Chapter Text
Misaki frowned at the three plates of food that had been set on their small coffee table in the living room.
“Saru, eat.” Misaki said, eyeing the toast from that morning. “You’ll be able to work faster if you do.”
“Later,” came Saruhiko’s mumbled reply. There was a tinge of green, causing Misaki to step back with a sigh.
“Saru, it’s nine in the evening. You’ve been working on that since last night. You need to eat before you collapse or something.”
“Later, Misaki.”
“Saru –“
“Quiet!” Saruhiko clicked his tongue, tapping away at the laptop in front of him. “I’ll eat later, Misaki.”
The green. The unhappy green.
Misaki’s eyes widened at the sight of it, but didn’t speak as he trudged away towards their bedroom. They had tossed out their previous bunk bed and replaced it with a soft queen-sized bed, which took up a lot of space in the room, but that was fine. Saruhiko’s drawer - the one that was made in the wall – hasn’t been removed yet, and Misaki had decided to keep his folder full of ugly colors up there along with some other trivial things – a knife, extra money, and a photograph of them.
He flopped down onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling, the green never leaving his mind. Sure, Misaki had seen Saruhiko’s green many times before, but the green he saw today seemed darker, almost scarier than normal.
Misaki looked down at his little ‘art corner’, which was the corner next to the window in their room. His coloring materials were scattered all over the floor around it because Misaki always forgot to clean up after finish a drawing. His sketchbooks were stacked in one tall tower, threatening to topple over any moment.
They’ll probably fall over if I try to put my next one on top. He mused as he imagined the tower falling over and scattering his drawings all over the place. His current sketchbook, which had a few pages left to fill in, was lying open on the floor with a recent drawing of Saruhiko’s smile staring back at him.
Those are happy drawings, though.
The redhead was more than worried about Saruhiko right now. He had recently accepted an assignment with a really early due date, which had forced him to sacrifice sleep in order to fulfill the (still not finished) job. He hasn’t eaten in a little over twenty-four hours, either, which was the biggest cause of Misaki’s stress that moment. Misaki had tried to give him plates of food while he was working, but he hadn’t touched any of them.
Saruhiko’s quick tapping was the only sound in the apartment. It was a cold white color, because that’s how inanimate objects always seemed to sound like. Sometimes white, sometimes grey, and sometimes even yellow. It didn’t make sense, but Misaki accepted the colors as they were, knowing that someday he’d be able to figure it out.
Misaki heard Saruhiko pushing the plates around, but didn’t bother to check on him. He was tired from work that day, and coming home to see Saruhiko not touching his breakfast or lunch only seemed to make matters worse. He already had to eat dinner alone, and that was probably one of the loneliest things he ever has to do when Saruhiko was too busy to pay any attention to anything that didn’t involve work.
Misaki waited for their wall clock to hit 9:30 before walking back out to check on his workaholic of a boyfriend, who was still tapping away at the laptop and making subtle clicking noises when things didn’t go the way he wanted them to go. He walked over to Saruhiko and sat on the couch behind him, watching as the genius quickly and skillfully spat out line after line of code that seemed like complete gibberish to Misaki. He knew better than to try to talk to Saruhiko, but after one look at the plates of food that had been placed on the floor, he couldn’t help but complain.
“Saru, why won’t you eat? That’s not even due for another three days, right? Get some rest, too. I heard that laying down for twenty minutes helps people that have to stay up for a long time function better, too.” He rambled without giving Saruhiko a chance to speak in-between sentences.
Saruhiko clicked his tongue loud enough for Misaki to understand that it was an expression that was directed at him rather than the laptop. He didn’t answer Misaki as he refreshed a website over and over again, looking at some colored text on the right side before editing more things and refreshing again.
“Did you build that?” Misaki tried again, but received nothing but silence. The website that Saruhiko was working on had a lot of purple and blue hues, which for some reason made Misaki a little happy. He peeked at the line of code Saruhiko was editing on the bottom right of the screen, furrowing his brow as he tried to make sense of it. “Console log Misaki?” He wondered out loud, wracking his brain for some knowledge of that. Saruhiko had tried to teach him programming years ago, but stopped after he started accepted heavy (high paying) job offers.
He gave up trying to remember what that statement meant, but he could feel the tenseness in the atmosphere as Saruhiko seemed to get more and more annoyed with something on the screen. He had started muttering strings of curses to himself, and after a while his movement seemed to grow more and more agitated as he pressed the keys a little harder than usual.
Misaki got up to get a granola bar from the kitchen in hopes that Saruhiko would at least eat that.
“Here.” Misaki murmured, tapping Saruhiko’s shoulder with the granola bar. “At least eat that.”
Saruhiko looked up at Misaki for the first time that day, pure annoyance written all over his face. “Can’t you just let me work?” He said, agitation laced in every word.
It was a dark cyan color.
Misaki’s eyes widened and he dropped the granola bar, taking a couple steps back as the color seemed to cement itself into his mind. He hasn’t ever seen that color before, and it scared him. The color somehow reminded him of anger, irritation, and countless other negative emotions.
He instantly hated that color.
Does he hate me? He wondered as Saruhiko stared at him.
“I-I’ll leave you alone. I’m sorry.” Misaki sputtered before making a beeline to the bedroom and closing the door quickly, sliding down to sit in the front of it. He locked the door in fear of having to see that color leave Saruhiko’s lips once again. He was hugging his knees and resting his forehead on it, trying desperately to will the cyan away, away, away. He had the urge to start clawing at his skin, but he resisted it, resisted succumbing to the pain that would come from it.
Soft footsteps and a quiet knock on the door threw Misaki out of his thoughts. “Misaki.” Saruhiko called out quietly, apologetically. “Misaki, I didn’t mean to yell at you like that.”
He heard hints of pink but paid no mind to it.
“Go away.” Misaki mumbled, barely loud enough to reach Saruhiko’s ears. “Finish your work.”
Saruhiko had tried jiggling the doorknob, and once he realized it was locked he sighed and sat himself in front of the door with his back leaning against it. “Misaki, I’m sorry.”
“Go finish your work.”
“I’ll do it later.”
“Just finish it!” Misaki yelled, frustration growing in the pit of his stomach. “Finish it so I don’t have to deal with this anymore!”
“With what?”
“That color! Make it go away; finish it so it’ll go away!”
Saruhiko clicked his tongue. “Not until I know you’re okay.”
“I am okay.”
“Not.”
“Am so!”
“You’re mad.”
“Not!”
“Then why are you yelling at me?”
Misaki’s breath hitched as he realized that indeed, he had been yelling at Saruhiko.
“… I’m sorry.” Misaki mumbled, hugging his knees even tighter. “Just finish it, please.”
“Let me in first.”
“Why?”
“I want to see you.”
“No… go away,” Misaki pleaded, “please.”
A barely audible sigh and Misaki suddenly found himself alone. Saruhiko had returned to his laptop, judging by the incessant tapping noises coming from the other side of the door.
Misaki sat there a little while longer before unlocking the door and crawling under the bedsheets. He was suddenly hyperaware of the empty space that usually held Saruhiko’s warmth.
"Goodnight, Saru," he mumbled before closing his eyes.
In the morning, he woke up and found the bed empty. The tapping sounds from the day before could still be heard from the living room, telling him that Saruhiko hadn’t gone to sleep - again.
Anger welled in his throat, but instead of stomping outside and yelling at Saruhiko, he instead got out of bed and grabbed the open sketchbook from the floor. He turned to an empty page, retrieved all the necessary colors from the pile of colored pencils, and began to draw the first thing he remembered that morning.
_______
It was a little past lunchtime when Saruhiko finally finished his assignment and set it up for live testing. He was tired and starving, but before sleeping or eating he needed to check on Misaki.
When he walked into the bedroom, though, he found Misaki asleep on the floor with a new drawing to him. Curiously, he picked up the drawing and frowned at the image before him. He had drawn a portrait of Saruhiko, but it was angrily scribbled out with cyan colors that Saruhiko hadn’t once seen in his drawings.
“Misaki…” he murmured, suddenly realizing that that was the color that Misaki was freaking out over last night.
“Nnn?” Misaki blinked his eyes slowly, making Saruhiko direct his attention to him. “Saru?”
“I’m done.” Saruhiko said, crouching next to the sleepy figure and placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Misaki.”
He looked up at Saruhiko blearily before smiling softly. “It’s purple again…”
“Because I can spend time with Misaki again, that’s why.” Saruhiko smiled. “Let’s go eat now.”
“Okay,” Misaki mumbled before sitting up slowly. Saruhiko helped Misaki stand, and together they made their way to the kitchen to get their food prepared.
“What should we eat?” Misaki asked while yawning. He had the frying pan out and started humming softly to himself as he poked through the refrigerator for inspiration.
“… Pancakes.” They said in unison as Misaki pulled out the milk. They looked at each other for a brief moment before laughing.
“Glad to see you’re back.” Misaki said, smiling.
Saruhiko returned the smile. “Glad to be back.”