Drabble Dump
This happened and I don't even know.
On top of everything else, it is too much.
The only reason that made the past half year bearable was the illusive promise of after. After meant change. Any change at all, no matter how minute. However negative even, just something to take and grit his teeth against. Just being visible for once.
Everything within his power to do, he’d gone and done. Made national television through his contribution as a pianist for a famous play. Had his artwork hand-picked and displayed in four of the most important buildings in Japan (and, no, dammit, none of them were owned by Atobe). Graduated with the highest marks to have been obtained in the past eight years. Contacted by five lawyer firms the day he was out of university.
Wordlessly, he’d opened all five envelopes (thick, white paper. Bold yet elegant script. Personally written, not just a template that had been copy/pasted) and then put the propositions on the kitchen table in a stately, wide fan.
His father had said nothing.
Nothing.
And failing that, all he’d wanted was for his girlfriend to just… hold him. Make him realize there was a better reason for having been unbearably lonely for the past six months. For her to just hold him and smile at him and take him to bed so he could lose himself.
Instead she’d been distant. Hurt. Because he had abandoned her. Never mind that he’d been doing it for her. Them. Their future. For his father. His mother. And maybe, most of all, yes.
Dammit.
Yes.
For himself.
Worst of all? He gets it. Of course she’s hurt. The last time he saw her was three weeks ago for a lunch date at a coffee shop. During which, admittedly, he was utterly focussed on his laptop and the thesis he was putting the final touches to. It wasn’t that he didn’t miss her, he did. Like a burn on the front of his heart. But everything had had to be pushed away because he couldn’t do it if he allowed anybody close. He’d just crumple and cling to the offer of support, let his tight control slip.
Everything was supposed to be… better? After. Or at least different?
Instead it is the middle of the night and he’s still got nothing. Like he’s missing a big, vital part and he’s used too much of himself to realize what it is. It’s snowing and it’s cold. Ohtori is not quite sure how he wound up outside in the middle of the night, can’t remember what happened or how he got here. He’s just so tired.
Eventually he’s shivering so hard he can hear the clack of his teeth echo eerily through the empty streets. Realizes he should pause and take a moment to figure out where he is and where’s he’s going. Looks up, vision blurry.
Recognizes where he is. Recognizes the small house he’s standing in front of instantly. Recognizes the shape of the motorcycle carefully tucked under a tarp before the window.
This, at least, makes sense.
It takes five minutes of continuous leaning on the doorbell before the sound of a bolt being slid free reaches his ears.
And there he is.
He looks absolutely perfect. Shishido is in a pair of large, baggy sweatpants, fluffy socks with puppies on them and a long sleeved shirt so big it leaves his left shoulder naked. Long hair tied back in a mussy ponytail, more strands out than in.
After a moment of blearily blinking up at him, Shishido growls: “Have you any idea what time it is? No, shut up. I’ll tell you. It’s three in the fucking morning.”
Ohtori blinks at him.
“This had better be fucking good,” he says, but reaches for Ohtori’s frozen fingers and tows him inside.
What hurts most is that somehow, even though he’s only heard him once in the past year -over the phone- is that here, with him, it is stepping into something wild and warm and nameless.
And achingly familiar.
Shishido is careful and slow, mindful of the pain in Ohtori’s cold hands, his utter exhaustion. He’s warm, like curling down in a patch of sunlight on the first nice spring afternoon, and smells of sleep. He’s rumpled all over and just that is enough to overwhelm him with the slow bubble of something neither of them have a name for, even after all these years.
Love, yes.
Happiness, yes.
Home, yes.
No.
Not really.
No words for this.
No words for Shishido fishing up a sweater and pajama pants from Ohtori’s, neatly folded and stowed in the top drawer along the rest of his clothes. Helping him dress when he gets too sluggish to do it himself and all but shoving him into bed when he stands around dozing. The way he just crawls in right after and gathers him against his front -arms around Ohtori’s shoulders, legs around his hips, mouth in his hair. In answer Ohtori raises his legs until the tops of his thighs touch Shishido’s buttocks, as if he’s sitting on his lap somehow.
He smells like soap and skin. Drowsy and warm and good and Ohtori presses his face into the arch of his neck and breathes in deep. Fingers drag slowly through his hair, teasing everything into a hopeless nest of curls, before smoothing it all down again, three, four strokes before his hand cups the back of his head. Answering with a slow press of his lips against Shishido’s jaw, Ohtori sighs, deep and endlessly relieved.
They’re both endlessly tired, Shishido is nearly slack and soft with sleep except for the fingers playing in his hair and Ohtori just done, having nothing left. Nevertheless he slowly begins talking and he’s sure half of it doesn’t make any sense and is slurred as he grows upset again. He fears he mights start to cry and stops himself harshly, a word choked off in the middle. When Shishido’s thumbs move over his cheeks in slow, gentle sweeps, Ohtori realizes he is.
Shishido dries his tears, ducks so they can touch their foreheads together and kisses them away instead. It’s sweet and somehow pure, even as he passes over his eyelids, nose and mouth, not so much a kiss as an inability to express what he wants.
It’s always been like this.
It’s beyond anything he has a word for and he guesses this is something uniquely them. All he knows it’s something real and powerful that somehow falls under ‘love, romance, relationship’ and yet misses all three of those entirely. Often he’s wondered if this a by-product of the way they played tennis. Letting all their shields and sense of individuality slide away until they needed no words, no contact, no nothing to understand the other perfectly. They never achieved synchro, even though once Ohtori wanted to more than anything. At the end of their partnership he’d come to realize they’d somehow moved beyond it, smashed it apart to feeble cobwebs and walked away with half of the other’s self instead because they couldn’t remember how to untangle properly.
So they are left with this, the aching frustration of not being able to crawl past the other’s skin and into his core and stay there. It’s scary and confusing and… consuming, more than everything. And yet somehow simple and good, so damn good, because he doesn’t really need any words.
Shishido is kneading his shoulders, has his mouth resting between Ohtori’s eyebrows and just holds him until he’s boneless and relaxed and warm, so warm, outside and inside, the places nobody should be able to reach.
“Warm,” he says.
“Hm,” Shishido hums, lips quirking. “Proud of you.”
Ohtori is smiling through his tears, feeling his wet lashes catch against Shishido’s face as he blinks. His heart is beating so loud he can hear it when he opens his mouth. He does and they both chuckle, sleepy and tender. Ohtori slips his hands under Shishido’s sweater to feel the gravelly rumble of that laugh against his palms.
They fall asleep like that.
Ohtori’s sleep is dreamless except for the sense of belonging and peripheral heat of Shishido’s skin. In the morning they have shifted a little, he onto his back with Shishido tucked in the curve of his arm, head pillowed on his left pectoral. There’s a leg slung over his hips, heavy and solid. Shishido is already awake, his long hair all over the place and predictably half in his mouth, too. Dark irises meet his own steady in silent greeting as Ohtori wakes up fully. They share a small smile before Shishido nods his chin towards the window.
It’s snowing. Thick, heavy flakes.
They don’t move. This time Ohtori’s fingers wind up in Shishido’s hair, arranging the dark mass so it makes a banner across the bed. Glides his palm along it, marvels at how sleek it feels. Shishido’s lashes are long and beautiful on his cheekbones and he fits just right against him like that, snug against his side.
They just lay there, watching the snow fall.
Ohtori has no idea what is going to happen. Knows he’s going to have to make a decision, will have to decide what to fix and what to abandon, will have to do something. Soon.
But not right now.