Archive of Our Own

As lovely as the vibrant liveliness of the city was, Paris was beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic.

Being holed up in his flat with nothing for company but his assignments and the occasional drink—whether it be tea, coffee, or boldly enough, wine—unsurprisingly stifled Shu’s productivity a fair amount, despite being in the country of his dreams. A stagnant Shu was very much an antsy, vexed Shu, so as soon as spring vacation mercifully drew near, he wasted no time in planning some sort of getaway. Anything would do as long as it was quiet and uncongested. In his haste, he scheduled a flight for his dearest Kagehira to come visit and made arrangements for them to stay in the very outskirts of what could be considered suburban, in an attempt to instigate some sort of Thoreauvian catalyst for inspiration. Perhaps it was also because he'd recently watched a romance flick in which the main couple happened to cohabitate in a cabin together, but that was entirely beside the point and barely relevant at all. Definitely. 

The main issue with Shu’s caprice was that his typical deliberation was thrown completely to the side in his restless state, and whatever decisions he made under his stressed state reflected his mentality.

As it turned out, the hefty cost of the vacation rental seemed to be entirely dependent on the surrounding scenery; magnificent and well-kept verdure surrounded the property, but the interior apart from the decor, seemed slightly run down. The pitiful state of the heating and cooling system wouldn’t be much of an issue in this mild weather, but the majority of the lightbulbs being too outdated to work would pose a larger issue.

As Mika stretched out his weary limbs near an opened window, soaking up both warmth and air that wasn’t filtered through an air conditioning system for once, Shu rummaged through their bags for his hand cream. Wincing each time the crack of a joint—a consequence of Mika’s hypermobility—resonated through the silence of the estate, Shu attempted to calm himself with the rationale that each snap was indeed not one of his beloved’s bones snapping but simply gas bubbles popping. Knowing that it wasn't inherently harmful didn’t keep him from worrying; he quickly worked the moisturizer into his palms and strided over to Mika’s side to place a hand on his shoulder, kneading it under his palm.

“I’d really rather you stop stretching so carelessly.”

Those words fell from his lips almost skittishly. Shu had heard far too many stories of people accidentally dislocating joints while looking into Mika’s condition; not that he didn’t trust him with his own body, but nagging now seemed safer than letting something happen while they were nearly in the middle of nowhere. Surely, it was just his recent neuroticism bringing him to press his thumbs in circles against Mika’s shoulder blades. Displacing his worries was all too easy. Mika didn't seem too bothered by his fretting either, only letting out a relaxed hum in response to Shu’s impromptu massaging. 

“I'm gonna nag at ya a bit, too. Yer gonna run yer hands sore if ya do that for too long,” Mika piped up light-heartedly, though he made no advances to stop Shu just yet. Instead, he took the moment of quiet to peruse through his surroundings curiously, glancing over to the rather aged sofa that sat off to the left, just past where the kitchen blended into the living room. Shu’s gaze followed Mika’s; after all, the piece of furniture seemed as if it were screaming in its suffocated scene.

With its dusty rose cushions and timeworn brass detailing, the sofa seemed a little out of place in comparison to the rest of the furnishings, the majority of which were of dark mahogany and burgundy. A last minute addition, seemingly something that’d been picked up without any consideration for the rest of the room; not a bad choice in itself with its delicate pleasantness, but it didn’t seem to work in harmony with the rest of the room, as if the darker tones were imposing so much on it that the blush of its primrose cushions was dampened. Beautiful on its own, but gauche within the crowd.

Mika’s voice cut through Shu’s quick mental appraisal, raising a hand over to the plush structure. “Can we sit over there? I kinda wanna lay down.”

Upon receiving Shu’s wordless nod, Mika slipped his unwavering hand into his, guiding him to the sofa and waiting for him to sit first. Shu didn’t cross his legs as he typically did, letting Mika’s head fall atop his thighs; he was a familiar weight resting against him in such an unfamiliar environment, and one that would leave as soon as it came. There wasn’t anything Shu could do, or anything he should do for that matter, to convince Mika to stay behind a bit longer. His selfishness had dragged them through enough of the infernal to empower any longer, yet it wasn’t by any means easy to choke the flames. Insatiability was what kept an artist’s heart beating, after all. Peace was balancing his own with Mika’s, but images aren’t visible in the dark, and he stumbled around while excusing all of his trips and falls as calculated expressions of grace.

… Well, Shu would be better off getting out of his own head for once, he’d done enough of that for the past few weeks, and the state it’d put him in was less than ideal. Mourning the living was discourteous, and Mika felt distractingly warm and tangible under his hand. His fingers moved idly through Mika’s hair as he brooded, stopping only once he’d noticed he’d been furrowing his own brows in an almost painful intensity while lost in rumination. 

As his eyes came back into focus on the sight in front of them, they softened without much further thought. Mika’s resting face seemed to have that effect on him, inexplicably. He found his gaze tracing over Mika’s delicate eyelashes that would bat occasionally in languid blinks, then to the sharp curve of his cheek, across the angle of his jawline, flickering over barely parted lips to follow the slope of his nose. Shu’s eyes darted back to his lips, quietly admiring the sheen from a thin layer of lip balm atop those slightly chapped lips—lips that gave way to the most beautiful sounds, whether singing or talking or simply laughing at that; after so long having heard it only though the constraints of a speaker, anything Shu could listen to was precious. Embarrassingly enough, the calls he’d spent with Mika that lasted until the boy ended up dozing off were just as much of a comfort to him as they were to Mika himself. 

Shu had never managed to capture a video of one of their calls as Mika slept, troublesome and finicky things that phones were, but now that he had Mika right on his lap, snatching a little keepsake couldn’t be all too terrible, could it? Feeling for his phone in his pocket, Shu brought the device up just enough to capture Mika’s peaceful face as he rested, only to look down at the screen and see a bright blue eye staring right back at him. After all, Mika wasn’t exactly asleep , the sudden movement likely rattling him out of his repose regardless, and the sight of Shu trying to sneak a picture of him must've been sweetly surprising enough for Mika to prompt playing around with him a bit. He flipped from laying on one side to the other and pressed his face into Shu’s tummy, blowing a playful raspberry against it.

“Caught ya!” Mika exclaimed in the midst of snickers, pulling his face away after a few seconds of giddy nuzzling to grin up at Shu, triumphant and impish. The squint of his eyes that resulted from such a smile softened after a few seconds of staring at Shu’s increasingly bashful expression. Certainly, this was some grave violation of privacy and an utter infringement on Mika's autonomy, photographing him as though he was just some pretty object, or so Shu’s mind raced before being cut out of his sulking by Mika’s terribly tender murmur. “Ya could've asked if ya wanted a picture, Oshi-san. Here, lemme take one for ya.”

Stealing Shu’s phone from his grip wasn't too difficult for Mika, given that his grip on the thing had gone somewhat slack with humility. With candor and a moment’s flash of poise—selfie-taking seemed to come easy to Mika these days, whether it was born from his modeling jobs, his insistence on sending Shu pictures of himself throughout the day, or simply from hanging around his circle of friends—he stuck his tongue out and shot a picture of himself. Not quite what Shu was looking for, but any tangible remnant of this moment would do. He coughed out a “thank you,” but the words came out a bit weakly, his hand returning to Mika’s hair. 

Not that Shu would get to continue petting for much longer; Mika sat up a few seconds after he took the picture, stretching his arms out and making a curious beeline to the windows, tapping at the glass with a finger. Whatever longing Shu had to remain in that embrace was quickly swallowed down.

“Looks like it’ll start gettin’ dark soon,” Mika pointed out, brow quirking almost amusedly, as if it was some sort of prospect for a comical escapade, “what should we do about the lights?”

“I recall driving past an épicerie on our way here, not too far off. It won’t be too much of a hassle to pick up a few tea lights, if they have any, alongside ingredients for dinner…”

The idea of cooking a nice dinner for Mika with local ingredients had been orchestrated days in advance; the malfunctioning of the lights had not. Perhaps the universe had decided to take pity on Shu and aid his efforts to devote these few days to properly pampering his Kagehira, bringing some mystical sense of impulse to his ostensibly immediate dinner proposal. Seeing Mika’s eyes light up at the mention of a dinner made by Shu’s hands brought an almost exasperating sense of relief to him. Sole meunière, Shu had decided after flipping through the pages of a cookbook—the embarrassment of realizing he was stroking the smooth page while thinking of how Mika would react to the dish stubbornly lingering—on account of its simple elegance. Somewhere within his suitcase was tupperware with flour and seasoning portioned into two resealable bags, since buying more while away from home would result in waste. Lemons, butter, fish, and parsley remained. Again, Mika’s speech gave him a rest from his own thoughts.

“If yer gonna go, let me come with?”

A single soft-spoken sentence had no right to make Shu’s heart ache as much as it did then. Silly, sweet boy. I should be asking you that. Before he replied properly, he coughed into his elbow in a pitiful attempt to rid himself of his perverse tenderness, wondering if this was the same soreness Mika spoke of when he first moved away.

“Put your coat back on, then. We ought to hurry back before it turns dark.”

Watching Mika’s carefree steps in contrast to his own traipsing brought a strangely bittersweet smile to Shu’s lips, only softened by the way Mika turned to him to have his collar straightened out after buttoning his coat up—normalcy at last, something recognizable from their days of cohabitation years prior. Shu fixed Mika’s coat before handling his own this time, and after finding a spare bag to hold their purchases in, they stepped out of the residence. Despite the familiarity of the action, taking Mika’s hand into his own after locking the door behind them brought some color to Shu’s face. 

In the past, as they walked, Mika would’ve asked if Shu’d gotten sick upon seeing the rose dusted across his nose and ears, and Shu would’ve retorted back with some sharp quip about the season clinging to the chill of winter. The same conversation played out in the rental car, if not as the bliss of tradition, then as Mika’s signal that he had some semblance of an idea as to what Shu’s mind was fixed on now. Comfortable repetition seemed to bring some radiance back to his weary face, and Mika mirrored the delight in his own expression.

“It’s real empty out here,” Mika murmured, resting his head against the window as he stared out into the scenery, “good for thinkin’. You’ve been doin’ a lot of that since we got here, huh, Oshi-san?”

Shu felt Mika’s eyes flicker back towards him, but he didn’t dare meet his gaze. “I suppose I have, and that was the intent.” 

“I think I might pass out after dinner, but I wanna stay up and watch ya sketch, if you do.”

“I won’t be doing so,” Shu reassured, brows falling back into a habitual furrow, “but in either case, your rest takes priority, Kagehira. You’ve been awake since god knows what hour, and before a long drive at that.”

“Nhehe, it ain’t my fault ya look so pretty when yer asleep. Plus, I was jetlagged, I couldn’t help it.”

“Jetlag is precisely the reason why I suggest you go to sleep at an appropriate time.”

“Can’t argue with that,” Mika hummed out in reply against the cold glass of the window. “Yer always lookin’ out for me.”

“... It’s only common decency.”

The sheepish stiffness of that answer bled into the way Shu rushed to the other side of the car to open Mika’s door for him, offering a hesitating hand to him as he watched him step out of the car. Until now, Shu hadn’t noticed how desperately he’d been clinging to the warmth of his palm; or, rather to the lack of warmth, given that Mika always ran a bit colder than he did. Regardless, the thought was terribly humiliating. Behavior of this bashful, bumbling kind would only tarnish his image, and devolution wasn’t something Shu could stand in himself.

With a small jingle, the door to the épicerie opened, and Shu tried to firm his pace as he walked with Mika hand-in-hand into the welcoming environment to make himself seem as though he was familiar with every establishment in the country. Feigning order and composure was an easy remedy to turn to. A confident turn towards the dairy would serve as a good starting point—butter would be necessary almost regardless of what Shu planned to make.

“The butter here tends to have a stronger flavor than that which is common in Japan,” he turned to state earnestly to Mika, who gazed back with a mix of affection and perplexion at the out-of-pocket factoid. 

“Huh,” he mumbled in fascination, glancing around the interior of the store. A slight rustic edge existed under these warm white lights. While the shelves were stocked with a few recognizable items, the text on them didn't register well, at least not with Mika's limited knowledge of French. Shu seemed too fixated on efficiently grabbing everything on his mental checklist to explain anything, so Mika's questions went unanswered. 

Two servings of sole wrapped in butcher paper joined the butter in the bag, then parsley, then eggs and sugar for tomorrow, and a bag of caramels that Shu’d conceded to buying at Mika's request. Thankfully, there was no need to resort to tea lights to illuminate the entire rental home, given that the store sold more substantial candles that wouldn't flicker out as quickly. Three of them should do, Shu thought, since they'd only need to use them during the night. Regardless, he cautiously added a fourth candle, if not for Mika to use in case of emergency, then as a keepsake of their vacation. Shu felt as though he was forgetting something. 

“Oshi-san, have ya already decided what to make?” Mika inquired, poking his head out from behind the aisle. He'd slipped from Shu’s grasp and taken to wandering around, perusing through the items on the shelves out of fascination, though he'd stayed relatively close to his side. Shu’s free hand was left empty; he didn't have the right to command Mika to take it. 

“Being in the presence of this multitude of options has helped me narrow down one dish to make, yes.”

“Not gonna tell me what it is? Nhehe, it's a surprise then. ‘m sure whatever ya make is gonna taste good.”

Seeing the glint in Mika's eyes reminded Shu that he'd completely forgotten to get lemons in the midst of his awkward moping. He called for Mika, letting out a small exhale of relief when he took the hand he offered out for him, and led towards the area for produce, heart strangely heavy. The entire situation was ridiculous to him, really—getting this worked up over a perfectly reasonable dismissal. Shu had been able to reassure Mika that he supported his decision to not move in with him, so why couldn't he reassure himself? Why did his chest tighten up when he became aware that he'd been going through his day without Mika next to him, when he was perfectly capable of doing things on his own? 

The root of his suffering was addiction, he'd decided; he'd gotten a taste of the boy's kindness and now he itched every moment he was aware he couldn't reach it. Making new connections in France wasn't difficult, especially given that he was surrounded by like-minded individuals in his classes, but none of them were as fulfilling as his bond with Mika. Whatever gaping holes loneliness left were easy to wrap up in ribbons and lace, easy to frame and be titled ‘art’ in and of themselves, Shu’d decided in his youth, after the passing of Kuro’s mother, but turning a blind eye to them didn’t fill them at all. Even if those wounds closed up over the years, scar tissue was fundamentally distinct from normal skin. He felt the skin of the lemons for firmness. The ones that yielded the least were the ones he picked. 

Reaching into the selection to pick out a lemon as well, Mika handed Shu a lemon with thin yet firm skin, a disconcertingly domestic smile on his lips to match the perfect fruit. Such a gesture shouldn’t have been heavy enough to make Shu’s lungs feel as if they’d collapsed, to bring his knees to threaten to buckle just at the sight of a single fruit; he knew he had enough dignity to stop himself from causing a scene in public. He doesn’t cry for long, wiping bleary eyes against the sleeve of his coat and striding off to check out, inhaling sharply to regain his bearings. Throughout the transaction, Shu doesn’t dare meet eyes with the cashier, speaking only through practiced dialogues; a greeting here, a thank you there, and just that would do.

Shu knew that Mika knew that something is wrong at this point, but he didn't quite let himself crumple when they returned to the car. It isn’t his own. He couldn’t bring himself to willingly come undone in this place that wasn’t his. Determined to remain respectable in face of his bleeding heart, he turned to fix his seatbelt, but his eyes met Mika’s instead—he’d quietly gotten out of his seat and walked over to Shu’s door when he wasn’t looking. With an almost unfathomable gentleness, Mika opened the car door, coaxing Shu up to his feet to get him to sit in the passenger seats behind the front two. 

“I’ve got ya, okay? Stay back here with me for a bit,” he insisted, closing the door behind him. The space in the back of the car was confined, almost reassuringly so; there existed no world outside of this metal cage, no one to see or hear. Despite his own reservations, Shu allowed Mika to take a seat next to him, not that he could voice any protests when his throat tightened to a nearly painful degree. He’d always have Mika this close if he could, though he knew it’d be far too cruel to subject him to that sort of future. Dragging air in through his nose, Shu tried to will his voice to return to its typical smoothness, only to croak out each word one by one, almost mechanically. 

“I’m… perfectly capable of handling— This, this isn’t… necessary…!”

How pitiful he must’ve sounded, for Mika to bring his arms around him, to pull him to his chest and shush him as though he were some weeping baby. Exhaustion ran through Shu’s blood like oxygen, leaving him unable to pull away from the embrace as he’d wanted to, shaking his head into the fabric of Mika’s coat, refusing to soil it with tears. Even if he was choking on the weight of his own melancholy, he was better than this loathsome behavior. 

This was still the warmth he’d craved, wasn’t it? The rise and fall of Mika’s chest under his head was what he’d dreamed of whenever he laid in bed with a spare pillow placed at his side, after having casted his dinner to the fridge, unable to stomach anything with the other end of his dining table left unoccupied. It was just enough space for two. Shu didn’t gasp for air as he remained burrowed in Mika’s hold, but for his scent. Was there a difference between the two, if he felt this suffocated without Mika’s presence? 

Pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes as he curled up on himself, all that Shu could pray for was some way to keep this lock from rusting, for both his sake and Mika’s. Some way to cover up his overbearing tendencies for the sake of Mika’s well-being. Some balance between “I want you,” and “I want to see you thrive.”  

As Mika’s hand made contact with his back, offering quiet consolation and familiar touch, Shu’s tears spilled from the lacrimal ducts he’d sworn to dry out. Wet, strangled sniffles of something Mika could barely make out as “I don’t know what to do with myself” from under his chin reverberated mockingly through the car, as if to taunt Shu with his own unseemly weeping. Hearing himself grieve for what he wouldn’t lose for another few days brought a deep sense of shame to fester in his gut, but he’d do nothing to remain in this moment for the rest of time, in the grasp of his lover and nothing to distract themselves from each other. 

Through the quiet of his tears, Shu felt Mika’s hand reach to entwine with his once again, giving a grounding squeeze to his palm before pressing his fingertips against his own. 

“Thought ya seemed a lil off since I landed, but I didn’t wanna assume anything,” Mika whispered, lowering his voice so as to not hurt Shu’s ears. Squeezing his hand once again, he added, “Oshi-san, ‘m gonna squeeze yer hand, and I want ya to inhale with me.”

Another squeeze, accompanied by the fall of Mika’s chest. Shu could feel every beat of his heart against his ear as he laid against him. “We’re gonna exhale together when I squeeze again like that. Is that okay?”

Managing a shaky nod between hiccups, Shu squeezed back each time Mika held on to his hand tighter, timing his own breaths to each of Mika’s reiterated squeezes, but his tears continued to fall ceaselessly. He’d missed Mika’s voice, his touch, his scent, the body heat that radiated from him, the sound of his steps padding through the apartment, the soft snores he’d let out in his sleep, he’d missed so dearly that he’d found himself wanting to continue sobbing to stay as they were now. 

“... You’re too kind,” Shu sniffled into Mika’s shoulder, tentatively ripping himself away from Mika’s hold to awkwardly shuffle back to the driver’s seat—even if he wanted to fall asleep against him, he had the responsibility to at least get the both of them back to the rental property—flinching at the sight of mismatched eyes now glassy with concern after his outburst. Clearing his throat, he started the car back up, and the rest of the ride was spent in silence. Confrontation wouldn’t be a viable option. Tomorrow would come, and he’d atone for his inconsiderate tantrum with a dignified smile and a breakfast of slightly-burnt pancakes, playing through his daydreams and insisting that this would be their eternity until his act came to its end at the terminal once more. The holes wouldn’t close, but Shu wouldn’t dare stop trying to gracefully sew them shut just yet.