasn’t too far off.