Work Text:
reasons to leave:
kazuya is twenty-one when he wakes up in the middle of the night to a shared apartment and an empty bed. reaching up to take off his sleeping mask, kazuya blinks when his hands grasp nothing but silence stretching out into air and air and air before he remembers ah, that’s right. kazuya hasn’t worn a sleeping mask to bed in years.
so he lets his hands fall back again, left hand by his head, palm up against the pillow and right hand on top of his chest. he waits for what follows next, muscle memory seeking not the calm that claims him before sleep but the calluses, the rough palm and slender fingers slotting between kazuya’s own. nothing happens, and in the wake of this loss for a moment everything else stops too, the world as kazuya knows it stumbling down into something small but still too much to fit into the palm of his hand.
he wonders if maybe this is a dream, or if it’s the other way around: everything up till this point was the dream and now kazuya’s woken up at last, catching up to the rest of the world, batter out, that’s three outs, change sides! his fingers curl into a fist on his pillow. turning his head, kazuya looks past his hand, sees an open door and the light spilling in from the hall, not quite enough to reach where kazuya is. sitting up, kazuya slips out of bed to follow it.
outside their bedroom it’s dark, light seeping in from the kitchen where kazuya forgot to turn it off before bed, whole lightyears separating where he stood then and where he stands now, living room sitting somewhere in the middle and, in the middle of that, is this: kuramochi splayed out along the couch, arm over his eyes. it takes kazuya a while to realise he’s crying, but once he does he can’t understand how he didn’t notice it before, thinks maybe it has something to do with leaving his glasses back on their nightstand.
thinks maybe it has something to do with how, even if he never has and now never can admit it, he’s always believed kuramochi was nothing short of indomitable. like so: kazuya is twenty-one and a catcher and sometimes he gets sad, and he’s only just started believing that maybe that last part is okay, and kuramochi is twenty-two and a shortstop and has never fallen apart, not that kazuya’s seen anyway, and kazuya’s seen more than maybe most people get to.
but isn’t that what they used to say about kazuya, too?
so when kuramochi shifts onto his side, legs tucked in to make space for kazuya on the couch, kazuya doesn’t take it, doesn’t remember how to. instead he opens up his fingers, lets go of the fist he didn’t know he was still making, and says the only thing left he knows how to give.
“i can leave, if you want.”
reasons to stay:
youichi jerks up at that, shoulders trying to hunch in closer and unfold themselves completely so he can see miyuki, all at once. he does neither of these things. listening carefully, youichi doesn’t hear miyuki say anything else, but he doesn’t hear him walk away either. so even though he doesn’t know which of those options he’d prefer, he answers miyuki anyway, not with words but with everything else.
lifting his arm from his eyes, youichi reaches out in miyuki’s direction, hand palm up so miyuki can bridge the rest of the gap. it’s a stupid decision in hindsight, though, because youichi’s eyes stay closed even as he lets everything else go, so miyuki could have gone and youichi’d have no clue, can’t see anything but the shadows under his eyes, can’t hear anything but his own ragged, wrecked breathing — crying, you’re crying, youichi — and worse of all his arm’s starting to ache, hurt creeping through his veins into his hand, his palm, his fingers.
he starts to wonder if maybe miyuki isn’t here at all, if miyuki never called out to him to start with. fingers closing together around a hand that isn’t there, youichi tries to laugh. a sob rips out instead, stealing all the air from his lungs, youichi left with barely anything at all after but his hands and his heart and his heart, sliding into the same mistakes it always does, muscle memory or habit charging straight towards another quiet calamity, sprinting headfirst into —
— youichi’s arm, falling to the floor but never reaching it, folded into someone else’s hand instead before being laid back across youichi’s chest. the hand doesn’t leave, though, stays there against youichi’s hand and his chest and doesn’t leave, sofa dipping under youichi’s feet like a promise: i’m still here.
youichi opens his eyes, blinking, and miyuki’s hand slips under youichi’s so their fingers rest tangled together on youichi’s chest. he can barely see anything, the world a blurred afterimage before his eyes but he sees miyuki. he sees miyuki and feels miyuki’s hand, his fingers, miyuki leaning to rest his head just above youichi’s.
when youichi’s head tucks into the curve between miyuki’s neck and shoulder he feels the soft, worn fabric of miyuki’s shirt, miyuki’s breaths soft and steady against his ear. for reasons youichi can’t understand or even think to explain it makes him cry harder, and when he does miyuki’s hand leaves youichi’s so both of his hands can curl around youichi, contact constant but loose, allowing youichi to leave it at any time if he wanted. it is the most tender way anyone has ever touched youichi, ever held him.
i’m still here.
and it — helps. doesn’t solve anything, or make it any easier, but it helps, and youichi thinks he could fall asleep just like this, so he does. when he wakes up again miyuki’s still there, the two of them shifting in the night so youichi’s ear is pressed close to miyuki’s throat, the dip of miyuki’s adam’s apple with every breath, youichi’s own pulse ebbing and rising to follow the same rhythm.