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Harua finds Fuma squatting outside the building, a little blind spot next to the carpark, where the streetlights and building lights don’t quite reach. He’s so small like this, his legs bent and arms hugging his knees. His breath catches when Harua squats next to him.
“It’s okay, Fuma-kun, you can breathe out,” Harua says, flicking at a spot of fluff on his sneakers.
Fuma lets his breath out in a slow, smoky exhale through his mouth. He brings his hand up from where he’d been concealing his e-cigarette, poorly, behind his thigh.
“How did you know?”
Harua shrugs. “I ran out of gummies the other day and I thought you might have some in your bag.” He looks at the device, head cocking curiously. “I thought you quit a long time ago?”
Fuma takes one last puff and pulls the paper stick out, slipping both the device and the stick into a small pouch, and then into his bag, placed on the ground beside him.
“I thought I did, too,” he says, simply.
They spent a little while just bent next to each other, listening to the sound of cars passing by and the wind whispering through the trees. Harua thinks about how, just a moment ago, the practice room had been so warm and boisterous, about how Fuma’s voice had cut through the noise so sharply, how awkward the silence had been after. Harua thinks about how Fuma’s hands had been trembling as he’d grabbed his jacket and bag and stormed out.
Fuma looks calmer now, less like he’s about to vibrate out of his skin. Harua is familiar with the feeling. He gets the same way too, sometimes, when he’s frustrated and overwhelmed. Maki always tries to get him to stay, to talk it out, but Harua knows that’s not how it works, not when he’s on the verge of lashing out, of saying something he can’t take back, of the fear deep down inside him taking over and making him lose control.
Harua’s way of dealing with it is to lock himself in his room and pretend he’s not crying. Fuma’s way, evidently, is to indulge in slow breathing mediated by some highly addictive substances. At least one of them doesn’t end up looking like shit the next morning.
Harua tips backwards and plonks himself properly onto the ground, legs stretching out in front of him. Scrunching his legs up so much after a long practice probably isn’t good for his sore muscles. He prods at Fuma until he does the same, though Fuma’s legs stretch out a good bit further than his own.
“Kei-hyung is gonna be okay, you know?” The ground is cool already; it’s been hours since the sun set and they’re still solidly in spring, that awkward in-between season where you’re always overdressed for the daytime and shivering slightly at night. “He may behave like a crotchety old lady but deep inside he’s still a healthy young man.” Fuma raises a questioning brow at him. “Okay, a healthy old man. Point is, he takes care of himself!”
Fuma looks like he wants to pull his legs up again and shut himself off. Harua pummels at his thigh with tiny but persistent punches until Fuma relents, settling for twisting his hands in his lap instead.
“Not well enough,” Fuma mutters, and it’s so soft compared to how loud he’d been earlier. How those gentle, uncertain hands had gripped Yudai’s arms so hard, how he’d yelled in Yudai’s face for him to stop. Taki had started crying even before Fuma had slammed the door behind him.
Harua begins to get fidgety. He’s not used to being the adult in these situations; he’s barely had a year as a twenty-year-old, he’s allowed to indulge in the parental doting that Yudai and Fuma and even Nicholas shower on him! Especially Fuma, who’s always been so strong and sure and gentle. Harua doesn’t know what to do with the timid and forlorn Fuma next to him.
Fuma seems to feel the same. He pulls his legs in and crosses them, leaning forward and reaching up to ruffle Harua’s hair.
“You should head home with the others, Harua, I’ll come along soon.” He’s got his papa face on now, his previous vulnerability shuttered neatly away. Harua pouts until Fuma chuckles, rummaging in his bag for a fun-sized pack of Haribo gummies, and dropping it into Harua’s open palms. Harua, placated, takes his gummies and scampers back into the building.
He had left his bag in the practice room on the pretext of making a bathroom stop before they head back to the dorms, so he goes to grab it now. Opening the door, he sees that the room is empty save for Yudai, who’s slumped by the AV station. He’s fiddling with a black, rectangular piece of fabric; when Harua gets closer, he can see that it’s a knee brace, just for a split second, before Yudai hides it behind his back, surprise melting into a soft smile of recognition when he realises who’s stepped through the door.
“Oh, Harua, I thought you left with the others! Did you forget something?”
Harua doesn’t see his bag anywhere. He’s glancing around the room when Yudai speaks up again.
“Maki took your bag, so I thought he was meeting you outside.”
Ah. Well if Maki’s been waiting for him this long, he can wait a little longer. Harua sits down next to Yudai, an uncanny mirror of what he’d done with Fuma just now. Except instead of letting the silence sit with them, he pounces on Yudai and they’re wrestling on the floor until Harua emerges, triumphant, knee brace in hand. Yudai snatches it back almost as quickly, petulant moue on his lips, but the playfulness doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“If the company doctor gave you that, you should use it, Kei-hyung. We all know your knee’s been bothering you recently.” Harua levels his best accusatory glare at Yudai. He may be small but he’s also spicy and he won’t hesitate to use it to his advantage.
To his surprise, Yudai caves almost immediately, a sharp contrast to how he’d been so stubbornly insisting on staying back for extra practice, to make up for the time he’d spent on his personal schedules. He’d been so loud, too, after Fuma had fled the room; chasing everyone out and telling them to go home, smile just a little too bright and voice carrying a strained edge to it, even as he gave Taki a quick cuddle and wiped the tears off his cheeks. Now, he’s just defeated, pulling at the velcro straps of the knee brace and levelling a small smile at Harua.
“I didn’t want to worry you guys, but I guess that kinda backfired, huh?”
Harua desperately wants his silly, annoying Kei-hyung back, so he digs his heels in, just a little.
“You worried my Papa the most!” Harua is horrified to find his lip trembling at the memory of how angry Fuma had been. Even Yuma, who’s known him the longest, had seemed honestly taken aback by the outburst, so Harua can’t be expected to keep his cool, right? Still, he can’t aspire to K-drama main character greatness if he can’t come out of a situation like this with the upper hand.
Refusing to give in to the confusion from the double negative in his train of thought, Harua draws himself up to his full height, which, thankfully, towers over Yudai right now, if only because Yudai is still seated.
“Fuma-kun only got mad at you because he cares about you a lot, and it’s extra scary when someone you care about is hurting themselves, because there’s only so much he can do about it, and it makes him feel helpless! And scared! So you need to put on that knee brace and apologise to him! Though not necessarily in that order!” Harua needs to end this speech in a cool and charismatic way; he tries to strike a pose, sticking one hand in his pocket and flicking at his fringe with the other.
The hand in his pocket closes around the small packet of gummies Fuma had given him. With as much melodrama as he can muster, he pulls out the packet and mic drops it into Yudai’s lap, turning on his heel to walk out of the room. Being a K-drama main character is hard! But Harua’s pretty sure he’s gotten through to Yudai, so his work here is done.
He’s looking forward to a sweet treat in the car home, but it dawns on him that the only sweet treat he had on him was the gummies he’d just left with Yudai. He debates doing an embarrassing u-turn back to where he left Yudai so he can get his gummies back when Yudai comes up behind him and wraps his arms around him, squeezing a little too hard to be comfortable. Yudai’s chin is digging painfully into the top of his head as he speaks.
“Thank you, Harua, I needed that!” Yudai laughs, and shoves the packet of gummies into Harua’s hand. “And you need this!”
Yudai is so annoying and Harua has had about enough.
Holding on tight to his gummies, he wriggles out of Yudai’s grip and dashes out of the room to the main entrance, where he can see Maki waiting for him. He’s talking with Fuma, but they both turn around as Harua leaps into Maki’s arms, forcing Maki to carry him to the car. Fuma doesn’t get in with them, instead waving at them until the car pulls out of the building driveway. Harua waves back, and spots Yudai coming out of the main entrance too. Fuma hasn’t seen him yet, but Harua knows he will, and they’ll talk it out, and Yudai will wear his knee brace, and Harua can eat his gummies in peace! Parenting his parents is hard work, and he doesn’t ever want to have to do it again.
Propping his legs up on Maki’s lap, he opens up his well-deserved packet of gummies and chews aggressively on them, letting Maki knead his shins all the way home.