Archive of Our Own ^beta

He remembers the first time he asked the question, many years ago. 

It might have been July, or maybe August. The tree in the yard bends towards the tall, swaying grass. Its leaves are full and heavy. Sunlight pushes through them and dapples the soil and the ceiling, dances gold across their faces. The memory of hundreds of teenage afternoons crashing and pressing into each other. 

“Aki,” Kouyou says. The weight in his lap is still strange to him. It’s a used thing; worn and rough and scuffed like the boy it belongs to. Akira’s red guitar. “This is so fucking hard.”

Akira looks up. His own bass dwarfs him, looming large with all the things he has yet to learn. An older Kouyou knows that it’ll be an extension of himself soon, as natural as the moon rising in the east and haloing through the night. 

“Yeah, it is, but I know you.” Akira’s little knuckles dig into his cheek when he leans on them. “You’re gonna be the best guitar player in the world.”

Kouyou startles, not for the audacity of being the greatest, but for the sudden force lodged in Akira's voice. His brain short circuits. Breath catching. There’s faith in Akira’s eyes–complete and unconditional. 

All for him. 

“I–”

“No,” Akira interrupts. He leans forward and bounces a finger against Kouyou’s forehead. The pad of his finger is still soft. “Don’t think too much. Just help me figure out the strumming pattern on this song. It’s been days and it’s driving me crazy.” 

He reaches over and clicks a button on the cassette player beside him. A cascading guitar lights up the track and sparkling drums pour into the room. “I’ll hold you close so you won’t ever forget,” the singer cries, drawing out the vowels in an endless ache. “Even if someday, my voice can no longer reach you.” And that’s all he hears before Akira shuts it off. 

“That’s not right,” he grumbles, rummaging around the shelf behind him. Kouyou shuts his eyes for longer than he needs to. He hears the cassettes click and clack together. His fingers mouth chords even when his heart starts wandering somewhere else. 

“Found it!” Akira yells. A moment later, the opening phrase of Luna Sea’s Lastly rolls in. Kouyou opens his eyes to watch Akira’s technique, but it's a lost cause. He trails up. Akira’s brow furrows as he tries his best to follow the rhythm. His skin is ruddy because the desk fan pushes hot air around instead of cooling them down. He misses some notes and he doesn’t hold the strings down right, so the steel buzzes in protest. Still, Kouyou thinks it sounds so pretty, like a heartbeat. A stinging, imperfect life beating towards eternity. 

Despite everything, his eyes flutter shut. A calm weight roots itself in his chest and he sinks into it. He’s cradled in its warmth–nothing like he’s ever felt before. The longer he falls, the warmer he feels, with Akira by his side. 

Something inside shifts at the thought, wet sand beneath his heel. A discovery quietly sliding into place. The thought that he can do this forever.

“Ugh, you’re not even paying attention,” Akira says. The complaint hooks into the nape of his neck and drags him all the way to the surface. Kouyou’s eyes shoot open.

“Hey,” he tries. Kouyou forces his voice to make it sound more confident than he feels. He really needs his best friend to listen. Akira pauses and rests his head on the flat of his hand, looking at Kouyou, long and steady. 

“If I move to Tokyo and start a band,” he swallows. “Will you come with me?”

He hears Akira before he even sees him. A mechanical groan swarming through the quiet, sputtering and gasping like the wings of a million locusts. 

“Kouyou!” his mother’s calls, voice amplified as the engine cuts out. “Aki-chan’s h–”

He yells something unintelligible as he shoves on a shirt from the floor. By the time he’s outside, Akira’s knee-deep in a conversation with his mother. Her crows feet wink in and out as she nods along. Whatever charming thing he’s saying is making her smile from ear-to-ear; the kind he sees less of these days. 

“Yo,” Akira calls out when he sees him. “Think fast.” Suddenly, there’s a blur in the air and a helmet square in his chest. He swears he could hear it thunk against his bones.

“What the hell is that?” Kouyou asks, pointing to the ancient motorcycle in the distance. He wonders if it was around when the emperor was a thing.

“Thaaaaaat,” Akira says, “is my new baby. A Honda Rebel 250.” He says “baby” in English and Kouyou stifles the urge to laugh in his face. Instead, Kouyou tilts his head, examining the bruised and battered metal body.

“What is it rebelling against? Life itself?”

“Haha,” Akira answers, and flips him off when his mother has her back turned.

She cuts in. “I don’t usually say this, but Kouyou’s right. Why did you buy this motorcycle? Surely boys your age would prefer something more…” He sees the rolodex of her brain shuffle through different words. Safe. Sexy. Not a piece of shit. She settles on “modern,” for the sake of polite company. Then she flicks her spent cigarette into the grass.

Akira rubs the back of his neck bashfully. “I know it’s not the best, but it was in my price range and I think it’d be good for my first bike to be something I could rough up.”

“Understatement of the year,” Kouyou mutters, which earns him a sharp elbow in his side.

“Plus, it’s a fixer-upper. I gotta put some of those tech school skills to work.”

Kouyou’s mother hums in faux approval. Her attention’s flagging, wandering back to the tinny television in their small kitchen. In the pause that follows, he can hear their voices, clipped and cold, mix with the cicadasong.

“Well,” she sighs. “Be safe, and don’t be out too late.” It’s a formality, something mothers are supposed to say, but he knows she won’t go looking for him. She aims a pointed look at Kouyou, even though Akira’s the one with the death trap. 

“Thanks, ma’am!” Akira yells at her retreating back. Kouyou stares at the crushed cigarette. Once she’s out of earshot, Kouyou smirks, able to breathe again. This is his favorite part. 

“Maybe if you could hold down a job for longer than two months, you could get a two hundred year old bike instead of a three hundred year old one.”

Akira rolls his eyes, but there’s a shit-eating grin plastered all over his face. “It’s only fourteen, not even old enough to smoke.” 

They start walking to the bike from Kouyou’s front door, shoulders knocking together. There are crickets now, chirping under a dusky sky. The uncut grass brushes their ankles. 

“Didn’t you start smoking at fourteen?”

“Weren’t you the one that gave me that cigarette?”

Oh, Kouyou remembers. It was a year after Akira’s red guitar and the year he finally got his own. He remembers the way Akira’s eyes lit up like flying saucers when he showed them off, slightly bent from being in his schoolbag all day. And he remembers running to get water when Akira started choking after the first inhale, the way his throat swallowed gratefully around it, again and again. 

“Fair. Anyway. I don’t actually care about what you ride or don’t ride. Just don’t kill me while you do it,” he says.

“If I killed you, I’d have your flat ass haunting me until the end of time and that would be–” Akira clutches both arms and shivers dramatically. “Really gross.”

“When did you start looking at my ass?”

Akira is a bit ahead of him, but he turns back with a smile, toothy and sarcastic. He twists and untwists the end of his shirt. 

“You fucking wish. Now put your shit on–Yuta’s gonna chew us out if we’re late again.”

Kouyou nods and traces the curve of the helmet. It feels cheap and plasticky under his touch, and Akira’s doesn’t look all that much nicer. “What’d you talk about with my mom anyway?” he asks, fumbling with the straps under his chin. He keeps missing the ends of the buckle, or they might not fit right at all, he doesn’t know. It’s pissing him off.

Akira’s voice snaps to a flatline. “Something about the Haruno kid getting sent away for kissing that boy. She thinks it's for his own good.” Kouyou can’t see Akira’s face because it’s turned to the road ahead. His shirt hangs loosely off his skinny frame; a starched, blank white. “I didn’t want to get into it, so I changed the subject.” 

Kouyou swallows. His hands get even sweatier and the buckle slips out of his grasp for the millionth time. He’s about to try again when he feels a hand circle around his wrist. Kouyou stills as Akira’s gentle, practiced fingers adjust the strap and click the buckle together. He holds his breath when they graze his chin. Doesn’t let go until Akira steps away.

“Thanks,” Kouyou says. Then, in a quieter voice, “God, I can’t wait to get out of here.”

There’s another pause as they both climb onto the bike. “I know,” Akira says softly. Kouyou blinks in surprise. He wasn’t sure Akira heard him at all. “Just. Remember to visit me, okay?”

Kouyou breathes in the languid summer air. It already feels like a time very, very far away. “I will,” he promises.

It’s been a week, and there’s already something wrong with the motorcycle. Kouyou, for the life of him, can’t figure out what Akira means when he says it “sounds bad.” It’s all the same to him. So he waits on the curb of the Lawson that they’re parked in, and tries his best to angle his body in the shade. Heat rises from the asphalt and makes all the edges of all the things waver, sun shimmering across the river’s surface. 

“What’s that?” Akira asks, nudging his chin in Kouyou’s direction. There’s an instruction manual in one hand and a fruit popsicle in the other. 

“Put a hole through the wall.” Kouyou flexes the bandages on his knuckles. A couple of them are already starting to peel off. “It was stupid. I hadn’t done that since the shoplifting years.”

“And bike stealing.”

“And fighting.”

“And breaking and entering.”

Kouyou groans. “That was one time.”

“Pfft,” Akira says. Like he wasn’t right there, watching Kouyou do it all. He flips to another page in the manual and sucks on the popsicle. The red liquid slowly drips onto the pavement. “How’s Fuyumi?” 

Kouyou blinks hard and suddenly feels every strange edge of his ripped up heart. He takes a moment to school his voice into something neutral. Smooths his face into something flatter than he feels.

“We broke up.”

“Oh,” Akira’s eyes dart between him and the bandages. Kouyou pretends to be interested in some ants trailing towards the splattered juice. He thinks about how his father annoyed him at breakfast, asking him when he was gonna get a real fucking job. He thinks about the new whammy pedal he just ordered from the catalog. He flicks through a million other things except for the new, girl-shaped hole in their conversation.

He looks up and meets Akira’s waiting, open gaze. It’s too much, makes him want to lick his wounds and hang his head between his knees, but his eyes catch on Akira’s newly-bare popsicle stick. They exchange a glance. 

“She didn’t think she could do long distance. But then we started arguing.” The plastic bag crinkles when Kouyou opens it, and the stick goes into the trash. Then he takes a bite of his ice cream, nearly forgotten in the sweltering sun. “She said she didn’t understand me at all. Like I don’t care about her or anybody else. I just.” He chews on the little spoon that came with it, mouth filled with the bitter taste of wood. “I’m still trying to figure out how it works, but I’m not fast enough.”

There’s a long pause. The ants disappear into a tiny, grainy hill. Kouyou doesn’t know how they always know where to go. What to do. 

“You’re just a guy on his own time.” Akira sounds awfully sure. He ducks around the other side of the bike and starts opening up the engine cover. “I’m not interested in that shit either. Right now, I just want to hang out with my friends and do lives.”

“Yeah,” Kouyou sighs.

“Bet you could find a girl out in the city real quick.” Akira peers at him through the machinery, dark eyes splintered through the scuffed piping and scratched plates. 

“I dunno,” he says, trailing off. Something in his chest strikes dull and wrong at the thought. A chord played out of tune. He can feel Akira’s eyes on him as he listens to the cicadas wrest cries from their bodies. He looks up, tries to chase the low rumble of an airplane overhead. Its silver belly winks at him through the thick, webby leaves. 

Akira stands up, stretches his arms behind his head in a circle. The muscle tenses up and flexes. There’s a feeling creeping into his mind, but it twists and turns when he tries to grasp it. He looks away. 

Akira exhales something resigned. “It’s really fucking hot.”

Kouyou can only nod, so somewhere, Akira makes a decision for the both of them. 

“This is the same bike that my dad rode before he bounced.”

Kouyou’s attention snaps up. “Did you know that when you…”

“Nope,” Akira says, ducking down again. “Didn’t find out until my mom saw it and gave me an earful.”

“Uh, how does it feel?” 

Akira pauses. He traces the end of the wrench in his hand, the curve that will never close. “Not good, but sometimes, late at night… it feels like too much of a coincidence.” 

Kouyou feels the worn tread of a conversation they’ve had before, but not in a long time. Those years echo now, when the loss was still fresh. Akira spoke like there were thorns in his throat, breath tearing on them, voice bleeding in hushed hours when only Kouyou was there to see. He snuck into his room then, and quietly squeezed Akira’s fingers. Kouyou remembers the light better than the words, the dawn dusting over their hands.

He wouldn’t touch Akira like that now. And anyhow, Akira doesn’t cry anymore. Instead, he speaks slowly and deliberately, as if each word could chase away each second of doubt. “You can make your own choices, you know? You don’t have to be like him.”

Akira huffs out a laugh, fingers carefully probing through the metal, trying to diagnose the problem. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do,” Kouyou says. It’s instantaneous, the words out of his mouth and the force in his voice. The type of righteous edge that comes when you believe in someone a little more than yourself. “You won’t be like him.”

“Okay, I won’t, I won’t.” Akira holds up his palms in mock surrender, a little smile on his face. There’s a ghost of possibility in his eyes. It’s not the kind that Kouyou likes.

A few minutes pass while Akira continues to work. Kouyou turns the empty ice cream carton over and over in his hands. The cardboard is damp from condensation–just a memory of something cool and sweet. He watches Akira screw the engine plate back on and, after a few false starts, the motorcycle roars back to life, smothering out all the sounds of summer. Kouyou follows the thread of Akira’s voice through the noise. 

“Anyways. The plan with the bike is to ride it out ‘till the end of the season. I’ll move on if things get really unsalvagable.”

“And where is it now? Like, actually?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Akira says. The sentiment is a little far, and then all too close. Return to sender stamped on an unread letter, address scrawled in a child’s handwriting. 

Still, the way he looks at Kouyou is not distant at all. If Kouyou followed Akira’s eyes and glanced down, he would see nothing but misshapen scars and scratches and an awkward tangle of limbs. Whatever Akira sees is something different. 

It’s a look he’s seen before—one that always tempers the burn in his chest. It’s the same look that Akira gets when his finger traces the curves of his bass or when he rewatches the VHS of Luna Sea’s Tokyo Dome live for the millionth time—their big, big dream flickering in his pupils. Maybe something like hope—a pale, dancing light in the darkness, reaching out to him. 

His body prickles like a dying bulb. There’s a thousand feelings rushing and collapsing into each other, just below his skin. Kouyou doesn’t know any of their names, save for one. So he climbs on the bike and leaves his anger behind in a long, trailing plume of smoke.

He’s thumbing through the latest Shonen Jump when the couch dips next to him.

“Hey,” he says. There’s a smile playing at the corner of his lips, knowing who it is.

Akira doesn’t answer, so Kouyou sets the magazine down. He scans Akira for upset, but he's still getting used to the thick makeup, the noseband, the floppy bang covering half his face. It’s harder now.

“Hey,” Akira finally says. The worry must be written all over Kouyou’s body, because Akira rolls over to face him. He smiles, small and reassuring. 

When Kouyou left him to sit in the corner, there was a roar of laughter, and Akira was in the center, as always. He watches Akira trade sharp jokes and sharper digs, able to hold his own without having to match the guys’ volume at all. He knows which beats to strike to produce this type of sound, but Kouyou doesn’t. Never has.

Akira’s smile, the one he put on for those guys, is practiced, but it’s not the same thing as fake. He learns that it's a bit like performing on stage. If the performance was fake, then every one they’ve ever done was a lie, and that would be too cruel. The truth is it just takes a lot out of you. 

So Kouyou holds out his beer, lukewarm and kind of nasty, but it's all he has. “D’you want some?”

Akira shakes his head and his hands still, fingers curled around the frayed end of his sleeve. “Nah, man. I just need to be quiet for a sec.” After a moment, his eyes slide shut.

Right now, Akira is not smiling, but no one can see that except him. No one can see how quickly he’s dozed off, how his features relaxed and smoothed into something much younger. 

A swell in his chest. A stab of a thought. He needs to protect that kid. But Akira is no longer a child, so he has to try something else.

Kouyou carefully unsticks his bare thighs from the couch and shuffles past. He weaves through a dozen other band members in their shared green room, past clouds of gossip and banter, the lightening flash of a shout. Some of them call out to him, but he can only muster a wave back. All he can think is that it’s not good to feel so tired before a live.

The voices hush and muffle as he reaches the vending machines. The pickings are slim and the machine buzzes loud, as if to fill up all the space with something, anything of substance. He suddenly thinks of Fuyumi, and feels strange, wonders what it would be like to have metal coils instead of ribs in his empty chest. The machine drowns him in cold blue. Underwater.

Then he remembers Akira on the couch, eyes shining like the crescent moon. His breath slows, in and out. He pulls in air and the world and his friend back into focus. 

There’s a lot of energy drinks left, but none are the brand that Akira likes. The available brand must be pretty unpopular–they don’t even sell it in his hometown. There’s a couple of canned lattes, but he knows the milk isn’t always mixed well. Akira doesn’t like slimy, squishy things. 

He spends a minute more thinking, but he ends up choosing the latte. It’s familiar, at least. As he walks back, he makes sure to shake the can extra long and hard. 

Kouyou hopes that Akira will feel better soon. He hopes that the liquid will be a little smoother when he swallows.

Little by little, Kouyou gets used to the bike. He gets used to flying by the short, squat houses sticking out like boulders against the jeweled rice fields. This is their whole world–magnified from a single, unimportant line of text on a map of Shonan. When he moves to Tokyo, that might be all he’ll remember. On longer rides, he counts the things that he doesn’t want to forget, but he comes up short every time. Instead, he gets used to the noise and tells himself that this is what it’ll sound like when he plays Budokan someday.

When he’s sick of looking at the same old streets, he looks at the wide line of Akira’s shoulders. Kouyou wonders what it would be like to hold onto him and his pulse jumps. It would feel safer to do that, but then their bodies might feel too hot and sticky. So he gets used to holding the back of the bike or clutching his own thighs to stay steady. Sometimes, he lets himself grip the hem of Akira’s shirt.

He gets used to the heat. Not the ambient, bloated summer air, but from the bike itself, simmering under the seat and caressing his thigh where it rests near the exhaust pipe. It travels up his waist and into his core. Curls up like it’s always belonged there, white-hot.

Then, there was the shaking. He knew it was going to be rougher than most. He didn’t expect the machine to vibrate beneath him. It felt uncomfortable. It felt weird. Then it felt good–the raw, pulsing power between his legs, completely out of his control. When Akira hits the acceleration, the engine roars. His breath hitches in time with the movement and his heart pounds loud, staccato. When he finally lurches off the bike, his thighs tremble and his backside feels sore and doughy. For a few minutes after, he walks around completely wrung out. Completely satisfied.

He gets used to that too.

He doesn’t need to get used to staying quiet when they ride. He’s already comfortable with silence. Except for one time, when Akira tries. 

They’re stopped at a railroad crossing. The cling clang of the warning system bounces off his ears. The striped bars lower slowly as Akira turns around. He flips his visor up. Sun-kissed skin staring back at him. 

“I need to tell you something,” he says. Kouyou sees the rise and fall of Akira’s chest as he takes a deep breath. He lifts his own visor and nods.

“I’ve been thinking about what you as–”

And then the train shoots through, a black wall cutting off his vision, horn shredding through Akira’s soft voice. The force blows them back a little–Akira shouldn’t have stopped so close to the track. Kouyou squints to try and read his lips, but it doesn’t work. 

“--go to–” 

He just ends up staring at Akira’s mouth for longer than he should. Then the train passes. The striped bars lift. “–kyo,” Akira finishes. They are free to go.

Kouyou’s eyebrows scrunch up. He’s about to ask Akira to repeat himself when a car beeps impatiently. Akira turns back and kicks his bike into gear, speeding off before Kouyou can even get his visor back down.

Eventually, they pull off the road into a field. Akira leaps off the bike and starts walking into it, with Kouyou trailing behind uncertainly. 

“Bro, what’s the plan here?” Kouyou asks. His arms swing loosely by his side, eyes bouncing around for some piece of civilization to land on.

“The plan,” he says, “is to find the wind and take a nap in the grass.” He stops and twists and turns, eyes narrowed in concentration. Then he flops down, cushioned by the thick greenery. He points a finger in front of him, says “the wind is that way, so you should face that way,” and loops his hands behind his head. 

Kouyou sits down and draws his knees in. He threads his fingers through the grass. They start talking about the latest One Piece arc, but his heart’s not really in it, and eventually, the conversation peters out. The silence expands. So does this new ache. He stares at the cloudless, marble-blue sky and imagines what it would be like to fall into it.

He doesn’t miss Fuyumi. They hardly hung out anyway, near the end. It’s just that her words are a rough, jagged blade, carving a hole into him, pieces strewn like shattered glass. Maybe she was right and he really is that incapable of caring. Or of loving anything besides his dream. 

He glances down, at his feet, at Akira. Akira is already looking back at him. 

“Hey.” Maybe he’ll have a better balm for the hollow in Kouyou’s chest. “What were you saying earlier? At the crossing?”

Akira draws out a hum. His brow furrows and he bites the inside of his cheek as he considers. He’s either straining to remember or straining to make a decision. Maybe both. “I dunno, guess I forgot,” he finally says. 

Kouyou nods and lets it go. If Akira remembers, he’ll just tell him later. 

So he lays down beside his best friend. They’re so close that he can feel Akira’s body heat crest over his own. A lock of his hair catches the sunlight and holds it there.

Kouyou breathes in, feels heavier than he did before, with sleep finally, gently pulling his attention away. Waves of emerald roll into white, and back again, when the breeze sweeps through. It cups his cheek and kisses the swell of it. His ache doesn’t disappear, but he does let himself close his eyes.

“Akira,” he murmurs. The words tumble out before he realizes. “Thank you for bringing me here.” 

And in the loose, floating space between awake and asleep, he hears Akira’s voice. “You’re welcome, Kouyou,” he says, soft as silk.

“Should I call you Old Man Suzuki now? Or do you just prefer hag?”

“Kouyou, I swear to god, you play too much. Never mind that we’re in a fucking playground.”

And that’s where they are, rocking loosely on the swings. The old iron creaks and croaks as the dusk settles all around them. A spill of yellow across the horizon; cracked yolk in a blue bowl. 

Kouyou smirks and punches him lightly on the arm. “Seriously though, congrats! How does it feel to be an uncle?”

Akira beams. “Honestly, not that much different than yesterday. It’s not like I have to take care of it. But the baby is so cute, man. He’s got a little round nose like the rest of us and he’s so squishy. I can’t believe that thing came out of my sister.”

They talk about the baby for a little while, the labor process, and how hard it was to choose the perfect teddy bear as a welcome gift. Akira cups his hands in the air as he describes the bear next to the baby, that they’re about the same size, and there’s awe stitched in every line of his face. His features come undone with joy when he laughs. It’s new to Kouyou, and he leans in to listen better, to study closer. The firecracker of Akira’s voice warms his cheeks too.

“How did it feel to hold your nephew–Wow, that sounds weird.”

Akira leans all the way back in the swing and looks at Kouyou askew. His choppy bang flops over his eyes, but Kouyou swears he can see them shining through the strands. “Like life is so insane and precious, I guess. Like anything could happen.”

He jumps off the swing with a rattle, and heads to the monkey bars. Akira’s so tall that the tips of his sneakers toe the dirt, so he draws his legs in and starts climbing across. Kouyou moves to sit in the mouth of the slide, watching his skinny arms quiver with exertion. “Speaking of anything happening, Miyo dropped something crazy when we were all there. She’s moving to Sapporo. Like, next month.”

Kouyou’s eyebrows shoot up. “What? That’s so soon–why’s she going so far?”

Akira falls with a thud. He shrugs as he picks himself up. “Her husband just got a cushy engineering job, and she said she wanted to try something new. Even when she moved out, she only lived in company housing. She never even left town. The whole family took it well.” Cheers float on the breeze from the next field over, one of the last football matches of the summer. Akira disappears as he climbs up the top of the slide, dull thunks against the wood. “Better than I expected.” 

Kouyou twists around to look up at him. “What did you think was gonna happen?”

“I dunno, I thought Mom would try harder to convince her not to go. And they just cried harder, but it was like, a different cry. A happy cry.” Akira rests his arms on the rim of the slide, and puts his head on top. He looks off into the distance, into a memory that Kouyou can’t see.

“And was he like, you know…”

Kouyou doesn’t have to finish because Akira answers in a tight-lipped smile. “Of course he wasn’t there.”

Kouyou clicks his teeth, a familiar geyser bubbling over. “Your dad is a real asshole.”

“But it’s not about h–” 

“No! He should have at least sent something, I dunno, flowers. Whatever people send for these things.” Kouyou jumps to his feet and starts pacing, voice rising. “I’m saying it because you never do! You never get angry.” 

A tense beat passes. Then Akira says “You’re gonna dig a hole to California if you keep that up. Then you could say hi to Korn for me.”

Kouyou stops abruptly and turns back to look at him. He knows what Akira is doing. It’s almost always worked for him before.

“I don’t need you to fight for me, Kou,” he once said. They were sitting in the principal’s office, Akira with a split lip and Kouyou with some other boy’s blood on his knuckles. He looked into the frosted glass of the office door, saw two short shadows theatrically throwing their hands around. He can hear their muffled sob story through the wood. They’re hiding that they were pushing him around, and then Akira, when Akira stepped in with some withering joke. It might have worked too–they might have all just walked away out of embarrassment, but Kouyou wasn’t going to stick around and find out. 

He stretched his fingers and then clenched them into a fist, felt every crack of pain under every cut. Closed. Open. Closed. 

“When are you going to fight, then?” he asked. It feels good to have something, someone you’d put your body on the line for. 

“It’s not like I’m not upset, but fighting for real won’t change anything.” Akira gently put a hand over Kouyou’s, stilling his anxious fingers. It’s like he reached inside Kouyou’s ribs and laid his hand over Kouyou’s heart too. “And I don’t need it for the people I care about the most.”

Kouyou blinks and a taller Akira stands above him. The moon shines softly in the distance. He’s wearing the same expression as before. It’s the face of someone a little older, a little wiser than he should be. Kouyou looks away first. Kicks at some stubborn weed in the dirt. 

Akira sighs and slides down. When he gets to the bottom, he stays there for a bit, resting on his elbows. “Well anyway, everyone was just so happy for Miyo–the baby, the move. I think… I know I’ll really miss her.”

“You can always visit her. Or you know, call on the phone.”

“It’s not the same. Things are going to change.”

Kouyou watches a flock of migratory birds streak across the sky. It’s late summer now, and they are all traveling to their next home together. “Sure, but it’s not like she’s going to completely forget about you.”

He can’t hear the birds and he can’t hear Akira either. At first, he thinks that Akira is just considering the possibility, but too much silence is passing. Kouyou turns around.

“Aki,” he says softly. Akira looks up. He suddenly looks very small. The shadow of the slide threatens to swallow him. “Moving’s not the same thing as abandoning your family. Things are just gonna be different.”

“I know, but it’s just… hard.” Akira digs his heel in and makes two piles of earth on either end of his sneaker, like a little grave. A newer thought digs into his skull, whispering in Fuyumi’s voice.

“Are you–do you think I’m leaving you behind?”

Akira rises from the slide and shakes his head. “What? No, no way!”

They’re facing each other now. There’s a final cheer behind them and a whistle screeches through the air. The sky deepens into the color of a bruise; the blue overtaking the purple. The game is over. 

For the first time in a long time, Kouyou’s not sure if he believes him. The tectonic plates in his chest jut against each other. His anger, his doubt. But he smothers the earthquake that threatens to spill over because Akira has always told him the truth. After all, Akira always tells him everything. 

He heads back to the swingset and throws a smile over his shoulder. It’s a smile like Akira’s; practiced, but not fake. Real, only because he wants to smile for his best friend. Because he wants to wipe away his anger, his doubt. His sadness. 

“Do you want to swing me?”

“Like, real hard?”

Kouyou nods and grips the iron chain so that it bites into his palms. Akira is over in a flash, and Kouyou can feel every hard, strong press of his hands through the thin fabric of his shirt. Then he’s in the air, weightless. Akira pushed him to be invincible in the lonely, deep blue sky.

It’s only for a moment. He lands with a groan and a crumple of limbs, pain lighting up his knees and arms. For a second, he forgets how old he is. He’s three, and six, and finally eight, when he meets Akira for the first time, tripping into the grass during football practice. His nose is filled with the scent of earth and soil. 

And Kouyou can’t stay mad when he listens to Akira laugh behind him, sunny and sweet.

Sometimes, the world is too big for Kouyou. Too many colors, too many loud noises, too many people, too many adults telling him to do things he doesn’t understand. Too many lights, too many fights, too many gripes, too many, too much.

There’s nothing he can do about the world, so he tries to change it. Cue the summers of shoplifting-bike-stealing-breaking-and-entering(onetime). He pushes the boundaries of what he can do and the world does nothing but push him closer to the edge of it. 

Then he “borrows” Akira’s guitar amp, and everything changes. 

He plucks notes out of the air and weaves them into a dream. His timing is uneven and there are some holes, but for the first time in his life, there is something that is his. Playing in a band is equally miraculous. And when the set ends, when the final notes dissolve, and the guys split to their own, mysterious lives, he is surprised to find that his heart still beats on.

He starts to measure his skill by the size of his calluses. When he turns thirteen, his limbs spring up, colt-like, and they swing free and loose and reckless. There’s always an ache in his bones, shifting against his need to control them. He learns to stay still in this new, alien body, unless he’s drunk or playing the guitar with precision. Perfection. Then he graduates high school and owns it. A boy then, a man now, a rockstar in the future.

The dream is his to create, to shape, to change, to control. There is doubt–hisses and hushed gossip when they think he can’t hear. He changes the way he reacts, pretends like it slides off like rain on his skin until he no longer has to pretend. He finds that control is the only way to satisfy the blood-red desire singing in his veins. He no longer bothers with anything outside of it.

So when Akira changes his mind yet again and says that he can’t move to Tokyo anymore, that he can do the band from Shonan, Kouyou does not protest. He knows Akira doesn’t like to fight. He also knows that Akira is wrong. The longer he stays here, the more he’ll root himself in the ground. The harder it’ll be to justify the ninety-minute train ride to more opportunity, in the visual kei capital of the world.

Unlike Kouyou, this ground has always held solid for Akira. Kouyou has seen it in Akira’s family—their easy laughter and easier smiles. He’s seen the way they hold him in their arms no matter how old he is, the way Akira never learned to knot a tie because someone has always done it for him. The way he gingerly wrapped a dying cat in his own jersey; a kindness passed from grandmother, to mother, to son. It’s a kindness that he’s always extended to Kouyou too. 

So sometimes, late at night, Kouyou, who is awkward, angry, roiling,

funny, driven, too smart for this stupid town, as Akira would say,

curls up in bed and hates it with every cell in his body. If he had never known kindness, then it would be easier to make a clean break. To freely walk into the gnawing, thrashing jaws of the city alone. But because this kindness means too much to him, it means he has far too much to lose. So Kouyou takes initiative. He steels his mind and makes himself smaller, hoping the loss might pass him by. He clutches his arms hard enough to leave indents on the skin. Kouyou is in control, even as the germ of a thought slithers from his heart and into his head. 

Impossible.

It’s another sleepless night. The moonlight cuts a slice of white across the left side of his chest, and he bleeds nothing. Somehow, it still hurts.

It’ll rain soon. The damp smell sneaks under his visor and fills Kouyou’s helmet. It stops them from reaching the top of the foothill, afraid that the road will get washed out. Still, there’s enough light to take a break before they head down. Kouyou stretches his limbs. Peers over the cliffside. 

“My sister came with me to check out apartments in Tokyo. There’s so, so many out there,” Kouyou says. He stares at the veiny streets criss-crossing the earth’s skin, dragging tiny buildings and cars in their wake. The earth breathes in ambient noise and breathes out wind, kicking up clouds of dust. 

Something darts out of the corner of his eye. The silhouette of a boy. Akira. It pauses when he tilts his head to look back at the road. 

“You don’t just have to look at the rent and the water pressure. It’s like, a bunch of other things. If you live on the ground floor, it might be cooler, but you’re gonna deal with bugs. An apartment on the top floor would be hotter because heat rises and everyone says a Tokyo summer is the worst. Basement apartment could flood. Stuff like that.” Kouyou’s voice is a wind-up, mechanical thing. 

When he turns back to the cliffside, he can see Akira’s shadow restart its glacial, steady path towards him. Kouyou turns his head and the shadow stops. His lips curl and he taps out a quick rhythm on his thigh. He knows exactly what game they’re playing now. 

“Not like I can afford to be choosy. I’m gonna try to save a bit more.” Kouyou rolls the loose pocket change between his fingers, listens to the clinking sound of “never enough.” He rubs the back of his neck and looks out again. 

Start. The shadow creeps closer, ebbs and flows as the cloud cover changes.

“No roommates?” Kouyou has to listen carefully when Akira speaks. His voice comes to him like a patchy signal, a game of cat-and-mouse with the wind. Akira is losing. 

“I don’t like other people. I just wish I could be left alone.” 

Akira’s shadow stutters. It’s just a second, but Kouyou sees it–of course he does. “Hate to break it to you, but ‘other people’ is kind of the whole point of being in a band.” 

“That’s different.”

“Different how?”

Turn back. Stop.

“I don’t know. It just is.”

Akira scoffs, but there’s no bite behind it. “You’re so fucking dramatic.” Not much anyway. “Try again.”

Kouyou sighs. “Making music, performing with everyone—it’s genuinely fun. It’s just everything else that’s hard.” He does have other friends, even if people think otherwise. It’s just that sometimes, when he speaks, the other guys look at him like he’s an alien, a silver humanoid that was just born yesterday. Sometimes, they’ll even laugh politely. Nervously. Then, Kouyou decides to take another shot.

Akira hums. “I’m not like you.”

Start.

“Of course you’re not. You play bass.”

Stop.

Akira is close enough that Kouyou can hear the smile in his voice. He imagines it now, bitter and small. His shadow is much larger now—the silhouette of a man. “I need people.” 

“Sounds like something a bassist would say. And I never said I don’t need other people, only said I didn’t like ‘em. I just can’t make the music I want by myself.” He pulls out each sludgy feeling and watches it spill into the dirt, splotching across the memory of Fuyumi’s face. He knows how it sounds. Knows that it's probably too late to turn around. 

“If you could, would you?”

“No.”

Start again. Akira closes the gap in a few long strides and Kouyou gasps when he presses his body into his. He stiffens. His thoughts brake hard. Akira knows he doesn’t like to be touched. 

“What is up with you?” he asks, with a small, nervous laugh. Still, Kouyou doesn’t want to spook him, so he lets himself be held a little longer. Akira’s chest and cheek are warm against Kouyou’s back. Little by little, the warmth spreads into the rest of his body, limbs, veins, and chases the tension away. It’s only when he exhales the last of it that he thinks he could be okay with this. 

This touch is new, but familiar. An old toy bleached in the sun, hidden in the tall grass. It is still wanted.

“You’re ‘it,’ you know. It’s your turn to chase,” Akira says, voice just above a whisper.

“I thought we were playing a different game.”

“Are we?”

There’s a tinge of sadness in Akira’s voice that Kouyou can’t place. He knows they’re not talking about games anymore. He always wishes his guitar could speak for him–sweet, comforting words dripping from steel string. In his own voice, the words thrash and struggle to be born, dying in his mouth, one by one. The taste of an aborted thought is hard and bitter.

“I don’t know,” he finally says. It’s honest, but still not quite what he means. 

Akira takes a long time to answer, so Kouyou lets his gaze wander. He doesn’t roam long before he catches their shadows overlapping on the ground. They’ve become one solid shape, unbroken by the strong wind and the leering clouds. They are still together, unbroken by the sneers of their town, their worries, their fears, the things that can hurt them. The things that can take them apart.

It’s just Akira and Kouyou.

Kouyou and Akira.

“Who exactly do you need?”

And suddenly, his too-warm heart balloons out, so he presses down quick. Strangles it. It's what he must do to survive Tokyo. Kouyou holds his breath, and he knows Akira feels it too. He doesn’t break out of the circle of Akira’s arms. Instead, he ghosts his fingers over the back of Akira’s hand. It’s a phantom of an answer.

He turns again and holds the Honda Rebel in his eye. Nothing lasts forever and he knows it will turn too—rust upon rust, dust into dust.

That night, Kouyou has a dream.

Thousands of limbs and heads thrash before him. The spotlights blink manically; shafts of light stabbing through the dark, torching the stage, throwing up embers as they burn. He is the fuel in the middle; ablaze. Beside him, a faceless voice punches through the air, the bass and the drums kick up a crazy rhythm, and the twin guitars sing and sing and sing. The energy is riotous; the noise cacophonous. 

Kouyou grins, flies across the fretboard, throws his hands up to force the audience to lose control faster, harder, wilder. Electricity sparks under his skin, zinging through his veins and out through his fingers. His cheeks burn when he makes eye contact with Akira, on the other side of the stage. 

Akira stalks closer and holds up his bass. There’s a glint in his eyes that cuts through the thick, pulsing heat. He doesn’t think it's possible to be this happy, looking at him, looking at his endearing, crooked teeth or the gentle curve of his lips. It overflows. Kouyou smiles, wide and bright, and twirls a hand in the air.

Come on, he thinks. Fucking come on!

Akira nods. It’s a stupid idea and they both know it, but Kouyou has never said no to him. Akira plants his feet on the ground and stakes a claim on his strength. He throws his bass to the heavens and they watch it spin out. Time unfurls strangely in dreams, ribbons thick like reams of velvet, pours slow like syrup from the bottle. 

And then a loud crack splits across the stadium. Kouyou looks around wildly to see if anyone’s heard it too. The guitar crashes against the ceiling of his childhood bedroom–he knows because of the glow-in-the-dark UFO stickers he’s put there. The music continues and the audience cheers without stopping. Akira catches his bass–of course he does. Still, Kouyou watches the injury spread like a bolt of lightning on his guitar. He sees cracks appear on that pale expanse of Akira’s neck–all coarse and jagged and wrong. The blotches spread, reddish and metallic, to cup the side of his jaw and duck into his shirt. 

His blood grinds to a halt. His chest seizes. Collapses. The thought of losing Akira suddenly becomes unbearable. It’s not real, he thinks. This is just visual kei. It’s just makeup that happens to make Akira look like he’s rotting, that he’s going to disappear, that he’s going to–

And then the rusty stains reverse course, receding and vanishing as quickly as they came. Kouyou’s mouth hangs open at the sight, and Akira raises an eyebrow in reply; pulls the collar of his shirt down to see nothing but the shadow of his ribs and untouched skin. Akira looks back up and raises the palm of his hand to mime closing his trap shut. 

He turns away to smother his smile into his arm; force of habit, years of hiding. When he looks back, Akira is still facing him. Then he bulges his eyes and sticks his tongue out like Usopp. 

“Idiot,” Kouyou mouths. He can’t help it. His laughter is lost to the churning, frantic melody. Akira beams like he’s heard it anyway, even though that shouldn’t be possible. 

Akira winks and bounces back to his spot just as the set ends. The moment stretches, elastic. The last notes of his guitar echo in his ears and rings around the stadium. In the death throes of the song, bracketed by the light and total darkness, Akira cradles his bass, holding on so tightly that he looks like he’ll get washed away if he lets go. He thinks there is eternity here too, where the glowing moon curls over its shadow.

And just like that, he knows the answer to Akira’s question. He’s always known.

The feeling in his chest is back, from all those years ago. An anchor drifting to the bottom of the dark sea. This time, he hears it too, the waves howling, trapped and calling out to him, as if he pressed a spiral shell to his ear. He turns to meet it.

Kouyou blinks and takes stock. 

When he breathes in, the sharp, brisk air is flecked with salt and something else, something ancient, that precedes them. He sees Akira, who catches his eye with a lit match of a smile. The ice block in his chest begins to thaw. It finally clicks into place–certainty–as small as the tip of a pencil and just as sharp. 

There’s a crumpled-up number at the bottom of his backpack, with a Tokyo area code. A friend of a friend’s cousin, who’s studying abroad in two weeks. Private student housing. Dormmates. He wants someone he sort-of knows to look after things, and since he didn’t start searching until the last minute, he’s willing to rent it to Kouyou for cheap. It’s an illegal sublet. It’s a good deal. 

Kouyou needs to make a decision about the sublet, but not just yet. Maybe it’s naive, but he doesn’t care. He watches Akira turn back to the beach. In a second, he’s made up his mind about something else. For as long as he has time, he’s going to draw out that certainty into resolve, into conviction; something outside of himself.

So he closes the distance; plucks the cigarette from Akira’s fingers and takes a drag before Akira has the chance to turn around again. 

For as long as he has time.

Akira’s smile slides clean off, and he looks at him with disbelief, fingers still pinched around the air. “Selfish, much?” he asks.

Kouyou smirks and blows smoke for the breeze to carry away. Some of it gets into Akira’s face and he retches theatrically. 

“Right, and an asshole,” he says between pretend-coughs. 

He snatches the cigarette back from Kouyou and starts puffing away like it's the last one on earth. A gust of wind rolls through and Akira shivers, waddles a little closer. 

Kouyou holds Akira’s wrist and brings the cigarette to his lips for one last drag. His gaze drops to the bare column of Akira’s neck and the sparkling, silver chain wrapped around it. Akira’s Adam's apple bobs when he swallows, when his fingers brush against Kouyou’s mouth. They stare at each other for a beat too long, tension weaving together in thick braids. Slippery like velour. Fragile as glass. He can see it for what it is now, with a new, electric clarity. 

“In front of everyone?” Akira asks.

Kouyou shrugs, tilts his head back as a challenge. “I don’t care.”

Akira huffs out a laugh and stubs the spent cigarette into the sand. They’re free to walk off, and when Akira does, Kouyou sees part of himself walking off too. After a few steps, Akira turns back to cock his head.

“Let’s get out of here,” he says.

Kouyou nods. They set off towards the pier in the distance. Their shirts swell and flap in the wind. There are no words, but the water speaks for them, pushing and pulling the sound waves in the space between. He tries to find their shadows under the flat, overcast sky. It’s harder than he thinks, but he sees them eventually, diffuse and rippling across the sand. Akira’s shadow is ahead; Kouyou’s behind, at its own pace, trying to catch up. 

Kouyou breaks first. “Dude, where are we going? I’m freezing,” he says.

Akira looks back over his shoulder and rolls his eyes. “Oh my god, can you man the fuck up?” Still, he slows down so that Kouyou can walk beside him. 

“I’ll pay you a million yen if you tell me exactly how freezing my balls off and being a man are related.”

“Okay, okay, how ‘bout this? Are you warm now?” he asks, patting him on the arm. 

Kouyou lightly smacks him back. “No, are you?”

“I don’t think so.” Akira slaps him again, harder this time. “What about now?” 

Things quickly devolve into a shoving match and when he pushes Akira so hard that he stumbles, he knows, immediately, that he has to run away now. His long legs can only give him so much of an advantage because Akira has always been better at this. Something about shorties having a lower center of gravity or something, he’s sure. Akira grabs the corner of his shirt and swings Kouyou around to face him. There’s a wicked smile plastered on his face, and Kouyou’s heart thuds hard and sharp. He almost loses his balance but he kicks Akira in the shin and escapes, breathless. His lead is embarrassingly short. Akira catches up to him and delivers the final blow against Kouyou’s shoulders. When he falls, the sand is there to cushion his body and invade his mouth. 

He spits it out while Akira doubles over laughing, hands on knees, boyish grin cast wide open. Kouyou smiles too, even as he’s clicking his tongue. Suddenly, the cage of his chest is too tight.

“Ugh, there’s sand all up my ass. It’s gonna take forever to wash out,” he says, shaking his head.

“Keep complaining and you’re gonna get a foot up there too.”

He holds his hand out and Kouyou yanks him into the beach. Akira collapses and lands between his legs, laughing fresh into his shoulders. Kouyou can feel the rumble in his chest. He wants to wrap his fingers around Akira’s voice and press it into the grooves of his heart, wants to keep him there as long as it beats red. Akira’s hands snake around his back and Kouyou almost curses because it's too perfect, too in line with his desire. 

He sits up a little straighter to support Akira’s weight. For a moment, he can almost feel Akira clutch onto him as he shifts, a vice grip so fleeting that he can’t be sure it really happened. Then the moment passes. Akira gently, slowly, untangles himself and sits beside him, facing the ocean. His own smile falters and fades with the clouds.

And because Kouyou can’t help it, because he knows what would happen to them if he calls that number, he lets himself rest his head against Akira’s shoulder. 

“Aren’t you a little too tall for this?”

“Like I said, I don’t care.”

Kouyou’s voice unravels on the last word and his brow knits in surprise, as if it could stitch that uncertainty together, too late. Akira doesn’t say anything, just stares straight ahead.

They watch the ocean for a little while, their fingers occasionally brushing together. Foam springs up and lines the coming waves like strings of gossamer. Pale light crisscrosses on the sand when the water retreats into its origins. Kouyou lifts his head and sees the twinkling lights from the pier, the dunes that slope down gently, the wind moving through the coarse, hardy grass, which grows in little sprigs that dot the sand. Everything bows towards the grace of the sea. 

“You know,” Akira says. “Ogawa was telling me about all the kinds of fish you can catch here. He said he even saw an oarfish beached on the shore when he was a kid, but I think he was lying.”

“Huh. Is that why he keeps acting like a walking, talking natural disaster?” 

“God, I hope so. It’d be tragic if he was like that by choice,” he says, chuckling. “Well, he’s not a good liar.”

“No, he’s not, and you’re not either.” Kouyou almost says this last part as an afterthought, but Akira is strangely quiet today. He starts fingering the chain around his neck. Akira’s drawing circles in the silver, and he’s drawing circles in the sand, circling around what they could be. Maybe, already are.

“Is that right?” 

“If you don’t like something, it’s all over your face. Your mouth goes like this.” Kouyou draws a straight line in the air and then drops down quickly at the end. He brushes away some of the sand that falls off his finger. “And then you sort of grunt out a ‘thanks.’”

Akira hums his approval. “You’re a little harder. Or, you never say anything that would require you to lie. You step around it.” 

“You’ve never hidden the truth?”

Akira shrugs and his mouth sets into a thin line, exactly as Kouyou described. Then a caustic smile edges in, as if he remembered. “Obviously, I have.” There’s a pause before he laughs, short and dry. “Anyway, who cares about that deep shit? It’s just nice to have a break right now.”

The silence that follows is not easy. There’s something simmering under the surface, but he doesn’t know if Akira feels it too. He wants to know what Akira is thinking, among all the other questions crowding the tip of his tongue, but he’s not sure what he’s allowed to say here, whether he’ll be pushed away or not. 

And there’s another feeling too– that he’s running out of time. Anxiety bubbles in his chest and he sighs to relieve some of the pressure. When it doesn’t go anywhere, Kouyou decides to settle on just one question. He lifts his head. “Well, can I tell you a truth?”

Akira blinks himself out of whatever state he was in. His smile loses some of its bite, returns to something a bit kinder. “Of course.”

“I miss you.”

“I’m still here, stupid.”

Kouyou shakes his head and wills his racing heart to slow. He shuts his eyes for longer than he needs to, and when he opens them, he sees himself reflected in Akira’s pupils. 

“I need you,” he says. He can’t help his voice splintering again, with how much this answer means to him. A tread into the water. The answer to Akira’s question. 

Akira doesn’t reply. Doesn’t dodge with a joke or laugh like he doesn’t know what Kouyou is talking about. 

“It’s not fair,” he finally says, pulling away from Kouyou. His voice is quiet; a different kind of brittle. Like dried leaves when the autumn wind rustles through, whispering of warmer days. “That you say you don’t like other people, and then say that you need me all of a sudden.” 

He’s too late again–Kouyou is always late. He glances at the sand stuck to his calluses. Some of the grains sparkle and glitter in the light. These are the fingers that fought for their dream; split skin spinning music. 

He takes a deep breath and tries again. “I asked you from the beginning, when we were thirteen, that I wanted you to do this with me. And I told you that I wouldn’t want to do this by myself, even if I could.”

Akira sighs and gets up abruptly. His hand finds its way to the end of his sleeve and he tugs; the fabric stretched out after years of anxious pulling. He doesn’t look at Kouyou at all. 

“You think I don’t remember that? Well, I also know that you think the future can’t come fast enough. That you don’t want to live in this shithole, stuck in the past.” Stuck with me, his voice says. He spits out a laugh. Kouyou swallows around the cry in his throat. He wants to say something, but he feels that he has no right to–not when he made Akira feel that way. So Akira takes the empty space and fills it with more words, more feelings. 

“But as much as I know you, there are still some things I don’t understand. Like, I keep asking you to ride with me because I like hanging out with you, and I fucking miss you too. Because sometimes—“ He stops tugging. His gaze shoots directly to Kouyou’s heart and lodges itself there; a piece of shrapnel, slowly splitting apart. “It feels like you’re already gone.”

Kouyou grips his thighs and takes it in, wave after wave. The knowledge that he could have never hidden anything from Akira. He never stood a fucking chance. “Aki–”

“Kouyou.” A pause. “Please, please don’t be like him.”

Akira is pulling at something very, very old. It’s not what he expected. Kouyou tries to grasp at the idea that is budding in his mind, unfurling its petals into something he can understand. “That’s not what you told me at the playground. You said that you don’t think I’m ditching you.”

Akira does not answer.

“Do you think,” Kouyou says, slowly and carefully, each word heavy on his tongue. “That I don’t care about you?”

They stare at each other, at an impasse. Then, Akira sits back down, as if a needle punctured the balloon of his will. He deflates and curls in on himself, digs the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“I don’t know. When I do the things I like, I only have to focus on the road ahead, or the conversation, or the next note in the song. Otherwise, I don’t know what to think.”

“Well, what about now?”

“I guess… I’m a little scared.” He buries his face in his arms. “Like all these thoughts can’t fit in my head.”

Kouyou nods and cradles Akira in his gaze, even when he can’t see it. “Look, I don’t know if the band is gonna hold. I can’t tell you that the future is gonna be better than now.” He wants Akira to be seen. To be known. To be held. “But there is no dream without you in it.” 

Even if it’s just like this. 

Akira shifts slightly, so that Kouyou can see a corner of his face–just a single eye in his direction. “You say that, but we would still be apart. The thing is, I can’t even blame you for chasing the dream. It makes sense to leave Shonan.” He unfolds the rest of himself and laughs, but it sounds more like a sigh. A white flag planted in the dark sand. “And I could never get angry at you.”

Kouyou suddenly remembers his dream, the one where Akira nearly rusted away. He woke with a gasp. It felt like he’s swallowed the world; too sharp and too big and too sudden. He brought his fingers to the corner of his eye and it came back wet.  

“But Akira,” he says. “You are my dream.” 

Akira’s eyes widen and he goes very still. Kouyou reaches inside his chest and holds his slow-burning coal of a dream, realizes that he’s fighting now, and there’s no coming back from it. It’s a different kind of fight. Not anger–quick to blaze out with no real direction. It feels like he’s fighting for eternity. 

“And I wish–I want you to believe in me–and us too. That we can do it together. What should I do?”

Akira bites his bottom lip and closes his eyes. “Just… show me that you’re here. That you’re not gone.” He opens them. Looks at Kouyou one more time. “Can you do that?”

Kouyou pauses to think. He lets his memories rise and fall with the water, trying to remember a time when he wasn’t by Akira’s side. It's impossible. 

He’s there, in the bad jokes, the hoarse laughter, the drinks that flow on and on. The grassy knees and glassy tears, the long nights hazy with hairspray and cigarettes. The cry after a spectacularly bad self-piercing, the cheap needle passing through his and Akira’s earlobe, very low and very permanent. How every earring afterwards seemed to cling on for dear life, like their hands finding each other in the darkness before the live, smoking stars under the emergency exit sign. 

Immediately, Kouyou wants to touch him again, to feel the solid weight under his skin. He leans into the pull of Akira’s gravity, slowly enough that Akira can draw back if he wants to, but he doesn’t. Akira just stares at him and waits. His heart races; pounding drumbeat on the inside of his skull. 

Kouyou raises his hand to cup Akira’s face. He leans into the touch, eyes fluttering shut. It’s a face Kouyou’s seen a thousand times before, but it’s new too–learning Akira under his fingers; careful, reverent. Kouyou traces his strong brow and trails down further, meeting the gentle swell of his eye. He greets familiar cheekbones and the curve of Akira’s cute nose. He graces over the bow in his lips. Akira sighs, and his breath is so, so warm.

It pushes Kouyou over the edge–Akira’s life in the palm of his hand. He closes the last bit of distance between them. It’s a homecoming. A kiss. 

And immediately, Kouyou knows that it’s exactly where he belongs, pressed against Akira’s soft lips, the taste of tobacco and minty gum lingering on his skin. Their first kiss is simple, chaste. Akira’s stubble tickles him, and it’s nothing like a girl, but he doesn’t mind at all. Kouyou wants everything, all of him–his beautiful, beautiful dream. 

Kouyou pulls back first, wide-eyed and breathless. Akira opens his eyes slowly, and he still looks at Kouyou as if his gaze could be heavy enough to keep him here, like Kouyou’s just a summer mirage, ready to wink out of existence. Kouyou’s heart aches once, twice, and the echo pushes him forward, into another kiss. 

Akira is shy at first; movements small and cautious. Kouyou stays with him, letting him lead, tongues flicking into each other’s mouths–bending, pushing, tracing each other’s boundaries. Their trust pours and deepens, settles into faith. A new rhythm; a new, complete way of knowing. Akira finally starts kissing him the way Kouyou wants, their twin hearts and twin desires moving in tandem. They are dancing together.

“Please,” he whispers, when they break apart. This time, he doesn’t bother keeping the tremble out of his voice. Even though he’s come this far, he can’t bring himself to finish the question.

“Okay, Shima,” Akira says. Kouyou’s chest hitches, breath caught in his throat. Akira draws back a little, and Kouyou can feel him smile like he knows. Akira always knows. 

“I’ll go to Tokyo with you.”

Their eyes meet, sparkling and sure. Kouyou picks up where he left off—what they both understand now. 

Akira’s question is an ache that took shape, something that he’s giving to Kouyou with unsteady hands, warm and bleeding, asking him to hold it too. At last, he accepts the love and takes the pain. He would if he were offered a million times, as long as it's Akira asking. 

Kouyou rests his forehead against Akira’s and smiles. Really smiles, wide and golden, for what feels like the first time all summer. Akira’s mouth brushes against his. It’s an ask without words, so Kouyou gives Akira what he wants again, knowing that Akira wouldn’t promise all of himself unless he believed in Kouyou. Unless they both thought;

You are my home. You are my family.

I won’t leave you behind.

They pull apart, just for air, then close the gap. Their lips, their whole lives shift and melt together. Again, again, again.

I love you.

They’re walking back to the Honda Rebel in silence, hand-in-hand. The clouds broke some time ago, and cradle the moon in wisps of grey. Sometimes, Kouyou squeezes Akira’s hand, and he relishes the jolt he feels when Akira squeezes back. Sometimes, Akira finds Kouyou’s eyes and he turns away quick, a faint smile lingering in the air; sparkler blitzing through the dark. He should have guessed Akira would be so blushy. 

They reluctantly let go when they reach the top of the sand bank. They’re the last ones on the beach; the bike’s the last in the lot. For a moment, Kouyou thinks that it’s already dead; hulking metal cold to the touch. But maybe it’s still alive; engine growling and howling when Akira turns the key. It is waiting for them. 

Akira runs his hand over the worn leather seat. Patient. Gentle, like he’s thanking it for carrying them so far. 

“By the way, I’ve decided to ditch this bike.”

Kouyou’s eyebrows shoot up as he follows Akira on the bike. He’s completely caught off guard. “When did that happen?”

“Just now,” he says, and Kouyou can hear the smile laced into his voice. “I’ll have to be a world-famous bassist so I can buy something better in Tokyo.” 

Kouyou’s heart strikes at his ambition. A renewal of their dream. “Good,” he mutters, and finally, finally wraps his arms around Akira’s middle. He buries his face into Akira’s neck. Kouyou breathes in the sweet, clean scent of his shampoo and the salt of the ocean. He sighs; so close, he can feel Akira shudder.

“You’ve always been so ticklish. So sensitive,” he says, smirking. 

The back of Akira’s neck flushes red. “Shut up.”

Kouyou digs his chin into his shoulder, presses a kiss into his earlobe–Kouyou’s piercing. “If I died because you drove with your dick instead of your head, it’d be so embarassing, I’d have to kill myself again.” 

Akira swats his head away; a thinly-veiled laugh tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Get better material, asshole–you’ve already made that joke.”

“‘Cause it keeps being true.”

“Uh huh, right. Like I can’t feel you behind me.” He rolls his hips back and Kouyou curses; clutches onto him tighter, heat flooding his body. Akira turns back with a wicked grin. “So. Should we take a cold shower?”

“Wha–”

And Akira hits the acceleration, engine roaring as an answer. He spins them around and they start driving into the beach, throwing up a shower of sand behind them. The headlamp slices a cut of light into their dark, uncertain future, but Kouyou is not afraid. Kouyou is screaming and Akira is laughing and he can’t let go. He would follow Akira anywhere, even when they’re heading straight for the ocean itself. For half a second, they stand suspended in the warm, roiling water. 

When they tip over, the waves shock him into the present–lapping over the bike, over their bodies. They start to untangle themselves, clothes heavy and sopping wet. Kouyou sits up, chest heaving. The water pulses, ringing his waist and wrists in silver. Akira fully rises, and ribbons of water stream from his hair, his head, his fingers; twinkling like jewels. The moment stretches on. The deep sea breathes towards the steady, shining moon. 

The world pares back so their hearts can pour forth without constraint. It’s overwhelming–how much of the two of them there is to fill the gaps between one breath and the next, the vast amount of space between the ocean and the sky. Still, he catches Akira’s crooked smile and instantly knows it’ll be okay, that they have the whole rest of their lives to fill together. 

Kouyou smiles back, and laughs.