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Rokko sighs, rolling the car window back up; the wind isn’t helping with his nausea as much as he’d thought it would. Ōta-sensei’s humming comes to a stop as he turns to look at his passenger.
“I already told you, there’s nausea meds and some water on the dashboard.”
“And I don’t need them. I’ll be fine.”
Ōta scowls, rolling his eyes before turning them back to the road. “You’re gonna pay if you throw up in my car, you little shit. Stop acting tough when you look like you’re five seconds away from the ER.”
The words sting, but not as powerfully as they could. There’s only one reason Sensei would bother putting any kind of medicine in his car, after all.
Sensei isn’t nice, far from it, but Rokko is learning that being nice and being kind are two different things.
Take this car ride they’re on; another attempt at going to the beach. To make up for the last failed trip, he said. Rokko’s not sure how Sensei ended up being more enthusiastic about the beach than the guy who got traumatized for life on the way there, but that trauma is probably precisely why he’s interested. Sensei's own twisted brand of kindness, surely.
He’d feel more grateful if it wasn’t for the fact that his stomach is about to turn inside out any minute now.
Grasping at another distraction, Rokko tries to look at the road. It’s not very crowded (who’d go on a beach trip in December anyways?), so all he has to look at is the straight lines of the road whizzing by, and the occasional car passing by.
A sense of unease. It’s too familiar.
He tries to look at Sensei, but his eyes are locked onto the road, and his head refuses to turn. On the road that seems to stretch on forever, phantoms of another road layers itself over it. A road he’s seen over and over in his nightmares.
A bend in the long, uninterrupted asphalt, and Rokko is back in his mother’s car, on the day where his life’s trajectory changed three years ago.
It’s clear that Rokko has been underestimating the extent of his trauma around car rides, but the realization comes too late.
The faint scent of artificial flowers that aren’t supposed to exist only adds to the bile in his throat. He no longer dares to turn his head; seeing Sensei replaced with the image of his mother would only break him, if there was still anything left to be broken. Tired pleas to stop fall from his mouth, rote from years of nightmares.
Please stop.
At this point, Rokko is saying it as much to the nightmares as he is to his long-dead mother.
Around the bend, a bright light is coming to view. The truck headlights grow from a pinprick to a white that blinds his vision. Thank goodness. One more time reliving the crash, and this can all be over—
“Rokko!”
Both his mind and body are yanked from that day as his name is shouted and hands pull his body into an embrace. The smell of turpentine and tobacco hits his senses as he is shoved into the crook of someone’s neck, and ends up being the contradiction he needed to come back to reality; it’s something that he can only experience now, in the present, years from the accident.
“……Sensei?”
“Mm. And where are we?”
“…your car.” Rokko’s mouth feels alien to him as it forms the words, but he can; his body is dragging itself piece by piece into the present. He breaths in more of that scent that is growing more familiar by the day as he stares at the old, worn interior of the car (”Have you ever considered that your taste is just expensive, you brat? It’s really not that old.”) that is definitely not his mother’s.
“That’s it. Good boy.” Hands ruffle through his hair gently as he feels the ghostly touch of lips on his cheek. Sensei’s kiss is warm.
The remaining tension drains out of his body, and Rokko feels impossibly tired. Ōta positions him back into his seat as he rummages through the dashboard with one hand, the other firmly anchored on Rokko.
“Can you swallow?”
“…I think.”
“Take the meds. Have half a sleeping pill too, might help,” Sensei says, shoving one and a half pills into one hand and an opened water bottle on his other.
It takes a long moment of confused staring until his brain comprehends what he has to do, and he downs the pills sluggishly before sinking back into the car seat.
Sensei watches him wordlessly. In his current state, Rokko can hardly make out the expression on Sensei’s face, but he is sure it would be calm and nonjudgmental, as always.
A warm hand caresses his hair softly. It’s horribly comforting.
Accompanied by Ōta’s aimless humming, Rokko slips into a dreamless sleep.
He opens his eyes and stares blankly at the roof of the car. When did the chair recline?
Outside his window is a line of shops. He reads through the signs slowly, and comes to the conclusion that this is a rest stop.
He tilts his head backwards to see through the back window, and finds an enthralling sight.
Framed by the dark oranges and reds of a dying sunset is Sensei’s profile. The smoke from his cigarette draws lazy arcs of white in the air. Noticing movement, Sensei turns to look at him, and a faint smile blooms on his face.
How could someone possibly be so beautiful?
“You up?”
“…yeah,” Rokko mutters unthinkingly, still trying to take in the sight before him. The moment passes as fleetingly as the cigarette smoke that has scattered, but he’s sure he’ll remember this for the rest of his life.
“Feeling better?”
Surprisingly so. He could still feel the exhaustion weighing down on him, but the fog in his mind has mostly cleared.
“Yes.” Rokko fixes his seat upright before taking measured steps outside the car. He can feel Sensei’s eyes on him as he stretches. Rokko doesn’t look back; he knows it’s one of those gazes that makes him feel like a frog on a dissection table, and he’s not up for that just yet.
Unfortunately, he’s given no escape route.
“Was that the first time?”
“What is?”
“The episode just now.”
Rokko’s eyes hone in on a café, just to the right of their car. Coffee sounds good. “…yes.”
Ōta hums, contemplative. “You were fine last time.”
“I’m not sure why either. I was staring out into the road, and…” it reminded him of that time, he doesn’t say. Couldn’t say; Rokko’s body has frozen again.
Out of nowhere, two hands ruffle his hair.
Rokko has no choice but to look. Their faces are close enough that he can feel Sensei’s breath on his face, and the faint smile on his lips fill the entirety of Rokko’s vision.
“There, there,” he coos. Sensei has likened him to a dog, once. Does he think of Rokko as a pitiful abandoned puppy he found at the side of a road? Then again, it doesn’t sound too off the mark; he does feel like a pitiful abandoned puppy right now, and if he had a tail, it’d be wagging at full speed from all the headpats he’s getting right now.
The tranquil moment is undercut by the loud rumbling of someone’s stomach. Rokko’s, to be exact. Ōta blinks, then laughs, free unrestrained sounds cascading out of his mouth.
It takes the edge off of his mortification, even if only a little.
“Guess it’s time for dinner! How about that café? I could use some coffee too.”
“…sure.”
As they walk to the café, Rokko thinks of something that brightens his mood and caps the day off sweetly.
“Does that mean this is a dinner date?”
“Cheeky bastard.”