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Tsukasa lies on his bed, knees to his chest. He’s so tired. It’s two in the morning and he can’t sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees his mother there, at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe his father is beside her. He can’t even bring himself to think about Saki in this scenario.
He’s scared.
Emu and Nene had to carry him after the show. His legs had gone out. He’s not quite sure what happened, still. His knees had just buckled. But the show, in and of itself, had been good. The applause felt especially loud that night, and he reveled in it. He felt seen.
Sakaki had been in the audience, and he had met his eyes as he was helped off the stage. His lips had curled upwards into a smile, and he had been proud of him.
Tsukasa had been good. He’d impressed him. He’d made the kind of progress that he had needed to. He’d felt so much clearer when Emu and the rest of the troupe had confronted him, and he had felt better, but now—afterwards—
He stares up at the ceiling.
Tsukasa used to want a popcorn ceiling when he was little. He wanted to look up from his bed in the middle of the night, and in the faint moonlight, make out the shapes and patterns that it made.
A sickly, sour feeling settles in his stomach. He just feels ill about the whole thing.
Slipping out of bed, he makes his way to the door. He softly pads down the stairs, careful to avoid their creaking, and walks through the kitchen to reach his parent’s room. He twists the doorknob as softly as he can, peering in the room. From underneath the covers, he sees the rise and fall of their chests—they’re okay. He stares at them for a little while.
He could never want anything bad for them. He could never wish harm to them. And yet he still doesn’t like to think about what might’ve happened if he had gone further. If Sakaki had pushed him to his limits. He closes their door before he can think too hard about it.
Saki’s room is right beside his parents, so he peeks inside her room next. She’s sprawled out on the bed like a starfish, deeply asleep, and her chest too is rising and falling gently with each breath. She looks so peaceful. And so okay. So alive.
Tsukasa closes her door and rubs his eyes. He doesn’t want to be alone right now.
He texts Rui.
Rui responds within thirty seconds. He says he’ll be there in five.
Tsukasa waits in his room, sitting on his bed, fidgeting with his sheets. He hears the door open (the spare key that he had given Rui one night, after they’d had a sleepover where they had felt just especially close—Tsukasa curled up in his arms and Rui braiding his hair—was coming in handy. He’s glad he didn’t have to go back down there.) and he waits quietly for Rui to make his way up the stairs.
He hears a knock on the door. “Tsukasa-kun?”
“You can come in,” he says, voice a little more unsteady than he’d like.
Rui looks soft in the moonlight. He’s in sweatpants and a jumper and looks so warm that Tsukasa wants to go back to that sleepover and never let him leave.
“Hey, Tsukasa-kun. Is everything alright?” He sits beside him on the bed, watching his hands as he picks at the blankets. “You didn’t sound too good over the phone.”
“It’s really—it’s dumb. A star such as myself should be able to handle trivial things like this!”
“But you don’t have to. And you know that. I’m here for you, truly, I am. If there’s anything I can do at all, then I want to be able to provide that.”
Tsukasa looks at him. Rui’s eyes are soft with worry. Not pity, and thank god, because Tsukasa wants nothing less than to be pitied. He looks at him and wonders how on earth he was so lucky as to have him by his side. To have him as his director.
“I just don’t want to be alone right now,” he says eventually, after a moment of silence. “I keep thinking and thinking and it feels like I can’t get out of my head.”
Rui shifts closer to him, putting an arm around him, holding him delicately. Tsukasa practically falls into his side, relishing in the feeling of Rui pressing his nose to his hair. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. I’m right here.” Rui presses a gentle kiss to his bangs. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Maybe in a bit, if that’s alright. I fear I might just want to sit for a while.”
“That’s perfectly alright too, Tsukasa-kun.”
They sit like that for a while. When Tsukasa looks up at him Rui will kiss the corner of his mouth and tell him that he’s not leaving, it’s not too late at night, they’re alright. Tsukasa knows he’s probably looking at him like he hung the moon, but he can’t find it in himself to care.
Eventually, Tsukasa pulls away. It’s cold without Rui holding him, but he needs to talk.
“The show,” he says finally. “It was good. It was successful.”
Rui hums. “It was,” he says carefully.
“Was I good?”
“You were incredible, Tsukasa-kun.”
Tsukasa hesitates for a moment. “...Is Len okay?”
Pause. “Len is okay. Shaken, but okay.”
“I just can’t decide if it was worth it. The show was amazing. One of the best we’ve ever done! It really felt like the characters had come to life,” Tsukasa says. “Does that make that pain worth it? If it means…?”
“I don’t know.” Rui exhales and looks up at the ceiling fan. “I wish I could know. I understand that wanting. You’ve done incredible. Reached amazing heights. But I don’t want to watch you lose yourself in it.”
“I wanted—I wanted to kill them, Rui. I wanted to, so badly.” He puts his hands in his hair, tugging it hard, as if to ground himself. His vision goes spotty and he exhales harshly, the lump in his throat growing. He’s amazed that he even still has the capacity to cry. “I saw my mother come home and I pictured my hands around her neck. I stood at the top of the stairs and—”
“Slow down, slow down, Tsukasa-kun,” Rui says, gently catching Tsukasa’s wrist as he goes to pull at his hair again. “Breathe for a moment. You know that wasn’t you. Those weren’t your own thoughts.”
It’s a lie. Rui doesn’t know it, but it’s a lie. Sakaki—he was right, wasn’t he, only pushing Tsukasa to bring out the truth in himself. Maybe deep down he’s always felt that way, maybe deep down he was never that kind person that he had made himself out to be. He was not a stranger to facades.
It’s a lie, but he doesn’t have the heart to tell Rui that. Not when he wouldn’t believe him in the first place, anyway.
Tsukasa feels like a dirty liar, sitting there with Rui’s gentle hands holding his, like he hadn’t wanted those hands around his neck just days before, squeezing, pulling the life out of him like sticky sap that he couldn’t quite shake from his fingertips. He takes a shaky breath. “I don’t want to kill them. God, of course I don’t want to kill them. But what if they were mine? What if they were? What if that’s the kind of selfish I am? I’m willing to—” He chokes out a breath— “I’m willing to do that?”
Rui stares at him, not with fear, but a wild concern that he’s never seen before. “They weren’t. Tsukasa-kun.” He shifts on the bed, toying with his lip before speaking again. “If they were yours, you wouldn’t be this worried about them. If they were yours, it would have been a problem far before right now.”
But who’s to say that Tsukasa hadn’t had those thoughts before, some other time, in passing? Thoughts that he had ignored or blocked out of his memory? Who’s to say that this isn’t who he’s always been?
He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut tight. The world slants around him, tilts sharply, and his breath hitches, but he doesn’t cry. No tears will come out. He’s forgotten how to.
And was it not worth it? For the show? An actor no-one will ever forget, Sakaki had said. That’s what he strived for his entire life. When he lay in bed as a small child, alone, alone, alone, he had wanted to become an actor. The kind of actor that made people smile. The kind of actor that made people feel like they were right there with them.
He overcame the rehearsal. That’s what made him better. That’s why the show ended up successful. It’s why it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. It might have been painful, but what was he without pain?
Rui reaches to put an arm around him again, but Tsukasa turns away. “ —I should be alone. Please don’t. Don’t.” Tsukasa smiles pitifully and looks at Rui, eyes dim. “I shouldn’t be afraid of pushing myself. If I were afraid of pushing myself, then what kind of actor would I be? Actors who don’t push themselves don’t end up anywhere. They’re forgotten.”
He watches Rui scramble for words. But there aren’t any, not now. Rui has said what he can, but Tsukasa knows himself, knows his limits. And Sakaki is right.
“...You may have performed well, but I cannot watch you destroy yourself,” Rui says quietly. “Emu-kun is right.” Repeating. Repeating, repeating, repeating.
“No, Sakaki is right. You do make boring work,” Tsukasa snaps. He purses his lips tightly, fingers curling around the fabric of his pants. “Sorry. That’s not true. It never has been. Dammit.”
Rui falters, pulling his hand back. He searches Tsukasa’s face for something, and Tsukasa doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Maybe remorse. And god, does he feel remorse. He just doesn’t know how to express it properly. He needs Rui to see him.
“I’m sorry. You should go.”
“Tsukasa-kun, I’m not going to leave you like this.”
“I said, you should go. I don’t need your help.”
“Tsukasa-kun.”
“Go.”
When Rui does stand up, withdrawing with an unreadable expression, Tsukasa wants to kick himself because this was the person who he swore he wouldn’t make leave and now there he is, standing near the door instead of sitting on his bed, and Tsukasa curses himself for making that mistake again. He’d made it before, and look where that had gotten him.
“...Just how thinly will you stretch yourself, Tsukasa-kun?” Rui murmurs, one hand on the doorknob. Tsukasa barely hears him.
Please don’t go. I love you. I’m awful and I love you but please don’t go.
He’s ten years old and the house is dark, and the walls stretch far above his own head. He calls his mother but she doesn’t answer, because why would she? It’s incredible that now when he calls someone, they’ll really show up. He doesn’t deserve that kind of care, that kind of patience.
“I’m sorry,” he breathes. “I’m sorry.” Rui has already left. He hears the front door open and close.
The house is now painfully silent. He hates this.
He takes a deep breath and stands up, peering over the balcony into the wide expanse of the kitchen. He feels small like this, standing up there. Perhaps he feels forgotten. He grips the banister, staring but not seeing. He feels like he’s in a trance.
Tsukasa moves to stand at the top of the stairs. Nothing around him feels right or real. It’s all slightly off-kilter.
“You forgot me.”
His ten year old self stands in front of him looking up at him with wide eyes. His shorts hit just past his knees. He is so small, and so innocent. He wants to fly. A phoenix. That’s what Tsukasa is meant to be. If he burns now, if he burns and burns and burns, he’ll rise up out of the ashes of himself and become something even better than what he is now.
“How could you forget me?”
This is what makes him good.
Tsukasa responds in turn.
“もう少しで, 背中を押せる.”
He places his hands on his younger self’s shoulders and shoves.
The time is almost ripe.