Archive of Our Own ^beta

Water, warm and gentle, rushed in rivulets down his cheeks. It wasn’t supposed to get down his spine, but some of it wound its way there anyway, soaking the baggy shirt collar to his nape. If he squeezed his eyes shut and kept holding his breath, he could almost imagine it - 

An open ocean, yawning beneath his arms. Cradling him with indiscriminate love, the same way it held up fallen leaves and rocking ships. 

That was, until someone moved the showerhead, and Suguru inhaled at precisely the wrong time.

“Satoru!” 

Coughing through the burning in his nose, he squinted one eye open indignantly.

“Sorry, sorry,” his friend said with barely suppressed mirth, running a hand through Suguru’s drenched hair. “There’s still a bit left in there.” 

It was late summer, August to be precise. Dwindling daylight cast blotches of gold over the walls, blinking in and out like stars. Heat from the lukewarm shower coated marble tiles in steam and fogged up the little window up by the ceiling. When Satoru had first come to Suguru with two boxes of hair bleach and the brazen declaration, “I wanna go white,” Suguru had just looked him up and down and laughed in his face.

“With that hair? Good luck.” 

But Satoru was Satoru, and Suguru adored him the way light adored all things. 

That left them sequestered in Satoru’s parents’ bathroom, two hours later. Bowls of bleach and crumpled balls of aluminum foil rested on the granite counter, as they took turns rinsing out the chemicals from their hair. 

“Okay,” Satoru finally grunted, by the time the burning in Suguru’s nose subsided. “Okay, I think you’re good.” 

With a creak, the water shut off. The air stilled, and instinctively, Suguru shivered. Before long, a warm towel draped over his head, as Satoru lightly dried him off (and by that, he ruffled his hair like he was a dog). 

“Alright, you ready?” 

A sunlit hand made its way around his own, squeezing tightly. Suguru counted each of the peeling blisters and calluses lining knobbly fingers, and squeezed right back.

“Yeah, I think.” 

Satoru’s free hand pressed between his shoulders, as he guided him out the shower and toward the mirror. 

Then, with a flourish, he yanked the towel off Suguru’s head. 

“Ta da!” 

Suguru was silent for a long moment. 

So was Satoru. 

So silent, in fact, they could hear the air conditioner humming in the other room. 

“Oh, God.”

“Trust the process?” Satoru said weakly.

Suguru reached up, fingers hovering over his hair. Clumpy strands of it, stained an eye-sore yellow, brushed over his knuckles. The shoulders of his dad’s old shirt were bled dry of color. Save for the top of his head, where his roots still grew midnight dark, everything else was - 

“Oh, God,” Suguru said again. “We’re so ugly.” 

Satoru winced. 

“Dude,” he repeated, because he didn’t think Satoru was getting the gravity of the situation, “my mom’s going to kill me.” 

“Okay, now. Your mom’s the nicest lady I’ve ever met,” Satoru retorted, sticking his nose into the mirror. As if looking any closer was ever going to change his hair back to black. 

“To you,” Suguru grumbled under his breath, watching him.

But it didn’t matter, really. It was already done.

And then, he couldn’t even think about how hideous he looked anymore, or how embarrassing it would be when he got home and his mom saw him for the first time. All he could do was look at Satoru. The crooked slant of his mouth, always choking back citrus peel laughter. The blocky glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, always slipping because he refused to get them fitted right, because the nose pads made him look like a real nerd, c’mon, Suguru. The faint stain in the shape of a handprint right in the center of his shoulderblades, where Suguru had left it when Satoru wasn’t looking. 

And he knew, with a startling intensity, that this was it. Maybe it was a dumb epiphany to have when they were barely even second-years, or maybe it was just a crisis, spurned on by their new blonde phases. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter.

Satoru was it. All of it.

And the world caught his gaze, froze for a split second. Then, brightened like a thousand full moons. 

“What?” Satoru smirked, brows scrunching up.

Suguru huffed. 

“I guess I’m really stuck with you now,” was all he could say, only half-choked. 

Satoru frowned at him. “I didn’t tell you to go white with me.” 

“Yeah.” Suguru couldn’t help but smile, biting his lip and turning away. “That’s a whole other battle.” 

“You’re so handsome, don’t hate yourself so much. Plus, we’re gonna look like your band guy! The one you like. You know, the chemical one?” 

Suguru crossed his arms, pressed his chin to his bony wrist. Stared at his own reflection as Satoru returned to fiddling with his bangs, and smothered another disbelieving smile against his veins. 

He’d survive the embarrassment and the scoldings, he figured. He wasn’t alone, after all. 

His best friend was right there with him, and he would be Suguru’s first and his last. No one else would come this close, ever again.

(It was not anything near doom).

((It only felt like the sunset would only ever grow more beautiful, tomorrow, tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that.

It only felt like the first day of everything else)).

A-SIDE.

SENDAI

The shirt was Yuki’s. So it kept threatening to slip over his shoulders when he stretched his aching arms, the uncut tag scratching the base of his neck with each step. Suguru ignored the incessant itch as he slipped backstage. 

Their debut album was a hit - surprise, surprise, everyone and their mother would follow the beloved Wrathful Star, Tsukumo Yuki, into the abyss, even if the rest of her brand new bandmates were unknown losers at best.

(Hey, it’s not just me, she insisted with a smug grin, lofty like she knew they all knew better. They think the rest of you are cool too).

((To that, Suguru shared a look with Yuuta, who only nodded with a lazy thumbs-up. 

We’re nepo babies, really, they agreed wordlessly)).

So that found them in Sendai, a crimson sunset awaiting outside a soon-to-be filled venue, on the opening night of their first tour. 

Not that it meant much. 

It was just another couple months to get through.

Suguru swung open the door to the dressing rooms, and it opened with a loud clang. He stormed in, whirlwind fast, barely paying any attention to the other person sitting by the mirrors. 

Well, he tried to - 

Until the low sound of singing and strumming petered out into a stung silence.

Suguru dug through his bag until he found the athletic tape at the bottom. Pulled off a strip and began stretching it over his left wrist, eyeing the shadow and empty guitar case behind him. 

Something cold blossomed behind his heart, as he felt his lip curl. 

“Don’t let me stop you,” he said. 

Satoru glanced over his shoulder, hand hovering over metal frets. His mouth twitched in an aborted reply, one that he instead smothered in quiet as he only leaned over to flip his notebook shut. 

Unwilling to spend more time there than absolutely necessary, Suguru tugged Yuki’s shirt off in one swoop. Pulled on his uniform - a black jacket cut in slits at the shoulders. Checked the buttons and collar in the mirror. Swung the locker door shut. 

All the while, Satoru’s gaze burned on his back, where he knew the inked wisps of a wiry dragonfly fluttered between his shoulders. 

When he finished dressing, Suguru slung his bag over his shoulder, before reaching up to tie his hair. It fell in loose waves over his neck as he turned back toward the door.

His fingers had just curled around the handle when Satoru finally spoke.

“When’d you get that done?”

Slowly, Suguru chewed on the inside of his cheek until he tasted metal. 

He didn’t push the door open, but didn’t release it either, only falling back on his heel. 

“After graduation,” he answered after a long beat.

“Oh.” Fingernails tapping against the body of his guitar, Satoru nodded, almost to himself. “It looks good.”

Sometimes, Suguru wished Satoru wouldn’t talk to him at all. Wouldn’t try to engage in small talk, wouldn’t try to search for him in the crowds, wouldn’t try to do anything whatsoever. 

There was just no use in trying to unravel one another anymore. 

Satoru didn’t know when he’d gotten this tattoo or that. Suguru didn’t know when he’d finally gotten over his fear of needles and had his septum pierced either. 

Suguru wouldn’t know a lot of things about him anymore.

And Satoru the same.

(There was only so far someone could stray before they became irretrievably unknown).

((And they had each blundered past that line years ago)). 

Suguru let go of the door handle, finally glancing over to Satoru, meeting him halfway. 

“You’d think this would be less awkward by now,” he said, and hoped he sounded venomous enough. “You make me watch you tear yourself apart every night, after all.” 

Something shut down in those bluebell eyes, more bitterly annoyed than anything. 

“You should get used to it then.” His voice was something sharp, biting - accusatory. Suguru tightened his hold on his bag.

“I don’t think it’s a great look on anyone,” he answered. “Least of all you.” 

Satoru just laughed, a heartless sound, before turning back around. He flipped open his notebook again, head dipped low over his guitar.

“Sorry,” he said emptily, “that you’re so uncomfortable.”

Suguru first met Satoru when they were both thirteen, at the tail-end of a fight he’d started with some other nasty kid he’d never see again. It wasn’t often that he lost those kinds of brawls, sprung out of a misery akin to boredom or a fierce itch to prove something about himself - 

So that made it all the more embarrassing when the dark-haired boy hovering at the edge of the dissipating crowd marched right up to him where he laid in the dust. 

Pristine, save for the few popped blisters at the base of his fingertips, he had held his hand out expectantly.

“That,” he declared in a scratchy, windchime voice, “was stupid.” 

Suguru had scowled and knocked his hand away. Nose running crimson and front tooth only partially chipped, he pushed himself to his feet. 

“Go away.”

“I’m Satoru,” the boy barreled right past his protests. 

“I don’t care,” was all Suguru had to say, more determined to lick his wounds in bloody silence than comprehend his future standing before him. 

He didn’t want to be easy to know. He prided himself in difficulty, thought himself a conundrum locked into a body that was too young and lonely to be all sharp edges yet - but how he wished.  

But Satoru had his way of stepping around all of that. 

And his gravity was contagious. 

(Yet his landing was soft).

So the world turned. His bruises faded. And naturally, probably inevitably - 

He came to know Satoru. 

It was the little things, at first. Blisters and calluses lined his fingertips and palms because he’d played the violin since he was six, but actually, he liked guitar best. Said blisters were always peeling and popping, because Satoru was finicky and hated the feeling of them on his hands. He was quite a bit near-sighted, more in his left eye than the right, and always squinted to see shop menus and chalkboards even with his glasses on.

Then it was the bigger things. How he found his first friend in Shoko by accidentally spilling soda all over her, and how she actually was the one with the funniest blackmail material on him. 

How his hair always flopped over his forehead when he finished swimming, and how he swam because he liked the feeling of floating. 

How Satoru’s nose scrunched when he laughed. 

How he laughed the loudest at dumb things, and laughed the softest when he truly meant it.

Bit by bit, in return, Suguru became known, too, the way you’d have to peel back an overripe clementine to see its kintsugi flesh beneath. All his mannerisms, all his adolescent violence, all his tender secrets. 

He had never been known so wholly in his life. 

(Almost shamefully, selfishly, he hoped that if it’d been a difficult, daunting, life-changing task - 

Then Satoru had wholeheartedly taken him on anyway).

((Because Satoru didn’t even have to try)).

Quickly, probably a little too quickly, adoring one another became as easy as sight, as breathing. Whatever Satoru loved, Suguru loved too. It was that simple. And oh, how he loved music. How he loved singing.

If Satoru wanted a partner, in music or in life, then that responsibility fell on him naturally. 

Piano? His mother had laughed when he first brought it up. Baby, you’re growing so big we barely even have room for you.

She had come home no less than a week later, hefting in her arms a large box. Suguru had only stared blankly at the snare and set of drum sticks waiting inside. 

How about this instead? She’d stood with her hands on her hips, beaming with satisfaction. 

If you like it, I’ll get you the full thing. 

So whatever. Pianos were good with violins, but Satoru liked guitar better anyway. That day, Suguru picked up the drum, clasping his fingers around the smooth metal rim. He just had to believe the rest would come to him later.  

Because there was no question about it. 

The moon hung in the same place in the sky, no matter where you looked from. And wherever Satoru went, Suguru would follow heartfirst.

YOKOHAMA

“We’re running low on toner again.” 

Suguru met Yuki’s gaze in the mirror as she leaned forward, rubbing the remnants of crimson eyeshadow onto the corners of her eyes. Then he glanced down at his own hair, carding his fingers through the ivory ends. 

“You’re our biggest consumer,” she continued. “Also, that’s my shirt.”

“Sorry,” Suguru said without meaning it. 

She didn’t call him out for the falsity, only turning and smearing the red on her index finger over Suguru’s eyelid. Looks like revenge, was the thing she always liked to say. He just swatted her hand away, lip curling. Before he could say anything else, she caught his wrist and brought it up to her face. 

Tapping one blunt nail against the fresh bandages circling his palm, she raised her brow.

“How’d this happen?” 

Suguru wiggled his fingers, before pulling his hand away. “Cut myself on a choke.” 

Yuki let him go with a click of her tongue. 

“Quit getting blood on the kit,” she said, reaching over his shoulder to grab the comb lying on the table. “It’s disgusting.” 

“Don’t you like blood?” Suguru grumbled. He tucked his knees up to his chest as she began running the bristles through his hair. “Changing your tune now?” 

“Not yours. You bleed, you clean.” Yanking a spare tie off her wrist, Yuki pulled the rest of his hair up into the high ponytail he always preferred for shows. Tight enough to not get in the way, not tight enough to leave him dysfunctional with a headache - just the way he liked. 

Suguru huffed his thanks, before reaching up and looping a finger through his bangs. Tugged the strands down to hang over his red-smudged eye. Yuki laughed. 

“Still don’t get why you stuck with that,” she said cheerily. 

When Suguru didn’t dignify her with a response, she just reached out and shoved at the back of his head. 

“Hey!” 

“Be honest. You alright to play?” 

Suguru sighed, rubbing the victimized spot on his head. Yuki was tough. He kept forgetting that until the most inconvenient of times. 

“‘Course,” he drawled when the bassist in question just stared at him expectantly. “Never been better.” 

Yuki just gazed at him for a moment longer, chewing on the inside of her cheek. When she was satisfied with whatever she’d found in him, she got up and shoved at him again.

“Bully,” Suguru called out as she slung her leather jacket over her shoulder. 

“Warmup in thirty,” she said. “Don’t be late.” 

That meant Suguru had at least seven minutes to himself before his personal alarm clock and bane of his existence would inevitably come barging in to drag him out anyway. So he sighed and slumped back in the seat, letting his eyes fall shut in the short-lived peace.

On the fifth minute, the door swung open. 

“I have twenty-five more minutes. Fuck off,” Suguru said in lieu of a greeting, even as a blob of darkness loomed over him, blocking out the droning ceiling lights. 

“You said you’d check out the new run I came up with,” Yuuta said, deliberately illiterate when it came to reading any kind of room Suguru was in. 

“Did I? When? Was I perhaps high?” 

“Your makeup’s uneven.” He heard the clicking of a plastic tin, before someone’s clammy finger pressed against his other cheek. Suguru finally opened his eyes and managed to nail a good hit to Yuuta’s stomach. The sound of his wind getting knocked out was a symphony. 

“Don’t touch me.” 

“Are you trying to kill me?” Yuuta coughed. “I was gonna say, we can get crepes after, then run back before Yuki starts.” 

No way of weaseling out of this. 

Suguru heaved himself up with a great sigh, before turning and knocking Yuuta lightly on the back of his head. (Because it was only okay when he did it).  

“Why didn’t you start out with that?” 

The venue was on the smaller side this time, black barricades already set up around the stage. It was always a strange feeling, seeing something so hollow when it was meant to ring with fullness. Suguru eyed the vastness before him as he followed Yuuta onstage, pausing for only moment when he spotted the flash of white already by the edge of the platform.

“Hey, Satoru,” Yuuta called.

Satoru glanced over his shoulder at the sound of their footsteps, eyes barely visible over the rim of his sunglasses. His mouth twitched - not vindictively, but not pleasantly either - when he spotted Suguru.

Even from there, his gaze was electric. Hair-raising, like a storm about to break loose.

Rough bandages rubbed against Suguru’s skin as his own hands twitched, instinctively. 

He didn’t know how to fill in the thunderous silence.

Satoru only stared at him for a moment longer, like he was trying yet again to search for the things that once glowed within Suguru, but was aware that it was ill-fated. This time, after all, he had an audience. 

“Hey.”

His greeting was clipped, almost reluctant, when he turned back around.

The sound of a ringing chord stopped whatever Suguru had to say in response. Yuuta was beckoning him over where he stood by the keyboards. 

Well, not so much beckoning, as he was repeatedly drawing a line across his throat with his thumb, like cut it out. 

So he said nothing. Suguru hopped up onto the raised platform, where both Yuuta and his drumset stood, waiting for him. Paused for a moment, ran his hands over the sticks resting on the snare. The lightest movement let out an echoing rattle. 

“Okay,” he sighed, picking up them and twirling them deftly, once, then twice. “Show me.”

Summer found them on a day made of jade. The air hummed and gasped all around them, sticky with heat. 

Crowded into the few remaining spots of shade, they sat upon the steps leading into Satoru’s backyard. Light dripped down their cheeks alongside sweat, kissing patches of amber onto sun-reddened skin, glowing gold through hair strands dyed an iridescent white. 

They were seniors now, and somewhere in the last several years they’d known one another, Satoru had managed to hit his growth spurt way earlier than Suguru did. His body was lanky now, like clumsily folded paper, growing at an awkward pace that somehow still suited him perfectly. 

Or maybe Suguru was just a little biased.

He watched as Satoru finally finished tuning the guitar resting on his lap - his dad’s old acoustic one he’d dug out of the garage, because he couldn’t (and refused to) drag his amps and things outside. The bony points of his elbow jutted out where it sat atop the guitar’s wooden body, and his hand brushed over the metal strings, notes muffled into his skin.

“Okay.” He sat back with a grin, brushing away some sweat that had beaded over his forehead. “So I came up with this last week.” 

A dragonfly, one of many that were swarming the late afternoon, flitted over the head of the guitar. Satoru ducked his head down, fingers crooking into the familiar outline of a chord over the fingerboard.

He didn’t sing that time, only played a melody like honey.

Suguru leaned back on his palms and watched as the world swayed to and fro, lost in an inexplicable wonder. It made him near light-headed, to know he was the only one bestowed with the privilege of witnessing Satoru at his most earnest. 

Him, and the second dragonfly beating papery thin wings over the valley of their knees.

Suguru couldn’t help but smile. 

“That’s nice,” he said when Satoru paused, gazing up at him expectantly. “What’s it about?”

“Mm.” The tips of his ears glowed carnation red beneath the drowsy July sun. So did his cheeks. “‘S not about anything until I have the words.” 

“You can have songs without words, no?”

“That’s too open for interpretation.” 

“I like those kinds of songs,” Suguru found himself saying, just to push his buttons a little. “I like that you can make them about everything.”

He snorted, before knocking their legs together. The dragonfly startled away, buzzing past Suguru’s loose hair with the tiniest gust of wind. 

“Hey,” Satoru suddenly said, perking up. “Why don’t you try playing?” 

Instinctively, he scrunched up his nose. 

“That’d be a waste of time.”

But Satoru was Satoru.

And Suguru adored him as sunflowers adored July.

So that left him with an old guitar in his lap only a few minutes later, with knobbly hands clasping around his own, shaping them this way and that. 

Fingertips, rough yet gentle against Suguru’s, pressed them down into the same fret, spanning three strings. 

Somewhere along the way, they had moved. The sun had fallen right into Suguru’s lap as Satoru reached around his back, arm slotting right against his own, and took his other wrist.

Chest pressed flush to his spine, he tugged his hand up and down in a strumming motion.

“That’s an A Major chord.” His voice, low and dizzying, ghosted over Suguru’s ear. He barely held back a shiver. “That’s yours.”

“Huh?” was all he could say dumbly. 

(In his defense, it was fucking hot, his heart was drumming wildly against the body of the guitar - 

And there was no way Satoru didn’t know what he was doing to him, just being there).

“It just sounds like you.” His laugh, smothered into Suguru’s shoulder, was as soft as the rustling garden. “Pretty, right?” 

Suguru felt his hand slip, clumsily ripping a twanging sound from the guitar. He could feel Satoru stifling a giggle behind him. He’d be more embarrassed if he wasn’t literally panicking.

“Get off,” he said numbly, head buzzing. “It’s too hot and I can’t focus.” 

“Okay, okay.” 

Peeling himself away from Suguru’s back, Satoru settled down at his side. The wind ran cold in the wake he left behind.

Lifting up his hand, he then wiggled his fingers in the air.

“If you follow that pattern,” he added, “you can make your own melody.”

It was only slightly easier to breathe now, the scent of sap and uncut grass and Satoru, Satoru, Satoru flooding his lungs as Suguru slowly mimicked the pattern. 

Thumb and ring finger, index then middle. Thumb then ring. Index, then middle. Repeat.

Surprisingly, it didn’t feel too difficult. Maybe because he was already used to having to do and count multiple things at once. Comfort grew steadily in the sagging line of his shoulders, as tension seeped from his bones, as summer songs made their way, languid, beneath his skin. 

Satoru watched as he fumbled his way through the chords and fingerings. There was a pensive look on his face, half-obscured where his glasses had once again started to slip down his nose. 

Only when Suguru grew bored with the same few chords and began to try out his own (read: fuck around, unfortunately find out) did he speak up again.

“I have an idea.” 

Glancing up from the guitar, Suguru hummed. “What is it?”

“Let’s start a band. You, me, and Shoko.” 

Then, with a flourish, he waved his hand through the air, like he was conjuring a stretch of stars. 

“Formation S.” 

Suguru stared at him for one long beat, before bursting out into surprised laughter.

“That sounds so stupid,” he cackled. 

“What?! Come on.” Satoru tipped his head to the side. “Our names were practically made for this!”

“But Formation S?” 

Leaning in close, thigh shoved up against his, balmy fire against bare skin where the hems of their shorts rode up, Satoru nodded with all seriousness and urgency.

“Shoko’s good at piano. She can do keys. That leaves me on guitar, you on drums. We can be Japan’s greatest. Don’t you think we could?” 

Something was roiling ticklishly in Suguru’s stomach, and for once, it wasn’t Satoru’s incessant proximity, nor was it the July sun. He didn’t know whether to call it excitement or something dreadful. 

“Satoru,” he could only say, helplessly. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed. But I’m kind of bad.” 

“The hell are you talking about?” 

Tucking his arms around the guitar, hugging it close to his chest, Suguru looked down at his own hands. At the crooked bends of his fingers where they dug furiously into his palms. At the scratches and scabs on his knuckles, products of over four years spent practicing.  

Ah. Maybe the feeling was shame. 

Maybe that was it.

“I don’t have a teacher,” he said. “I learned from nothing.” 

Satoru smiled, brilliant with the sun. 

“Don’t you know how great that sounds?” 

When Suguru’s throat bobbed but no words arose, he felt hands press to his cheeks, cradling his face. This time, he did not flinch, did not shrink away, even as Satoru ran a thumb beneath his eye. Even when he shook with every betraying beat of his heart.

“You sound beautiful,” Satoru insisted. “You’re beautiful because you’re bad.” 

Suguru feebly glared at him, mouth twisting into an attempt at viciousness.

“That’s not how it works,” he said. “Also, you do think I’m bad then.”

Satoru rolled his eyes and shook his head. 

“What am I gonna do with you, Suguru?” he lamented, almost to himself. 

An indignant protest instantly sparked on his tongue. Suguru wanted to be difficult and mean, spit something like absolutely nothing, or the good old leave me alone. Not that Satoru was ever one to follow directions, especially for the latter.

But before he could command anything else, Satoru only lurched forward instead. 

The kiss he pressed to his mouth was soft, so snow-soft it was barely even there. 

Immediately, Suguru felt himself tense. Felt his hands slip over the guitar, really slip this time, and somewhere in the roaring din of his head he thought he really would’ve dropped it if Satoru wasn’t sitting so close to him, and he probably should move away because it was warm, too warm, and he was sweating right against Satoru’s palms, and that was kind of nasty if he thought about it, both nasty and rude, and speaking of thinking he didn’t think he was doing a really good job at sitting still or kissing back or anything at all, and - 

Satoru held Suguru like he was not his friend, but the sea.

Not with terror, but reverence.

But there were no maelstroms, and there was no ire. Suguru closed his eyes as something, somewhere between one rib and the next, slipped back home.

“Believe me now?” Satoru mumbled when he pulled back, the ghost of his smile on Suguru’s own mouth.

“...Huh?” was all he could mumble, faint and belated.

Pressing their foreheads together, the hollow noise of nameless chords plunking together, Satoru reached down to take his hand. 

“You’re beautiful. And I like you, Geto Suguru,” he whispered. Where their fingers touched, light lived eternally. “I always knew I was going to like you.”

HAMAMATSU

In a place as cramped as their bus, it was hard to stay hidden - if not outright impossible. But to be seen was not to be known, so Suguru found it didn’t irk him too horribly. 

At least, most times.

Most times, it looked like the four of them sitting around the lounge, tossing playing cards onto the tiny table for whatever game-of-the-week Yuuta had decided to try and teach them. And if that failed, which happened more often than not, with a certain guitarist’s abhorrent lack of grasp for any kind of game rules, then their downtime was spent humming along to the playlist Yuki had burned for their tour. 

And if all those songs grew too repetitive, then she’d bring out her bass and gesture for Suguru to play along too - even if it meant playing riffs off the edge of the table or an unfortunate nearby water bottle instead.

Most times, it was even nice. 

Most nights, though, it was hard to sleep. Most nights, Suguru spent them staring at the worn mementos he’d torn from his dorm and stuck to the wall by his bunk - old My Chemical Romance magazine spreads, X JAPAN vinyls, the like. 

Tonight, he spent it curled up on the couch, staring out the tinted window, counting city lights as they zoomed down the road toward Hamamatsu. 

Moonlight cast striped shadows over dog-eared notebooks and empty takeout containers, painting his arms in a silvery glow. 

Suguru absently pressed his fingers to his left wrist. Muscles twinged beneath his touch as he flexed his hand, wriggling his fingers to watch the tendons move. Distantly, he could hear the small rumblings of the road beneath the tires, the clanking of guitar cases getting shut and soft good-nights as curtains drew closed. 

Only when the couch dipped beneath the weight of someone else, and when something warm pressed to his knee, did he stir.

“You’ll need to brace that soon, if you keep straining it like that,” Satoru said, holding up the heat pack. 

Suguru stared at it for a long moment, at the near elegant curve of Satoru’s fingers against the scratchy fabric. At the small amount of distance between them that Satoru had perfected at keeping perpetually. 

For a wistful moment, he contemplated just snatching the pack then leaving without a word. 

(But Suguru could never hope to avoid him here, even on the best of days).

Careful not to brush up against his palm, he reached out and picked up the heating pack. Pressed it gingerly to the bone of his wrist.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“How long’s it been like that?”

He shrugged. “It’s on and off again. It’s not bad.” 

When he saw the look on Satoru’s face, like he wanted to say something righteous, chastise him for pressing down on bad things until they burst, Suguru felt a familiar bitterness coat his tongue like oil. 

“Don’t say anything,” he cut in before he could open his mouth. “You would do the same thing.”

“Tour’s just started.” 

(As if Satoru’s own hands didn’t still bear the scars of years spent peeling them open). 

“I’m taking care of it.”

((As if he knew any better, really)).

Satoru scowled. “Quit lying.” 

“It’s not like you have anyone else who can fill in,” he snapped. “But I doubt it was ever that dire. Every other fucker in the city probably would’ve thrown themselves at you before you came to me.” 

“Suguru.” 

What was he supposed to offer when he said his name like that? The cut on his other palm had scabbed over by now. Pairs like them would always know injury, how it felt inflicted, how it felt taken.

“Suguru,” Satoru said again, blank and unflinching. “Just say if you’re going to be alright.” 

The floor beneath them rocked and bumped. On the table, a single chopstick rolled off the edge and clattered to the ground. Tightening his grip on the heating pack till it threatened to sear his joints, Suguru tore his gaze away from the infinite blue before him.

“It’s just the stress,” he muttered. “Like I said. I’ll be fine.”

On the last warm night of November, Suguru wanted to watch the sunrise. Because he was a little selfish that way, and because he’d always dreamed of seeing the sun emerge from the sea.

So while heat still lingered mercifully in the waters, they swarmed the beach. At five in the morning, the sand dunes were practically bare, and the world was lit by a sparse but soul-seeing blue. 

He should’ve been dead tired. But a childish desperation ignited his bones, chasing out the nagging exhaustion, searing at him from the inside.

Maybe it was the fact that he was not alone. All his friends were out on the beach, slurping instant noodles because Haibara had somehow managed to set up an entire electric kettle on the sand.

Or maybe it was the fact that he’d already waded halfway out the shore. November was a fading warmth, but where they splashed against his bare legs, the tides were still cold. 

Or maybe it was this - 

They had little time left before graduation and what-after-that would start looming over their heads. Childhood had only lasted a day, and the sameness that had always swathed them each hour was already beginning to flicker.

And Suguru wasn’t sad. He wasn’t there yet. He still had time.

But he had no other word to call this feeling - this horrid dread, this yawning sense of loss coloring every breath. Waters only shifted because they were drawn to a lunar heart an unfathomable distance away, and Suguru would never call himself anything celestial - 

But he had this terrible urge to cling onto everything he hadn’t even lost yet anyway.

In the shallows, he watched the waves spit up foam in lacey patterns, ebbing and flowing around his feet where they sank into the sand. 

Beneath a not-yet-broken dawn, the motions were enchanting. 

When a warm hand wrapped around his elbow, Suguru inhaled sharply and looked up. 

Satoru smiled at him, bright and toothy. In the liminal hour, as the wind tumbled through his bangs, his hair looked nearly iridescent, as if coated in the thinnest film of oil. Suguru thought he smiled back, but mostly, he was just trying to memorize the feeling of Satoru’s fingers intertwining with his own. Every callus, every blister, every spot they collided.

“Let’s go further out.” Satoru spoke quietly enough he was nearly lost to the roaring ocean. “Let’s go swimming.” 

So Suguru didn’t protest as he pulled him farther out into the waters. 

Tightening his grip around Satoru’s palm, he raced after him, as the shallows plunged into hills, as the tides rose to his thighs, then his waist, then his torso. He had to stretch down, real far, to touch his toes to the bottoms. Seawater curled around his legs as he slipped in the foamy sand, and with one final leap - 

They were floating.

Out here, the water was ice cold. Goosebumps erupted all over his arms as he spat salt from his mouth. The fabric of his clothes grew heavy and cumbersome beneath the waves, and it was probably a horrible decision to swim like this, lest he really get swept out to sea and drown - 

But with the world at his side, Suguru felt like he could do the most dangerous things just then.

Satoru dipped beneath the surface for a second, only to come back up breaths away from him. His grin settled in the corners of his eyes as he reached up behind Suguru’s head, gently tugging out his hair tie. 

Spilling out of its shape, white spread like lilies in the waters.

“Suguru,” he said, jerking his head to the side. “Look.” 

Amethyst scars had cut through the blue hour sometime between one tidal swell and the next. First it was that violet, then came the orange. Suguru’s breath snagged jaggedly in his throat as he watched the sun begin to emerge from the sea, round as a yolk. 

The storm clouds that had bloomed and blushed blue over their heads slowly rolled back to return home. Darkness lifted, as sudden as a blink, as gentle as waking up. Dawn broke the sky into kintsugi, into a promise that even broken things could be fixed, tangerine gold running in rivulets through plum. 

Suguru watched sunlight brush elegant fingers through the churning waves, almost reluctant to let go. It would return there in twelve hours or so, but it still clung on dearly. 

Adoration ran red through the atmosphere, through the waters, as the sea heaved beneath its gentle farewell. 

“Suguru,” Satoru said, as the light kept climbing higher and higher. “I wrote a song about you.” 

There was a strange, tight ring in his throat that could not have come from choking on salt. Suguru turned to him, eyes tracing the tangerine pools sinking at the bottoms of his irises, the clementine shine igniting his cheeks - still round and peach-fuzzy. 

“Why?” he could only ask, breathlessly.

“Why not?” 

Seawater ran in tiny streams down Satoru’s temples. Suguru reached out to try and smear it away, only for his fingers to slip down the shell of Satoru’s reddening ear.

“You could write about anything,” he said. “The ocean, the sky, the stars. All of that.” 

Satoru just shook his head. 

“But I already am writing about all that.” 

“No,” Suguru protested, even as hands came up to hold his waist, fingers digging into his hips. “You said you wrote it about me.”

The sky shone, brilliant, like the ribbed walls of oyster shells.

But Satoru held Suguru like he was the pearl.

“I’m writing about everything because I write about you, stupid,” he insisted, softly, fondly. “There’s only one ocean, only one sky. Only one you.” 

He reached up, pressing a thumb to the spot where a droplet of water had traced its way down Suguru’s chin.

“You’re my best friend,” he said. “So you’re all of it.”  

Sometimes, Suguru wished he was the sea itself. Water was the only place where you would never lose a love. The only place where, if you were swallowed whole, you would never come out of it. 

But he was not the sea. He was just the person Satoru had decided he loved. 

So he could only look at him, at the boy who had only been in a fraction of his life, but who he felt like he’d never lived without. He’d had a good but unremarkable childhood, besides the occasional fight or two or ten. It was nothing he really bothered remembering. 

But that was all before Satoru had crashed into his life - or rather, barged right into it on his lonesome. He’d had a head full of midnight hair then and glasses a little too large to fit his face. 

Now, he was taller. Leaner. His hands fit around Suguru’s just right, though his fingers had always been just a bit longer than his. Now, his hair was all white, not a trace of darkness left. Change had shaped his smile into something sure and fashioned a couple extra shadows here and there beneath his eyes, but it’d mercifully left his heart untouched.

And given enough time, enough kindness, Suguru figured he’d be okay watching what else about Satoru it’d shift - 

So long as he could stay at his side.

(The universe had already been kind enough to gift him the boy who would charge out to sea with him).

((Foolishly, he hoped it would stay so kind for the rest of their lives)).

“Yo, Satoru,” he managed to say, and he hoped to everything that could be listening that Satoru wouldn’t hear the break in his voice. “Are you gonna ask me to marry you?”

His hands slipped, and he let out a noise that sounded suspiciously like choking. Suguru fumbled to hold onto Satoru’s shoulders as they shook with a rough cough. 

“Where the hell did you get that from?” he sputtered through the wheezing, ears and cheeks burning a furious red. 

Suguru bit his lip to smother the laugh threatening to bubble up. He just looked away, glanced dramatically toward the carnation clouds instead.

“Just sounded like you were gonna propose just then,” he muttered. 

It wasn’t as if his answer would change. Granted, they were too young, and they had never even considered such a thing when they’d hardly started dating until the past summer. They barely even scraped eighteen, despite the growth spurt that had slammed them both. They were not yet at the age where things could end just as quickly as they began, but they were close. 

Yet, Satoru could make Suguru believe in the insane, even if it was just for a second.

(He’d made him believe he could pick up the drums on his own, after all). 

When Satoru had recovered from his coughing fit, he dared to swim close to Suguru again. Wrapped his arms around his waist in a half-embrace, tugging him close until their chests pressed together. Suguru could feel his heartbeat thrumming through his ribs, like it belonged in his own body. 

“If I did,” Satoru said urgently, “would you say yes?”

Sunrise forgotten, Suguru was all eyes for the world that held him close. The world that was nice enough to cradle him like he was precious, when he’d spent most of his memory feeling like anything but. 

Dizzily, he wondered if he would ever feel happiness like this again.

He didn’t think so.

Reaching up, he cupped Satoru’s face between his hands. Tucked loose strands of hair behind his ears, as he leaned forward. 

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” he said hoarsely, and sealed it with a kiss. 

“Lovebirds!” he thought he could hear Shoko shouting somewhere in the distance. “You’re gonna drown out there!”

Salt stained their mouths, and his fingers slipped through his hair, and he hoped that Satoru would understand what he didn’t know how to say.

Yes. Yes. Yes, he meant. The sun had risen, and he could taste its shine. I’ll go there too. 

Of course I’ll go.

NAGOYA 1

Satoru had a habit of looking over his shoulder.

Suguru first noticed it back when they used to do smaller gigs in college - back when Shoko was their keyboardist and Yuuta was still a stranger he’d found merely irritating. He would turn to look over at Suguru, mic pressed so close to his mouth it was almost uncomfortable, stage lights haloing his hair in a thin film of gold. Then, as the chorus lowered from a fever-pitch into a gentle strum, he’d smile and point in his direction. Fingers splayed out, holding him in the center of his glowing palm.

Like it wasn’t the people swaying and shifting at his feet he was singing for - 

But Suguru, instead.

While it lasted, the attention had been kind. To know, so unambiguously and casually, he was the only subject of someone else’s devotion left Suguru unwoven and undone before everyone else. 

Now, it was only grating.

Heat weighed heavy on Suguru’s shoulders as hundreds upon hundreds of bodies pressed close in the arena. He couldn’t hear their voices, but he could see the shimmering shifts of the crowd, where they swayed and jumped and bloomed with Satoru’s words, over the din of crashing cymbals and heavy bass.

It was near unbearable, all that motion reverberating through the stadium. All those same words had once belonged to them, had once been places only they knew. 

(In a different time, it could’ve been a vow).

((Now, Satoru sang eulogies onstage every night)).

And now - 

Their eyes caught again, searching and finding. Through the flashes, through the neon glow. 

Suguru could never tear himself away when it happened. It was all he could do to not stumble or miss a beat, because he guessed that was what he was there for. 

Satoru’s voice faded in his ears as the stage went dark, as the tracks cut off into that abrupt silence that Yuki always said was the artful kind. Ten seconds of it, at the very least, she’d noted while they’d been recording in the studio. 

Even in the hollow blackness, Suguru could feel him. Satoru, looking over his shoulder, still.

He let out an unsteady breath. Lifted his sticks in trembling hands. Slammed down on the bass drum only three seconds in.

It ruptured the ringing quiet like a warning gunshot. Suguru could feel Yuuta shooting him a confused look, but it didn’t matter. He wanted it gone. He wanted to be gone.

When their show finally came to a crashing close, the lights had barely dimmed before Suguru rocked to his feet. He didn’t wait before clawing out his in-ear, shoving it into his pocket. Screams and cheers immediately flooded his senses, ringing and high-pitched and almost dizzying, as he stumbled backstage. 

He could only get a few steps through the door before a hand was wrapping around his elbow, yanking him back.

“What was that all about?” Yuki demanded. 

Suguru feigned ignorance. 

“What was what?” 

Her eyes hardened as they flitted rapidly over his face.

“Stop, Geto. You’re not pulling that shit on me.” 

“What’s going on?” 

Yuuta’s voice was barely audible over the clamor they left behind in the stadium, as he and Satoru approached. Yuki’s gaze darted toward them, then toward Suguru again, lingering for a split second before she let out a sharp breath through her nose.

She was harsh like a knife when she needed to be. 

Yet, here, she barely held him tight enough to bruise. 

“Don’t do that again,” was all Yuki said, before letting him go. 

Suguru’s arm burned like she wanted to hurt him anyway. 

Globs of honeyed light dripped between gnarled branches, aburst with soft pink bloom. Loose petals and entire bodies drifted to and fro in the warming breeze like snowflakes. 

Suguru blinked up at the sky, squinting against the brightness. Despite the overcast weather, the promise of sunlight flickered just behind the thick smattering of clouds. When a cherry blossom fluttered down and brushed the tip of his nose, he barely held back the instinct to sneeze.

“Suguru, baby. Look over here!”

His mom kept waving wildly at him, face hidden behind a bulky camera. The rest of their parents, an eclectic bunch, crouched this way and that on the sidewalk. An arm dropped heavy over Suguru’s shoulders, and when Satoru leaned in close, the scent of clementines and fuzzy daylight flooded his senses. 

“Let Mama see it, come on!” 

Mechanically, Suguru felt himself heft the bouquet of flowers in one arm and the certificate in his other. They were sunflowers, to be precise - his mother’s favorite and his own by extension. Rusty golden petals tickled his cheek as Shoko knocked her head against his. A smile stretched across his face, more muscle memory than honesty.

They graduated amid the season of falling blossoms. Pink dusted their heads and parted around their feet and shivered with every breath they took. 

Suguru could feel Satoru shifting behind his back every now and then, probably to pluck a particularly large petal out of his hair. 

“Okay!” Satoru’s dad spoke this time, flashing a thumbs-up. “Got it!” 

They didn’t spring apart immediately, despite their cue to. Satoru’s thumb kept rubbing circles against Suguru’s shoulder, and Shoko pressed her cheek to his arm. 

It was one of those days, he guessed. One of those days where you just didn’t want to let go of anything at all. 

“Hey.” Satoru was the first to turn toward them, something unimaginably fond wavering in his smile. “We made it. We survived.” 

“Yeah,” Shoko grinned. “I didn’t think you would.” 

She ducked before Satoru could ruffle her hair the way he always liked to do, a short laugh bursting forth. Blossoms fluttered from her shoulders, dusted her sleek black dress shoes.

Then, frozen in light, they turned toward him. 

Suguru meant to say something just then too, maybe crack a joke just to complete the puzzle -

But he could only nod wordlessly. A lump constricted his throat and everything he’d planned on telling them, words rehearsed in vain over countless sleepless nights and anxious dreams. 

Satoru was going on to a music university, because he’d always known when and how he would chase what he wanted. Shoko had a few more days before she would have to move to a different city, when she’d always been only a ten minute walk away. 

And Suguru - 

He still had a million things left to say. 

(Don’t you go, was all he really meant. Don’t you go on). 

Satoru enveloped him in a crushing hug, sudden and swift enough that he stumbled back. Sunflowers and certificates spilled to the ground as Suguru clutched onto his shoulders, squeezed his eyes shut. 

“You send me pictures from Kyoto, okay?” Satoru whispered into the crook of his neck, pressing an almost-kiss into the skin. “Everything you do.” 

“You too,” Suguru breathed. “All of it.” 

“We’ll see each other again. We’ll be okay.” 

“I know. I know.” 

He felt Satoru lift an arm, pulling Shoko into orbit too. Her hand settled over Suguru’s side and held him tight.

“Don’t kill yourself studying all the time, Shoko,” Satoru said, strained and cracked. “We’re gonna need you on keys too.”

“I know,” she murmured back. 

And for a moment, the world did not change just yet. Home was still two heartbeats pressed close to his chest. Cherry blossoms meant returns and not goodbyes. 

But Satoru pulled away first, when his mother called for him again. He left them with two squeezes on their shoulders and a promise to call as soon as he got settled. Shoko peeled away next, waving to Suguru over her shoulder as she looped her arm through her father’s. 

Suguru watched each of them go, dizzy and off kilter. When his own mother walked up and picked up the sunflowers, pressed a kiss to his head before heading for their car, he could only muster a numb smile in return.

He had this feeling, deep in his stomach, a near apocalyptic one. Everyone he loved was right there, at least for a second still. Suguru could count their spring-haloed heads, each one. 

Yet it was all over. 

He could only stand and watch, a rock parting an unrelenting river, as sakura was set adrift in the currents. 

(But the world is not ending, right? someone whispered, ghosting over his shoulders).

((No, Suguru answered. It’s just that I’m on my own from here)).

NAGOYA 2

Acrid smoke curled listlessly from Suguru’s parted lips. It crowded out his lungs and singed his throat.

From where he sat on the hotel curb, the sun had not yet risen. Only a small streak of gold igniting a violet horizon offered any indication that light would return at all. 

It was hard to get any kind of private silence these days. Just these moments before wakefulness remained.

He inhaled deeply from the crumbling cigarette again, before scooching to the side to make way for the trail of ants crawling along the street. 

The dwindling blue hour cast mountainous shadows from their tiny bodies. Suguru watched them go on and on, in one neat little line, indifferent to the ever-spinning world.

“Sorry,” he mumbled out loud to no one, as he watched one of them inch around his sole. 

“Not sleeping, again?”

Suguru looked up just as Yuuta hopped down onto the street, hands resting in the pocket of his baggy hoodie. Behind him, the doors to the lobby had slid open.

“Nah,” Suguru said dryly. “Got a few hours in.” 

Yuuta settled down beside him on the curb, only to pull his knees up to his chest to make room for the ants too. 

A small smile twitched sleepily at Suguru’s lips at the sight. He hid it behind another drag of smoke, lest it get used against him.

As he blew the wispy plume out the corner of his mouth, Yuuta cleared his throat.

“When did you start smoking anyway?” 

“Hm?” Suguru hummed, tapping away the ash at the end of the stick. “College. Why?” 

“I just think it’s ironic,” Yuuta said. “You didn’t used to like that kind of stuff.” 

And I didn’t used to like you either, Suguru thought of retorting. What gives? 

“I didn’t even know you back then,” was all he said. “Who told you that?” 

“Who else?” Steadily growing sunlight washed Yuuta in a licorice red, as he tilted his cheek onto his hand. “Satoru told me, when you were doing his hair, that you didn’t even want to breathe in the bleach. You put a pin on your nose the entire time.” 

(You look so dumb like that, Satoru kept hating on him, as Suguru rushed back and forth around the little stepstool they’d pulled into the bathroom. The wooden clothespin resting on the tip of his nose had a fierce pinch).

((I’m not breathing in the fumes, stupid! Suguru had retorted, wrapping another piece of foil around Satoru’s stringy hair. He’d tried to sound stern - but the pin made him sound all nasally and funny. It smells fucking gross)).

Memory came back in a startled rush. All the bleach powder they’d spilled on the countertop, all the brushes they’d left lying haphazardly on the ground. 

All the bright things of that one shining summer, when joy felt long enough to last an eternity. 

Warmth stirred in Suguru’s chest, tight and bruised. He breathed out a soft laugh at the reminder, couldn’t shake it, couldn’t help himself. 

It seemed he still held that time dear, after all. 

“Huh,” he murmured. “I guess it is ironic.” 

Glancing down at his cigarette, he rubbed a thumb around its papery side. A few embers floated to the ground as he shook out his hand. 

It turned out unexpected fondness was a harsher taste than any ashy burn of nicotine. 

“Offer’s still open, by the way,” he found himself saying, when the sour tang grew strong enough to leave him queasy. When Yuuta raised an eyebrow at him, Suguru pointed toward his head. “If you ever want to join the cool club.”

Yuuta wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “No thanks. I already fucked up my hair once.” 

Suguru was slow to comprehend at first. But when he did, and laughter actually punched through his chest - sudden and furious - he didn’t bother holding it back that time. Anything to get rid of that nostalgia, gooey between his molars. 

Because that? That time was hilarious.

Yuuta glared at him without any heat, before elbowing him in the side. Suguru clutched his ribs with a wheezing gasp. 

“Stop that,” Yuuta commanded. “I was vulnerable.” 

“You were bald!” 

“Oh, go ahead. Just announce that to the whole city, would you?” 

Suguru’s sides quickly began to ache as his eyes watered. He heaved in a deep breath, lurching forward. 

“Oh, wow. Fuck,” he sighed, as Yuuta stifled a snort into his fist.

He hadn’t been quite loud enough to wake the city, it turned out. Just obnoxious enough to alert the rest of the band to their presence. 

It felt like only a few seconds later before a third shadow emerged, a jeweled cloud shifting over the near-magenta streets.

“You two seem civil today,” Satoru remarked, coming to a stop before them. 

And Suguru guessed he really was a bit sleep-deprived and loopy just then, because he just flapped his hand in a sorry attempt at a wave.

“Oh, nothing,” he chuckled lightly. “Your cousin’s hilarious.” 

Satoru raised an eyebrow and Yuuta was stubbornly reticent. Then, a smile broke out across his face - hesitant and crooked, as was the crescent moon. When he took up residence at Suguru’s other side, he was careful not to brush up against him.

Yet, their shadows molded into one where their legs laid tangled in the street.

By the time the sun finally split a bruised sky open, Suguru’s cigarette had smoldered down to the filter. He dropped it mournfully to the ground and crushed it, just as Yuuta got up with a light shove to his shoulder. He said something about grabbing coffee for all of them, to which Suguru only waved him off. 

With nothing else for his hands to hold, Suguru rested his face in his arms instead. He could feel dawn ignite his skin in a clementine blush as it bled into the atmosphere. 

And Satoru was a bruise by his side -  

Not yet aching, but something he refused to touch all the same.

“Suguru.” 

He didn’t stir at the sound of his voice, didn’t try to poke at the dull soreness of his ribcage. 

“Are we going to talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he mumbled, defensiveness automatic and instinctive. 

Satoru just stared at him flatly for a long moment, uncomprehending, before breaking into a frown. 

“I just mean the show.” 

Lolling his head over, Suguru forced his eyes back open.

“What about it?” 

“Why’d you do that?” Satoru plucked at the few stray weeds that had sprouted through the concrete cracks. “You started before the rest of us were ready.” 

The reason was simple.

It was sitting right beside him on that shitty old curb, and Suguru was sure Satoru knew already. 

“Yuki already yelled at me for that,” he said instead, syrupy and quiet, opting to pick at his thumbnail. “In case you didn’t hear.”

He scoffed. “She didn’t yell. She doesn’t yell at her people.” 

Crimson pooled languidly around his ruptured skin, and Satoru just kept gazing at him. Suguru nearly bristled from the weight of it, unrelenting as it traced the shell of his reddened ear, the glistening ink of his tattoos. 

(Cherry blossoms loved to rot beneath the treetops that had let them go, and snow blushed pink beneath the same star that promised to sear it away). 

((That same thing glowed in Satoru’s eyes, was always present, no matter where they kept finding one another. Among the scratched-up couch of some stranger’s apartment party, in the midst of an undulating sea of hands, or here. 

With no other witness but their oldest and dearest)).

“Stop looking at me like that,” Suguru ordered hoarsely.

Satoru blinked. Didn’t turn away.

“I’m just looking at you,” he said quietly. 

“Stop doing it,” Suguru said again, “like I still mean something.” 

A sharp breath. A soft exhale. 

“You do,” Satoru murmured, insistent. “Don’t you know?” 

Maybe it wasn’t forgiveness or misplaced kindness or anything at all. Maybe it was mostly just sadness.

The sadness of car wrecks and springtimes that could not have been stopped, could not have ended well. 

Still, the sadness that certainly, something, anything, could’ve gone differently.

Suguru’s fingers itched for another cigarette, or just anything to grasp onto. 

(And there were all those years too, of course). 

((All those years he would’ve held onto the man beside him until he’d bled)). 

But there were no cigarettes, no cherry blossoms. No way of asking for anything back. Suguru only pushed himself to his feet, pressing the beads of red on his thumb to the hem of his shirt.

“That’s why,” he murmured.

It wasn’t rotten from the start. At least, he tried to believe that.

He moved onto campus in Kyoto with two suitcases and an armload of promises to keep in touch. “Call me every night, Suguru,” his mom had muttered into a rib-crushing hug, and Suguru had held on just as tight, as if to swear it into their bones. 

He couldn’t recall who was the first to let go, or if it was something else that had pulled them apart. 

All that he remembered was standing among a crowd of people who might as well have been from a different world, watching the sun just beginning to set.

The first few months were the same. Suguru would call his parents every night and tell them about his day, and when the days began all looking the same, he’d make it every other night. Satoru would send him a long, rolling text of his class schedule, and Suguru would do the same. They talked to one another from bus stops, from lines in bustling cafeterias, from beneath trees turning to rust to skeletons altogether. 

“Did you write anything new?” Suguru would ask. 

“Hey, I’ll show you next time,” Satoru would promise.

Next time was whenever the next red-circled date on their spreadsheets of gigs and shows was. Every other weekend, Suguru would make the three hour train ride to Tokyo, and Shoko would do the same. They met again in the midst of not-so-crowded bars or sweaty, dank basements, where they would spend an hour or so shoving their hearts in the faces of anyone who would listen. 

Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. It didn’t really matter, though, because for the next few hours, they were together again.

“Let’s get drinks,” Shoko would often announce as they packed all their things, well past closing hours. 

“We always get drinks,” Satoru would complain, the lightweight that he was. “Let’s eat somewhere.”

“But drinks are quicker,” she’d reply. “I have to get home soon, anyway.”

And Suguru would never push for one thing over the other, because it all went unsaid. He would follow his last two friends anywhere they went.

It wasn’t rotten. He’d tried so hard not to make it all rotten.

Or - 

At least, he’d tried to try. 

He wasn’t quite sure when it all started to change. When calls began to dwindle into texts. When texts began to dwindle into silence. When words became an indication of survival and nothing beyond. I’m still alive, Suguru uttered silently with every shrinking conversation. I’m still here.

He stopped talking to his roommates first. He never liked them in the first place. His mother was next. She wouldn’t like the new piercings shoved through his ears or the ink staining his leg anyway. 

There was no point in speaking to a world that rendered him unknowable. 

There was no point in opening his mouth at all.

So he got up. He went to classes. He played shows with his bandmates first and childhood loves second, then he went home to a place that was not home. 

He had his first cigarette, swiped from a stranger in the dregs of some party he’d stumbled his way into. He held onto the awful burn in his lungs like it was air and he was drowning. 

He kissed Satoru again, a rushed thing half-hidden in the shadows, on the only days they met anymore - in the aftermath of another crowded show. 

Satoru had pulled away first, eyed him oddly.

“You taste weird,” was all he’d said. Suguru didn’t smile back. It was too dark to see anyway.

The first cigarette became a pack, and then two. His hair grew out, white strained to silver to an ugly, faded beige. He didn’t pick up when his mother tried calling again. Watched the phone rattle until it lay still on the table. 

She wouldn’t like him very much anymore, really.

And some days, loneliness weighed heavier than anything in the world. Some days, he woke up and felt everything lay on his heart like a body. Some days, he wanted to cry but he couldn’t even summon the sound of his own voice.

Maybe he’d look back in some morbid sort of fascination, if he could even bother moving his head. Because there must’ve been some point where it changed. Where the first leaf fell, where the first star shattered. 

But it wasn’t a car wreck or a plane crash. There was no recording of the minute and second of the fatal error. 

So maybe it was just him, Suguru reasoned. Maybe it was something wrong with him. Nobody else seemed bothered. Shoko seemed fine. Satoru seemed just fine. Satoru was talking to new friends. Satoru brought up names Suguru had never heard of in passing conversation. 

“Are you okay, Suguru?” he would ask, the same way he used to when petty brawls were all the hurt he’d known in the world and wounds were things he could point to and see. “You seem tired.” 

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Suguru would reliably answer. “I’m fine.” 

But he was a relic. An artifact. Look at this one, point and laugh, he’s from way back when. 

He’s still not there yet.

But he was alive, wasn’t he? 

He wasn’t dead. He was just enough. 

He just felt a little wrong, that was all.

I’m alive. Another flawless show. 

I’m alive. Another call missed. 

I’m not getting there. Another summer. Another year.

I’m aliveI’m aliveI’m alive - 

Where was it?

He once swore he’d follow Satoru anywhere.

So where the hell was he going?

Look back. Look back. 

I’m still there, 

I’m still there, where are you 

where are you going why 

are you going

I’m still here I’m still here I’m still here. Look for me. 

(Look for me).

((Look for me)).

Look for -

Suguru slumped back, watched blankly as the first drop of red fell onto the toms. Then five, then too many to count. A cut or two had reopened on his knuckles, a furious blemish in the dark. 

He kept playing. He did not miss a beat. He was getting everywhere.

Up before the stage, Satoru held an arm up high, his pick glistening a blinding silver. 

The crowd was getting loud these days. 

(The crowd was beginning to sing back).

In the limelight, Satoru was beautiful.

((And Satoru did not look back)). 

KYOTO

“I hate this place.”

The confession had emerged beneath an old tree wide in bloom, on the college campus he’d once sworn - in blood and inked dragonflies - that he’d never return to if he could help it.

Satoru had eyed him cautiously from where he sat beside him, negative space always an elegant companion left between them. 

“There wasn’t even one thing you liked?” he’d asked, to which Suguru had only shrugged, wordless where it mattered.

He guessed he had been weak then. So unlike the boy who had taught himself the drums, simply because he had loved someone.

Instead, he’d become the person to dive headfirst into a fall with nothing to offer at the end but a crash landing. 

He would never feel nostalgic for a time like that, but something else just as bitter had flooded his throat anyway.

“You know what happened, Satoru,” was all he’d said, quiet and heavy. “They weren’t very good years.” 

“But I don’t.” Regret was something they’d both come to recognize the hard way. It colored every syllable, every breath between sound. “I don’t know what happened, Suguru. You never told me.” 

Even if they’d had more time just then, if Yuki hadn’t burst forth with a demand for Suguru to show them around his old campus, he was sure he wouldn’t have been able to explain a thing. 

“You can say no to her, you know,” was the only other thing Satoru bothered saying as they’d gotten up to join her and Yuuta at the main gate. 

“If I could,” Suguru had muttered, Satoru’s gaze searing between the bladed wings of a dragonfly, “I wouldn’t be here.”

So now here he was. Curled up on one of the spare couches lying around backstage, knees tucked to his chest as he stared at the ongoing call heating up his rickety old phone.

“So did you show her the cafeteria?” Shoko was laughing. He couldn’t help but roll his eyes.

“Fuck no, she’d make me buy her a meal or something. Then I’d have to buy everyone a meal, or I’m a shitty person.” 

“Like the last time I went?” 

“Yeah, just like last time.” 

They didn’t get to call often, between medical school eating up most of Shoko’s time and Suguru and Satoru being on tour. So when her name had lit up Suguru’s phone, the hour before the show was set to begin, of course he’d answered.

“So,” Shoko said, shoving a soggy fry into her mouth, because for some reason she still liked to eat on her bed. “Have you been talking to Gojo?” 

Suguru flopped over onto his back, staring up into the ceiling. 

“Don’t you talk to him? Go ask him.” 

“I wanna hear it from you, stupid.” 

“Okay. We’re fine,” he said automatically, which meant absolutely nothing. Shoko coughed on another near-derisive laugh.

“Glad I’m not there right now.” 

He peered down at his phone screen with a frown. “Hey.” 

“You know that’s why I said no, right? Told Tsukumo you two were a mess to play with. It’d be rude if I didn’t tell her what she was signing up for.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

“No, really,” Shoko continued, a little too enthusiastic. “It’s like watching a car crash into a truck, but every day. Kept me entertained, though.” 

Suguru was mildly tempted to ask which one of them was the truck, but in the interest of his already dwindling pride, only mustered a flat, “I hate you.” 

Shoko smiled pleasantly. 

“Anyway,” she said, wiping her oily fingers off on whatever textbook she was reading. Suguru truly couldn’t believe she was trying to be a doctor. “How much of the tour’s left?”

“We’re probably halfway through by now,” he guessed. “Why?”

“You’re stopping in Hokkaido, right? Think you’ll visit your parents?”

For a long moment, he only managed to blink at her, almost dumbfounded. 

“You still talk to my mom?” was all he said.

Raising an eyebrow, she retorted, “Yeah. More than you do, apparently.” 

Guilt, a gentle stirring like hunger pangs, tugged at his senses. But Suguru was well-accustomed to pushing it down by now - if you ignored it for long enough, it became your body entirely. That was how you lived with it.

“It’s just - ” Shoko kept looking at him, searching, and Suguru could only seek out a weak protest in return. “It’s just been too long.”

“Nonsense,” she replied immediately. “You’re talking to me right now.” 

Sure, he still sent his mother occasional texts to show sign of life - that hadn’t changed since college. And maybe a few photos of their tour stops, if the sunsets looked nice enough on camera. 

Never of himself, though. 

Like he’d said. He just didn’t think she’d like what she saw.

Something in Shoko’s eyes softened, as she looked at him. It wasn’t pity, because Shoko was never one to pity anybody, but an understanding piercing enough to make Suguru want to shrink away anyway.

“Just go home sometime,” she said. “Okay?”

Above him a ceiling light was beginning to flicker, in and out. The sound of a dressing room door creaking ruptured the fuzzy peace, and he was pretty sure he could hear Satoru’s muffled voice somewhere down the hallway, talking to someone else. 

“Hey,” he found himself saying in all that quiet, almost wistful. “You should come with us next tour.” 

Shoko only let out a laugh, softer this time, the warm crescendos obscured by cracked static.

“Next tour, huh?” she repeated. “You’re already thinking about another one.” 

It wasn’t so much a question as it was an observation. Suguru felt something prickle at the back of his neck, almost uncomfortable, and pressed his cheek to his wrist. He didn’t know what to make of it, so he wanted to reject it.

“I guess,” was all he mumbled.

“Hey, don’t go back on me now.” 

“I didn’t do anything.”

“That’s good,” Shoko insisted. “That’s good that you’re thinking about it.” 

“I was just saying things. I miss playing with you.” 

She laughed again. The sound of bedsheets crinkling beneath her weight bloomed loudly over the rumbling silence backstage. 

“Call me when you guys get back,” she said. “We’ll do something then.” 

“Aren’t you working now? Won’t you be busy?” 

“For you?” Shoko huffed. “Never.”

There was nothing to prove, nothing she was demanding of him, but he couldn’t help but feel ashamed just then. 

He could outgrow jackets, it turned out, but never that shame.

“Shoko,” he continued, almost defensively. “We had a good run.”

Their first band and first dream’s crashing and burning had been a slow one, after all. An oil spill, a slow leak in the side, one with Suguru’s name written all over it. He could only gaze at the grainy image of his old friend, nearly as old as Satoru had been, illuminated by the same desklamp they’d spent countless nights looking for, combing through stores for the cheapest kind that would still work fine. Then, even the mundane had been life-changing.

(It was in these moments that he thought shame and sadness were the same thing). 

((The moments where the sea melted into the sky, where nothing he loved was distinguishable among that all-eating blue)).

Shoko just hummed when he fell silent once more, unable to say anything that he meant. 

“Yeah.” She wasn’t gentle or pitying, just honest. It felt like kindness anyway. “We did.”

There wasn’t one moment, looking back now, when he decided that it was done. It just felt like everything had been ending, over and over again, for the longest time.

Late February brought a curtain of green over the city. The last dewy dregs of winter still hummed in the sidewalks like ghosts, but soon the promise of blossoming pink would replace them. 

Three years into college, Satoru had grown even taller by now - a feat Suguru would’ve thought impossible that last summer in their senior year. He was not boyish anymore. Traded in his glasses for contacts, lost some roundness in his cheeks in favor for a different kind of tiredness beneath his eyes. The guitar case strapped to his back was an extension of his body at this point, the deep blue cloth rubbing against Suguru’s shoulder in the scarce moments their orbits crossed again. 

“Hey, thanks for coming,” Satoru called to the stranger by the keyboards. 

Shoko had cancelled last minute this time, forcing them to scramble for a replacement. Said she had a big exam coming up and couldn’t afford to flunk it, even though Suguru was sure she could’ve just cheated through it. The substitute - some guy whose name he had not bothered learning - said something about calling him anytime, before pulling the plug on the keyboards and hopping down into the now-emptying venue.

It hadn’t been the three of them for a while now. 

Suguru watched Satoru drift to the edge of the stage, head dipped low as he packed up his amps and wires. A lone light flickered above him, washing over the jagged waves of his hair.

Beneath the promise of stardom, he shone like moonlight on snow. 

And Suguru was tired. 

He was so tired.

Satoru turned back toward him, notebook in hand. It was where he kept track of all the things he’d written and everything else he had to do. Suguru watched him flip through the yellowing pages, pen clasped between his teeth.

“How many more shows this year?” 

The sound of his own voice, rough and low, would have startled him if he didn’t feel so numb. 

Satoru just hummed. 

“Just a couple more next month,” he replied. “Some in April and May, too. Summer’s open right now.” 

Suguru was moving by himself now. Mechanical, as he stood up, set the stool aside, picked up the pedals on the floor. 

“Okay,” he felt himself muttering, slow as he began to put the sticks back into his bag. “After that, I’m done.” 

“Huh?” Satoru said, the tail-end of a confused laugh trembling in his voice. “What do you mean?” 

Suguru said nothing else. Disappearing into the silence was easy. And he hated to explain himself. 

As he bent down to pick up a fallen roll of bandages by the kick drum, he felt Satoru’s gaze fall on his shoulders. 

Without anything or anyone else in the way, it pierced him to the bone.

“Suguru,” Satoru said, unsure now, when the quiet began to grow its own pulse. 

Then, a hand closed around his wrist. Suguru didn’t know when or how Satoru had crossed the distance between them - 

Only now, he was too close.

Clenching his aching fingers, Suguru tried to jerk his hand away. Satoru wouldn’t budge.

“Suguru,” he said again. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Let me go,” Suguru whispered.

“You’re done?” 

“Let me go.” 

This time, when he wrenched his arm away, Satoru let him. His hand fell down to his side, a deadweight. 

“What’s wrong?” was all Satoru could ask. There was no point. It was helpless now. 

Suguru inhaled deeply, felt his breath rattle in his lungs. Pressed on his scabbed knuckles until he felt them bloom beneath an unyielding touch.

“I just don’t want to do this anymore,” he said.

“Is this about the band? The shows?” 

“No, it’s not, Satoru. It hasn’t been for a while now.”

He stepped before Suguru’s vision, boxing him in. There was nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide. 

“Then what - ” When the realization slammed into him, because Satoru had always been smart, maybe too smart, he made no indication of hurt. 

The only thing that changed was the steady splintering in his gaze.

“Oh,” he said. “You’re breaking up with me, then.”

It felt like such a shallow thing to call it, maybe even unnoble. What did you call ending the first half of the life you could remember? It’d been three years since it felt like he’d truly known Satoru, yet here, he’d still memorized every last way to make it hurt the worst. 

All he could utter was a desolate, “We’ve been keeping a dead thing going for years now.” 

Satoru’s eyes widened. 

“Dead thing?” he repeated. “Is that what you’re calling us?”

“I’m calling it off.”

Hands rushed up to meet his own. Calluses, ones he’d once felt pressed into his hips and others he swore were brand new, scraped against his bandaged skin. 

“It’s me, right? What did I do wrong?” he asked, desperate. “What am I supposed to do when you won’t talk to me?” 

Suguru turned their hands over, dug his fingers into Satoru’s wrists, where their pulses throbbed in tandem. Things had been ending for a long time already. 

And he had been bursting with catastrophe for years. 

“Nothing. Do nothing!” he snapped. “You’re perfect, and you’re fine - ”

“Clearly not!”

“ - You know,” Suguru gritted out, “some people just stop working and there’s no fucking reason.”

Satoru kept shaking his head. Kept clutching his fingers, even as frustration surged, familiar and wintry cold, in his eyes. 

“You can’t just say that,” he said. “There has to be a reason. You can’t just jump to those conclusions by yourself and not explain anything.”

“I - never asked - for any of this.” 

“So what do you want, Suguru?” Satoru breathed. “Just say what you want.”

Simple answer:

He wanted to stop. 

Long answer:

He wanted to be inside his own body. He wanted to speak and feel it come from his throat. 

He wanted to not have to watch his life from the end of a train going the wrong way. 

He wanted there to be a singular point where it all began to fall apart, one he could point to and blame, so he didn’t have to force a rupture into his timeline on his own. He wanted to step into the future, one, two, three years from now, and not have to turn around to a fiery wreck that he knew would never stop burning. He wanted a future where he did not have to point, and say - 

Those are the relics. Those are the artifacts. There lies the last precious thing Geto Suguru had.

And there, he killed it all by himself.

(The real answer:

More than anything, he just wanted to go back).

((He just wanted to speak into a phone where someone would answer)).

Suguru stared down at where their hands were still intertwined, but beginning to slip. 

He swore he could see red smeared between their palms.

“I’ll play with you for the rest of the shows,” he said slowly.

At that, Satoru just barked out a disbelieving laugh. It grated, like slamming headfirst into concrete, as he took a stumbling step back. 

“Oh, fuck you. Fuck you, Suguru, do you really think I still care about that?” 

“I’ll play with you for the rest of them,” Suguru repeated. “When that’s done, it’s over.”

Finality had made its home in Satoru’s eyes, in the jagged curl of his fists. It echoed in the drag of his breaths, in the vitriol he was just as capable of spitting but held back, out of some kindness Suguru was never able to find.

It swelled in the unshed tears, glistening among his lashes.

“So that’s it.” He pronounced it dead when the pulsing quiet finally gave out, one minute or eternity later. “We’re just through? Not even friends anymore?”

His sticks clattered like gunfire where he threw them down on the snare. Suguru just stood and watched them rattle, knuckles bleeding white around the strap of his bag. 

“Fucking hell, Satoru, we can be whatever you want.” He laughed roughly. “Just not together.” 

OSAKA

They did not usually play their old songs. Maybe it was more in the interest of preserving Satoru’s sanity that they avoided them like the plague. Or a plain refusal to let time taint what had used to be good, any more than it already had. 

But Suguru had no say in writing the setlist, had gladly excused himself from that responsibility entirely. 

So when Satoru struck the familiar chords, a tune only two people in the world would recognize as mournful, Suguru had no choice but to play along.

After their rupturing, the band was the next to fall apart. Though she was there enough for the two of them, Shoko deftly kept herself out of the crossfire. She did not stop Satoru from flaying himself open onstage during the few dwindling shows they had left, and she did not stop Suguru from ricocheting off the rails when he drummed gunfire until his knuckles splintered. 

He didn’t blame her. 

He’d already done the same, after all.

By now, those four years of Suguru’s life had become one gray blur in his head, only moments of the particularly bad surviving among the bloody mess. 

But it was hard to forget just how far they’d fallen as he set the familiar, fast-paced rhythm, one that drove his whole body, one that offered him no rest or solace.

(Where his mind had tried so hard to let go, his hands always remembered).

Ironically, it was one of their more well-loved songs, too. A new addition to their limited list of releases back then, one that Satoru had claimed, to any sorry person who asked, had come to him in a stroke of genius instead of a grim reality. Suguru could tell from the valiant waving of flashlights that a nostalgic wave had come for a select few in the crowd.

It turned out, some hadn’t quite forgotten where Satoru and Suguru had come from.

So he played on, and on, and on. Even when his wrist started twinging painfully beneath undulating lights, even when Satoru sang himself hoarse, even when the singing began to sound more like screaming.

(Because Satoru would never scream unless he really had to). 

((And Satoru would never be honest unless he knew people would think it all an act)).

Sound ended much like they had - 

Abrupt, in blackout silence. 

As the stage went dark for just a flash, Suguru’s aching hand clenched around the cymbal to stifle its ringing, the only thing he could feel anymore was the trembling shudder of air in his lungs. 

Light returned in an instant, washing them in blue. Satoru stood up from where he’d somehow fallen to his knees, lifting his fist with what Suguru was sure was a brilliant grin - 

Look at my imagination, he lied as he waved out to the crowd, shouting something about how they were doing tonight. Nothing about this hurts anymore.

Their next song began with a roaming piano ballad, one of Yuuta’s solos. Suguru had about one minute before he had to start playing again.

So he slumped back in his seat. Fumbled around his pockets unsteadily, until his fingers clasped around the familiar outline of a metal lighter. 

He somehow had enough clarity of mind to angle his body away from the prying cameras of the grand jumbotron, to dip his head just enough so that his hair, sweaty and loose, could slip before his face. Violent shakes wracked his fingers as he clasped them around a cigarette, sticking one between his teeth before clumsily dropping the rest of the pack on the ground.

It took several tries before he managed to light it up. He couldn’t hear a single thing except his own panting breaths and Satoru’s voice, echoing endlessly through his ears. The lighter bounced off his knee and clattered to the floor along with the rest of his cigarettes. 

Ash bloomed in his lungs when he inhaled as deeply as he could handle. It burned and it suffocated. Thirty more seconds until his cue. 

So Suguru choked himself in the fumes, let himself run out of breath, clung onto the starving ache - 

As if it was anything remotely comparable. 

Formation S disbanded the same day Tsukumo Yuki first barged into their lives. 

The beginnings of June heat had just begun to bleed through the half-open doors of the venue. Crickets, hidden away outside, had been chirping all night. Suguru had been packing up his things - he really didn’t know what he was going to do with all those sticks or pedals or the years spent on them - when she waltzed onto their stage.

Ridiculously large sunglasses did jack shit to hide who she actually was - even Shoko had managed to recognize her - yet she somehow offset that look with an even more ridiculous offer.

I’m starting a band and I want you in it, she’d said, brazen and confident. Bubble gum popped between her teeth. You’re the ones I need.

Suguru had laughed in her face, only to register she wasn’t joking. Then when he registered that, he laughed again. Maybe it was a bit rude, but considering he’d already been burning his bridges for quite some time now - 

Just one more didn’t matter.

I’m not playing anymore, he’d told her, sparing nothing more for Satoru as he jumped off the stage for the last time. Good luck.

But Yuki was nothing if not stubborn. Annoyingly so.

It took her a few months. But she finally tracked him down in the corner of a party he didn’t even want to be at, dizzy and drunk but not quite out of his mind yet. The best kind of state for making life decisions, he told himself bitterly as she plopped down before him, going on and on and on over the roaring bass and flashing lights. Something about a missing drummer, a studio signed, a Gojo’s-already-agreed-to-it, a - 

“Satoru?” Suguru blinked blearily up at her, feeling the metal edge of an old resentment cut into his tongue. “What’d you say about Satoru?”

Yuki looked only slightly annoyed, to her credit.

“I said,” she repeated, sounding out each word, “Gojo’s already agreed to the band.” 

So Suguru threw his head back and cackled, because what else was he supposed to do? 

“Yeah,” he gasped, when the fit died down. “Sure. Now if you’ll ‘scuse me, I have a bus to catch.” 

Any subsequent attempt he made at lurching to his feet was immediately thwarted when Yuki sighed and stuck out her leg. Her heeled boot immediately caught against his shins, sending him crashing back down onto the couch. The meager remnants of his drink spilled over his shirt. Gross.

“Just give me two minutes,” she said when he summoned the strength to glare up at her. Then, she smirked and added, “I’ll give you a ride home.” 

That was tempting, he would admit. But any enthusiasm that had arisen at the prospect of getting a free lift home on Yuki’s shiny, probably-worth-more-than-his-life motorbike soured when he caught a flash of white in his peripheral. 

Deep blue fell over the lounge like a hush, a harsh shift from blaring reds and oranges. Suguru pushed himself up on his elbows as a familiar hand - blisters and Band-aids and all - planted itself on the couch cushions. 

“Yuki,” Satoru said. “What’re you doing?” 

She flashed him a look over her shoulder, said something in return that Suguru didn’t quite catch. He only chewed pensively on the plastic edge of his cup, eyeing the man before him.

They hadn’t seen one another since Suguru left their last show. How long ago was that? It was almost December now. 

Oh, Suguru thought drowsily. It’s nearly his birthday.

Hints of black had begun to grow back in at Satoru’s roots, a marker of his carelessness. He was usually so attentive to never let them show -

Though the new shagginess of his unkempt hair, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the blueness in his core that could not have come from those incessant LED lights, all said the same thing.

How startling it was, how quickly and mercilessly change had seized them.

Satoru’s gaze flicked toward Suguru where he, mortifyingly, was still half-sprawled on the sofa. They held one another in regard the same way one counted accidents on a road, almost morbidly fascinated, and Suguru wasn’t sure if he wanted to squirm or kick at him. 

He didn’t have to choose. Satoru’s mouth flattened into a thin line, then, as if in a split-second decision, he moved around the couch arm to sit beside Yuki.

He guessed they really were good friends now.

“This is an ambush,” Suguru said mournfully, tucking an arm over his stomach. He felt a little sick. 

Satoru leaned toward Yuki. 

“You should talk to him when he’s sober,” he said in a low murmur. 

“Is it my problem if I can’t find him sober?” she shot back. 

“Not my problem you can’t find a better drummer,” Suguru interjected petulantly, just to feel included. 

“I’m growing quite aware of that,” she replied dryly. 

He offered them a pleasant smile. It felt like a grimace instead. 

“So.” Absently, he traced a finger over the patch on his shirt soiled by the drink - he’d just done his laundry for the first time in a few weeks, too. “Anyone else in your little band?” 

Not that he was humoring the idea. 

Satoru answered this time. “Yuuta,” he said, jaw twitching. “You know him.” 

“He’s on keys, since Shoko refused,” Yuki added. 

Oh. Suguru could feel himself making a face already. That twerp. He made a mental note not to say that. 

“So Shoko can refuse, but not me?” Pulling himself up clumsily, he glanced between the two of them. “Because you’re not making a compelling argument right now.” 

He held up all five fingers. Started lowering them as he counted off, one by one. 

“Seems like my only options are being in a band with my ex, his twerp cousin - ” oops, he’d said it out loud after all, “ - and you.” 

Then, he held up his pinky. A promise yet to be made. 

“Or,” Suguru declared, “I could quit forever.” 

Yuki leaned forward, propping her chin on her wrists. She had an obnoxiously smug sort of look on her face, lips flattened into a near smirk. Like Suguru had said exactly what she’d been hoping for. Like he’d crashed right into a trap. 

“Geto,” she said. “The band needs a heart.” 

Suguru couldn’t help but scoff. Because something jagged had made itself home in his chest cavity years ago, and it might as well have seeped into his marrow by now. He didn’t know why it started or when each breath started to ache, nor did he know how anyone could look at him and see someone real -

Not a spectacle overdue to be cleaned.

“You won’t find that in me,” he said quietly. 

“Then you can be timekeeper at best.” 

Suguru rolled his eyes, as best he could without giving himself a migraine, and stared down into the bottom of his empty cup. He could feel Satoru’s gaze on him, incessant, familiar, burning into his edges. 

When he felt Yuki placing her hand on his knee, he couldn’t find it in him to jerk away. 

“I know your type,” she said when he looked back up. 

“Yeah?” he grumbled.

“It was good for a while, until it wasn’t.” Yuki dug her nails into his skin, holding him in place. “So it made sense to stop, for a while. Until it didn’t. Right?” 

Instinctively, he felt his lip curl into a scowl, as something cold pooled in his stomach. 

What would Tsukumo Yuki, darling across all coasts, know about him?

He wanted to throw her off, maybe say just that. Was it that he had become so removed from the person he’d thought he was, from the person he once never thought he’d hesitate to call his best friend, that even a stranger could look at him and say those things?

Was it just that easy?

It made him feel rotten. If it was that easy, then what was the point? Being see-through with nothing pretty to show.

(Though, some nasty part of him thought, judging by his current state, it wasn’t really too difficult a task now).

“Geto.” She shook him a little, snagging onto his waning attention. “Nothing worse could hurt us now, huh?” 

Suguru tightened his grip on the cup, felt the flimsy plastic crinkle beneath his fingers. He wished he was blacked out. 

He kind of wished he wasn’t here at all.

Barely audible to even himself, he could only really say one thing -

“I was good at it.”

Yuki smiled faintly. He looked away. Blue bloomed to red, and a fleck of disco light darted across his knuckles.

“I used to be good,” he whispered again, to no one.

“So just give it a year,” she promised. “One album. One tour.” 

Holding up her finger, she tilted her head with a wink.

“Don’t you think it’ll be fun?”

And against it all, despite it all, Suguru looked to Satoru. A habit he’d never quite gotten rid of, he was afraid, searching for that one second where light shone through even the most impenetrable things. 

In those seconds, there was an odd look on Satoru’s face. It wasn’t anger, wasn’t dread. It wasn’t permission either. It was - 

Hope wasn’t supposed to injure. Or, at least, a fair world would’ve seen to that. But the contradiction burned in the tilt of his brows, the slight angle of his mouth. That resentful gratitude in his eyes - the last dregs of shame Suguru was sure the drowning held for the seas that swallowed them whole.

He hated it. That indiscriminate devotion.

He never knew what to do with it. 

So Suguru tore his gaze away, focused on the neon ends of Yuki’s hair instead. 

Fuck. 

He was going to regret this. 

“Will I get solos?” he forced out. 

The beginnings of a grin slowly began to curve Yuki’s mouth. 

“Plenty,” she promised. 

“...Can I scream?” 

“We don’t have scr - ” Satoru’s protest cut off immediately when Yuki rammed her heel into his shin. Whatever he was about to say trailed off into a high-pitched yelp, as he lurched forward, clutching his leg.

Yuki turned back to Suguru. This time, she beamed, all teeth and glee. 

“Done.”

B-SIDE.

KOBE

Satoru sang to tear himself asunder.

Anyone who knew where to look could tell, could trace the tatters leftover from violence and the hell of a mess they’d stranded themselves in that one summer in the studio - trying to make anything worth calling art.

If convincing Suguru to join the band had been a battle, then making their first record was a fight of pure vitriol and venom. Mostly because Suguru hated being told what to do, and mostly because it was Satoru telling him what to do - 

(“Fuck off, Satoru,” he’d snarled, on more than one occasion, grabbing his loose shirt collar to haul him within punching distance. “Don’t think I won’t walk out on you all right now.” 

“Please,” he’d snapped back, one hand coming up to grip Suguru’s wrist while Yuki muttered something to Yuuta about writing a riff down, “you’d get bored within three days and come crawling right back.”)

So he’d told himself he hated Satoru the most. Hated him, for dragging him back to the place he’d tried so hard to leave behind, for forcing all those new songs that could not have been about anyone else into his hands - 

For making him play along to the very wounds he’d caused. 

In retrospect, the fact that they even made it to a release was probably a miracle. Between Yuki’s own tunnel-eyed bossiness and Yuuta’s awkward reticence and Satoru’s awful heartbreak and Suguru’s general presence - 

He hadn’t thought they’d survive. 

(Maybe even some vindictive part of him had hoped).

So it was strange to hear themselves, playing grainy and staticky over the conbini’s shitty old speakers.  

Suguru stilled where he hovered by the shelves of cigarettes, hands clutching two new packs as he tilted his head toward the sound. Radio noise had obscured the sound of Yuki’s steady bassline, but he’d long memorized the rises and falls of the rhythm. 

When Satoru’s voice came on, ragged and tinny, and not just from the store’s butchering, he couldn’t help but scoff softly.

Countless months later, and it still felt like witnessing him for the first time. 

Tucking the cigarettes into the crook of his arm, Suguru grabbed the cheapest lighter off the rack before heading up for the front. 

They’d made a stop at the store before they were due to head back out to Kobe, mainly because Yuki wanted to pick up new sake, and Yuuta needed the bathroom. He felt a little stupid just then, roaming around inside with the baseball cap from his old university and pitch-black sunglasses. Yuki had insisted on it, lest someone recognize them. Yuuta had agreed, only because he said Suguru’s hair was recognizable enough from space.

He ought to have kicked him. 

The elderly lady at the front smiled at him wearily as he placed down the two packs and lighter. Before Suguru could reach for his own wallet, he heard the sound of bills crumpling behind him.

“This, too,” Satoru muttered, sliding a single can of peach soda across the counter. 

Suguru watched as she took his money, tapping something into the register. Dimly, he felt his lips twitch. 

“You don’t have to do that,” he muttered. “It’s all on our budget anyway.”

“It’s all our budget, so it doesn’t matter.” Satoru snatched the soda as soon as he got his change handed back, which he immediately turned to throw into Suguru’s bag. 

The prick. 

Muttering his thanks to the lady and dipping his head in what he hoped was a polite enough nod, Suguru slipped the lighter into his pocket before pushing his way out of the store. The bell jingled just as their chorus swelled into screaming heights.

Outside, the noises of traffic, heavy as the humid air hanging over the streets, smothered everything else. 

Tension he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying immediately seeped from his shoulders, despite the droning heat blossoming in his lungs. 

Satoru was already standing outside beneath the papery awning, biting pensively into the aluminum rim of his drink. Suguru came to a stop beside him, dropping everything else, change and all, to the curb save for the cigarettes in his hands.

Sticking one between his teeth, he held up the brand new lighter to the end until it smoldered. Smoke trailed from his mouth as he squinted up at the sky -

A day green and ripe with the promise of rain.

“You think they did that on purpose?” Satoru asked quietly, as a couple more strangers slipped into the store behind them.

“Did what?” Suguru muttered.

“Put on our music.”

The laugh that bubbled up, ticklish in his lungs, felt oddly clean. Ease, old and time-worn, a little outgrown, settled into his bones, achy like a day of exertion. Maybe it was the humidity, or the fact that their bus was completely gone so there was nowhere else to go or hide. 

“Sure,” Suguru drawled through a mouthful of ash, “only because they recognized you.” 

Satoru gestured to his hood and the mask caught beneath his chin. 

“I’m better covered up than you,” he pointed out. “So you gave it away.”

“Nah. They think I’m an idol.” 

“With that smoking habit? Not a chance.” 

Suguru was tempted to blow some smoke in his face for that. He just exhaled out the corner of his mouth instead, digging his heel into the ground. 

“It was probably Yuki, honestly,” he said idly. 

Their silence was warped but full of unsaid things. He could tell Satoru was mulling over what to say in the quiet’s thick expanse, his gaze tracing down the outline of his ear, coming to a point at his jaw.

After a beat too long, all he said was -

“When are you going to quit?” 

Above them, a thick cloud drifted before what remained of the weakening sun, plunging them into a deep emerald shade. Suguru sighed lightly into the fatigued atmosphere. 

“Quit?” he said sarcastically. “I’m only just getting started.” 

And Satoru just looked at him all serious, a twitch running beneath his eyebrow as Suguru flicked away the ash dangling off his cigarette. Tiny embers drifted to the ground, too short-lived to burn holes into his battered sneakers. Sweat began to bead at his temples, it was just so hot, and as sudden as a skip in the pulse, as the last sliver of daylight before a monsoon - 

Suguru felt sorry. 

He didn’t know what for, and that was just the thing when the body ached without a beginning or end. He felt a little sorry for everything. For the difficulty, for the meanness, for the second-hand damage. For the chemicals between his teeth and the songs that hurt as much to write as they were to hear. 

(For the seas they were too afraid to explore anymore). 

((For all the shallows they lingered in, for all the water that would never pierce their lungs)). 

Something cold fell onto the tip of his nose, rudely jerking him out of his reverie. 

Instinctively, Suguru glanced up.

One drop turned to three, turned to ten, turned to too many to count. A forest wept in the sky, and as quickly as it began, drizzle turned to downpour. Rain battered the cement, racing in rivulets down the gutter and bruising the pavement just beyond their feet. 

Beside him, Satoru let out a wavering sigh as he squinted skyward. 

“Maybe I should get the driver to pull up,” he muttered, almost to himself.

Suguru was tempted to say that would defeat the whole purpose of their stupid get-ups; a tour bus was as recognizable as their bare faces, if not more. But Satoru was already jogging out from beneath the flimsy awning anyway, making it only a couple feet before something rooted him into place, turned him back around.

“Suguru,” he said, his hood slipping down to his neck. “Stop smoking. We need you around.” 

Silence left a stunned aftertaste in his throat, seizing up his vocal chords. 

Thinking of a petty comeback, a why-would-you-care, was useless when something tectonic had already shifted, with a startling and devastating clarity. 

He could only watch Satoru head down the corner, hands hanging loosely at his sides, barely attempting to shield himself from the storm. Rainwater kissed his shoulders, slicked snowy hair to his forehead.

For a second, even drenched, even taller, even seven more years removed from the boys they once were -

Satoru looked, for the most blinding moment, blissfully unchanged.

Oh, Suguru breathed out quietly as he watched him go, terrified to even blink, lest everything old and good disappear again. Oh.

The bell jingled pleasantly behind him again, as the door swung open. For a second, an unfamiliar song blared out from the conbini, their old voices gone. 

Footsteps approached him, stuttering to a stop as a gust of wind threatened to flip the canopy upward.

“Huh. Where’d Satoru go?” Yuuta asked, a plastic bag full of chips and clinking sake bottles dangling from his arm.

“Went to get the bus,” he replied absently.

Squinting out at the pouring rain, Yuuta wrinkled his nose.

“With no umbrella? Idiot.”

They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring out into the roaring streets. Suguru glanced down at his cigarette, for once blameless in the newfound ache that had settled in his lungs, in his stomach. 

With trembling fingers, he brought it up to his mouth one last time. Breathed it back to life, letting his eyes flutter shut.

Then, he dropped it into the floods.

NAGASAKI

“Three sevens.”

Suguru clumsily tossed the cards onto the table, sending a silent thanks to the universe that none of them landed face-up. Across the lounge, pillowed by his clumped up coat, Yuuta narrowed his drooping eyes at him. 

“BS.”

He guffawed. “Take the fucking deck, twerp.”

“Screw you.”

“I should never have taught you this game,” Yuki bemoaned where she was slumped over on the couch, cards practically pressed up to her nose. 

The road down to Nagasaki was about nine hours long, give or take. About halfway through the trip, Yuki had decided to break out the alcohol she bought three days ago, pouring everyone sake in water bottle caps or whatever else they could scrounge, because none of them had remembered to pack the shot glasses from their last hotel. 

Suguru wasn’t awfully drunk yet, but a soothing warmth buzzed in his belly anyway. He rode the churning waves eagerly, even if the occasional bumps in the road made him feel a little sick. 

At least the tipsiness made him better at cards. Or bluffing. Or honesty.

He ended their fifth round of BS with another victory, and Yuuta promptly passed out against Yuki’s shoulder. She wasn’t in a very conscious state herself, head tipped back over the couch as she hummed deliriously toward the ceiling.

Cards spilling haphazardly over his legs, Suguru clambered up to stick his face to the window instead.

Roaring coastlines glistened beneath the lilac moon, as they zoomed down the road. Tides as soft as snow rushed to and fro upon purple-sand beaches, though the view eventually disappeared behind the sheets of rain coating the glass. 

Rippling light waltzed across shining floors and upturned bottles. Breath fogging up the cool glass, Suguru held out his palm, watched the rain catch red between his fingertips. 

With one wavering finger, he drew a shaking line into the mist. The road emerged brilliantly for just a sliver.

Eventually, his head grew too heavy to keep upright. 

Somehow, Suguru ended up slumping over, cheek pillowed against Yuki’s lap as she snored quietly above him. Her arm laid heavy over his side where he’d crawled under it, her rings snagging onto the rushing streetlights every now and then.

From a sideways view, Suguru squinted at the blurry outlines of the three other people who had somehow become everything he’d known in the last couple of months. 

All the while, raindrop shadows darted in constellations across their bodies.

Somewhere between nearly dozing off and the next time he snapped awake, Suguru thought he could see a flash of blue in the corner. A quiet humming, nearly imperceptible over the gentle rumbling of the road. 

When he managed to open his eyes once more, cheek smushed against Yuki’s thigh, his bleary vision focused in an arduous instant.

Satoru had dragged out his guitar, its sky-blue body resting across his thighs as he tinkered with the strings. The six eyes decorating its surface seemed to blink back at Suguru, shimmering with movement as the bus rolled on. He was muttering to himself as he ducked his head low, fingers crooking deftly over the frets. 

Beneath the flashes of light and dark, he flickered like a hologram - sitting there with the thinnest flush over his cheeks, hand plucking an unfamiliar tune. 

It was soft, like birds. 

Inextricably, Suguru felt something in him unravel at the sight and sound. Breathy laughter scratched his lungs, came out in a whistling sigh.

“Haven’t heard that one before,” he said, syrupy and slowed. 

Satoru’s fingers slipped, nails scraping over an unfinished chord. He looked up, eyes wide, as their gazes snagged in the middle of a watery world.

“Oh.” He let out a startled sigh. “I thought you were asleep.”

“‘M still here.” 

Suguru blinked slowly as Satoru just watched him from across the lounge, where he sat, separated from the rest of their clumpy closeness. He looked nearly untouchable in that moment, haloed by the moon’s generous spotlight. 

He was the center of their tiny cosmos, and wholly unreachable.

“You should talk,” Suguru mumbled into the fuzzy quiet.

Satoru’s lips twitched. 

“Talk about what?”

“You don’t talk much anymore.” 

His hands dropped into his lap as he shifted his body toward Suguru. Tear tracks, false and reflective, trailed down his pink cheeks.

“I do talk,” he said, insistent.

“Not to me,” Suguru whispered.

There was a strange expression on Satoru’s face just then, the kind of look he imagined would only come when looking at a beautiful thing, knowing it was the last time. A particularly golden sunset. A shell washed away on the beach. 

A boy you were in love with.

(Of course, you never knew for sure that it was the end. Maybe some miracle would bring it back after a decade or two).

((But sometimes, most times, you could just tell)).

And now, something awfully nauseating was bubbling in him. A warm but childish kind of sadness, urging him to speak it into existence, urging him to talk or it’d go crazy having to bear him alone for any second longer - 

And there was so many things he could proclaim just then, all the awful shit he cradled like cards to his chest, and - 

He just didn’t know how to say it.

How to say anything at all, without crying wolf about an apocalypse.

“Do I make you sad?” 

The question slipped out almost pathetically, as the moon disappeared behind a lush curtain of clouds. 

Satoru let out a jagged breath, face falling. 

“I don’t resent you,” Suguru continued, quiet, when he didn’t answer. “I really don’t.”

Something bruised Satoru’s gaze, as he tilted his head to the side, drinking Suguru in. Pain, as unspoken as all the breaths it took to carry on living, twisted his features.

“You made that kinda hard to believe,” he confessed.

“Well, ‘cause I - tried to,” Suguru muttered back. 

Satoru blinked, once, twice, then snorted quietly. 

“…You’re a piece of work.” 

Against it all, a smile began to twitch languidly at Suguru’s mouth, a blurred and clumsy thing. A streetlight flashed, and he didn’t know if Satoru smiled back.

“Can’t help it.” 

For a while, they trailed off into quiet. Satoru didn’t play again, the only other sounds muffling the world coming from Yuki’s phone, playing a grainy version of Bullets, and the engine, humming lively beneath their feet. Suguru’s head felt like it was stuffed with cotton now, and he really, really wanted to sleep - 

But Satoru kept looking at him like if the whole world went sunless, he would still be luminescent. 

So swathed in that careful attention, he stayed awake a little longer, reaching up to idly fiddle with Yuki’s rings. 

As far as he knew, existence had shrunk down to the size of two, so he’d retreat into the small things once more. The small talk, the small truths, the small requests.

All the little and doable things that weren’t asking for forgiveness, or digging into their injuries, or looking for what used to be. Just the things that let Satoru be who he always was - 

Kind.

“Satoru,” he murmured. “Play something I haven’t heard.”

A second passed where nothing changed, and maybe that was for the better. 

Then he huffed softly in amusement, but leaned over and set his hand against the strings anyway - 

Because he was never one to turn a knife to Suguru’s stomach, even if presented with the blade. 

Satoru tucked three fingers in a row between two metal frets, pinky hovering gracefully in the air as he began to pick a familiar pattern. Thumb. Ring finger. Index and middle. Thumb. Ring.

It was a chord dripping with honey and July and joy aged beyond wine, beyond memory. 

Beyond everything.

(But it couldn’t have been that long ago. Right?)

((It sounded like only yesterday and the beginning of Suguru’s unremembered life)).

Satoru trailed off after a few minutes, lips flattening into a thin line. Suguru opened his eyes when he hadn’t even remembered closing them, body sagging into the soft cushions. 

“D’you have words for that?” he asked. 

To that, Satoru just smiled to himself, a crescent moon tucked away into his rumpled collar.

“There are no words.” Wistful, he whispered into his side of a tin can phone - the other end stuck years behind them. “It’s about everything.” 

Suguru thought he meant to say something else, the words were right on the tip of his tongue, but exhaustion was finally winning its battle. The rain let up just the slightest, staining everything a forget-me-not blue. For a fleeting second of consciousness, he wanted to stop the bus, stumble out into the open before the storm receded entirely. He wanted to spin around the empty highway and feel it in his mouth. He wanted to watch the waters rejoin the sea and know, before it all was over, that there remained at least one way to return home.

He wanted to tell Satoru something, but it had already left his mind long ago.

Heavy fabric draped over his shoulders as hands, tender yet roughened at the fingertips, tugged a jacket over his side.

“Good night, Suguru,” someone whispered, just as he passed out altogether. 

In his dreams, he was back in a garden. He was swathed in a day of jade and dragonflies. 

But he could not hear their buzzing wings, nor could he even hear the wind racing through the grass. 

Only chords, so simple, so beautiful, that someone had once brazenly claimed were his own.

OKINAWA

There laid an oil spill in the sea.

It floated among the waters, not too far astray from the shallows. Iridescence spilled like white lilies from a rotten head, and this was the closest it’d ever get to resembling spring. In truth, it could not bloom, not when it held its debris close to a quivering chest, cradling the damage and spoils like they were dear.

For hours, wavering fingers, bruised and crusted over in half-picked scabs, trailed through the waking tides. But there was nothing there to hold, nowhere for an anchor to root - 

So it became unmoored, uncontained, unknown. A disaster site, spreading relentlessly.

(The sea did not know how to spit it back up, or even that it should).

((The sea carried spills and sand dunes all the same)).

Suguru tipped his head back, salt staining the corners of his mouth, to drink in the neon moon. The crescent shape settled upon the tongue of the blue hour like a misplaced piercing, shining as loudly as it was tender, sending rivulets of sapphire through the heaving ocean.

By now, his clothes were all drenched. His shirt stuck to his torso uncomfortably, and swirling tendrils of gravity closed around his shins, threatening to tug him lower.

He hadn’t meant to take a midnight swim, but that was just how things turned out. Their flight to Okinawa was short and sleepy, rewarded with an entire afternoon spent down by the crowded sands. All day long, the beginnings of a sunburn itched beneath his shoulders - 

But like many things, if he promised not to press on it, it didn’t hurt. 

When he wandered back out to sea, swathed in another bout of insomnia, Suguru hadn’t thought twice before diving back in, abandoning only his jacket and a spare bag on the sands. Holding his breath, he’d swum out of the shore’s eyeline until his lungs grew sore and sodden.

Right before he drowned for good, he resurfaced rudely, crashing through pristine waves with a hoarse gasp. 

Decades of rain and tears had dripped between his parted lips, as he then shuddered and collapsed backward.

He could not tell how long he’d been floating out there, with neither direction nor will. He wouldn’t be able to tell much at all, anyway. 

Above him stretched an endless blanket of bruises, a forever darkness that could be just a breath from his nose or thousands of light years away. At no point did the sky or sea begin or end. 

At no point was the world distinguishable in that same, sticky blue.

Suguru curled his fingers into the cooling tides, taking in a ragged breath. 

Sometimes, it felt like that little monster sitting on his heart was still there. Those days in school, when he’d wake up bearing the weight of all loneliness, it was hard to tell who clung to whom. Whether it was an abandoned body, or a helpless child. 

All he knew was that dreadful inkling that maybe he was the only person left in the world who still harbored such a demented thing.

Yet, he’d never quite let it go, just kept lugging it along in a beat-up suitcase, hoping no one else would notice its tar-black tracks.

But here, the waters only yawned and sighed softly beneath his back. 

They did not call him shameful, they did not point or laugh.

It could only be here where it was marginally easier to carry. Here, where if he swam any further out, it would take days before someone declared him lost at sea. 

Here, where he still floated.

Here, where he was still not heavier than the world.

(But oil spills had to be contained somehow. The ocean did not know how to love the right things). 

((That was not its fault)). 

Suguru did not swim back willingly, more so leaving himself at the mercy of the waves depositing him back ashore. He closed his eyes, rolling over face-down in the stinging swells. 

When he blindly reached down, he felt the ground loosen and billow around his foot. One sinking step, then two. He pulled himself out from the rushing ebbs and flows, scrubbing lingering waters out of his eyes and brushing his hair out of his face. 

Wearily, he looked up and squinted through the fuzzy blue.

Standing on the shoreline was the silhouette of another figure now. Moonlight glowed in his hair. And Suguru would recognize him even miles away.

“I thought I’d find you out here,” Satoru called, voice carrying over the whistling winds. 

Goosebumps erupted over his exposed skin as a gale sent his hair tumbling. Suguru wrapped his arms around himself and trudged out of the shallows, suddenly keenly aware of how drenched he was. He probably looked more like a soaked cat than a human person.

An odd, misplaced embarrassment burned in his cheeks at the thought.

Satoru held out a towel, which Suguru ignored in favor of peeling off his shirt. He could feel Satoru’s gaze, somehow warmer than a beaming August afternoon, settle between his shoulder blades as he tugged his jacket back on and zipped it up. Cold fabric brushed over rubied skin, and he shuddered at the sensation. 

“Just felt like swimming.” 

Satoru hadn’t asked for an explanation, but he felt nauseatingly compelled to offer one anyway. Sand clung to his shins in scattered clumps as he slumped down with a quiet breath. 

In the distant, a loud screech sounded, the call of a waking seagull. Satoru knelt down beside him after a second of hesitation. 

What was left of the blue hour cast him in a youthful glow, kissing the scratched-up hills of his knuckles, gracing the slopes of his arms. Light dripped down his nose, and Suguru followed its path warily, only pausing when his gaze landed on a smear of beige. 

“What happened?” 

The question arose quietly as Suguru felt himself point to the Band-aid, carelessly slapped onto Satoru’s hand. It was peeling off already.

Satoru stirred, glancing down at his fingers, as if he’d forgotten it was there.

“Ah.” He shrugged, casual. “Cut myself during soundcheck.” 

Suguru didn’t think twice before he was tugging over his bag, rummaging through the insides. He always kept a first-aid kit stowed away in there somewhere, because he spent more time bleeding than attempting wholeness anyway. 

In his peripheral, Satoru uttered some weak protest about it not being too bad, don’t worry about it, but Suguru’s fingers closed around the familiar plastic tin anyway.

“Why were you even going that hard?” he muttered as he flicked it open, picking out a bottle of Neosporin. “It was just soundcheck. No one’s looking.”

He grabbed Satoru’s hand, dragging it forward until it settled in his seastained lap. 

Beneath his touch, Satoru sat motionless, rigid, tough like a blade carried the wrong way. Suguru didn’t care about cutting himself on those upturned edges as he leaned forward, inspecting the injury.

It wasn’t large or deep at all, mostly inconveniently placed right at the base of Satoru’s right thumb. 

When his fingertips brushed against the open wound, Satoru let out a quiet hiss. 

“Sorry,” Suguru muttered, wiping his hand on his jacket before squeezing out a small dollop of ointment onto the the cut.

Beneath a five A.M. glow, the beach was blissfully private. Their only other companions were an unaware sea and the briny winds raking through their hair.

Yet it felt like everything was holding him witness anyway. 

The overbearing weight of a gentle entirety peered at Suguru through the lapis light, unpeeling him deftly in the incandescence.

“Suguru,” Satoru said. “Are you alright?”

“Sure,” he replied absently. “Why?” 

“It’s just - ” He jerked his head toward the glimmering blue beyond them. They were still close enough to the waterline that they could feel the spray of foam against their ankles whenever the waves wandered up too far. “You could’ve gotten sick. Or lost.” 

Suguru waved him off thoughtlessly.

“It’s fine,” he muttered. “If I get lost, just look for white.” 

Satoru’s laugh was soft as the waves still entrapped in seashells. 

If time had treated them differently in even the slightest, Suguru would’ve cupped the sound up to his ear and tumbled in love with those rushing tides all over again.

But time treated no one specially. Did not take requests, did not take mercy. 

Instead, he just ripped open a new bandage between his teeth, pressing it lightly over Satoru’s thumb. 

When he finished patting it down, for some reason, he didn’t let go. 

Something nameless kept him pinned there, the same inclination that kept him long adrift among a watery grave, one sorely mistaken for home. 

“This is what you wanted, right?” he found himself murmuring, almost unsure of what he was even asking. 

Satoru’s fingers twitched beneath his own. 

“What do you mean?”

“Touring,” Suguru decided. “Doing shows again.”

At that, Satoru only shook his head. Fondness, bent out of shape, softened his eyes, lived in the corners of his eyes, the seemingly perpetual downturn of his mouth. 

“Not really,” he confessed.

“You’re not having fun?” 

He shrugged, exhaling a quiet sigh.

“Fun is a relative term, isn’t it?” he said, and it was just like him to say that type of shit. “Spends the time, keeps me sharp. Takes me out of my head.”

Suguru felt himself frowning, digging his thumbnail into the delicate roots lining Satoru’s palm.

“Why’d you bother saying yes to Yuki, then?”

If Satoru wasn’t Satoru, if he was the boy a decade younger that Suguru had been sure he’d adore until the last glowing day of his life - 

He imagined Satoru would’ve just laughed him off, a sound as disruptive as it was life-saving, a lighthouse for the sodden. He’d say something like, isn’t it obvious, and Suguru wouldn’t even feel embarrassed that he hadn’t been able to tell, because Satoru would never look at him like he was anything worth inciting ire. 

But Satoru was Satoru was fashioned into something weary and tender-bruised, while he hadn’t been looking. 

Satoru was Satoru, and here, he glanced away, throat bobbing on words Suguru could scarcely hope to predict. 

(Satoru was Satoru.

And he held his hand without ever holding him). 

“It was never really about the music,” he murmured. “Maybe that was part of it, but - it wasn’t all of it.”

“Really?” Suguru couldn’t help but ask hoarsely.

At that, he nodded solemnly. 

“It’s not what you want.” 

And if Suguru wasn’t Suguru, if he had managed to remain the boy he’d always thought he’d be - 

He probably would’ve laughed it off too, shyness hot between his ribs. Can’t you tell? he’d ask, mortified but not in the hurt kind of way. Embarrassment would only come because the promise had been so thoughtless, so inevitable. Whatever’s yours, I’ll make mine. 

But time had not left him unchanged or forgotten, as much as he’d hoped it would. He’d tried to make a key and a map to head back home, but nobody told you where to go when home looked like a mere handful of years and people who moved as relentlessly as rivers - 

There was only one way to go, and Suguru had fallen far down that waterlogged path a long while ago. 

By the mouth of an open ocean, he could only watch helplessly as Satoru began to unbury all their oldest and dearest graves. 

“I got caught up in everything. Nothing let me go,” he kept saying. “Everything was happening so much and so quickly, you know? And I didn’t expect people to actually like us.” 

A grin, dizzy and nostalgic, flickered across his face like a light. 

“I just liked shouldering it with you. With Shoko,” he said, so sure of it. “It was my dream.” 

Suguru felt his grip on his hand slip, leaving behind an awful cold. Instinctively, he curled his fingers inward, digging harsh moons into his skin. Satoru looked at him the same way he’d always find him onstage, beneath the watchful eyes of thousands - 

But there was no more audience, no reason, nothing left to prove.

He just looked for Suguru, and Suguru alone, among the upturned soil of all their lilac abrasions. 

“I thought you were following,” Satoru whispered. “I thought you’d catch up.” 

Some part of him wanted to yell or cause a scene, to get up and walk out before they could uncover anything more. Some part of him bristled at how rudely Satoru had stormed past every careful boundary, every line in the sand, every don’t ask they’d ever put up between them. 

And the rest of him - 

He’d tried to protect it all those years ago, but the gore came slipping out anyway, a trickle that never slowed down even after all this time. 

Suguru looked down at himself, half expecting to see a bed of carnations sprouting from the sand.

(Leave some things buried, most of him wanted to plead. They’ll grow flowers with enough time).

((We’re just not there yet. We’re just never there)).

“I thought you were leaving me behind,” was all he said instead.

And immediately, Satoru began shaking his head. His mouth opened with a ready refutation, a barbed defense, and Suguru couldn’t bear to hear one, not now, not then, not when he’d spent too much of his life convincing himself he was more fashionable for abandonment than anything. 

He fumbled his way onward, felt the penny aftertaste in his mouth. 

“I just - I wish something had happened,” he said. “Then it’d all be okay, you know? I’d have an actual excuse for - for being like that.” 

“Suguru,” Satoru breathed.

“But nothing happened.” It turned out shame always knew where to go, could seek him out even seven years astray from home. “No one died. No one hated me. I just fell off. I just couldn’t make myself feel good about anything anymore.” 

He met Satoru’s gaze, saw all the injury in his eyes, coiled between his brows. Suguru held onto his own violent heart, and he swore after he said his piece, he’d finally throw the rest of that horrid thing away.

“You made it look so easy,” he said harshly. “Like it didn’t even matter.” 

His fingers dug into the unmarked grave they’d made for themselves. 

And the rest of the eulogy followed - 

“I didn’t want to be easy,” Suguru whispered. 

Because the truth was, he had loved Satoru. He’d loved him more than anything, more than the music he fumbled his way through, more than the little band they’d sparked, more than the cherry blossoms that kissed their heads over dappled summer evenings. 

(He loved him, the same way he’d clung to life. Desperate. With claws. Unsustainable).

((Yet well past the proper end)).

A hand closed around his wrist now, the flimsy edge of a Band-aid scraping against his veins. Satoru leaned forward, urgency glowing like embers in his eyes.

“It wasn’t easy, I swear it wasn’t easy,” he said in a rush. “I had people, but they were just that - people. Not you. Not anyone else.” 

Suguru shook his head, palm pressed to his knee.

“You know when - you think bad things happen, because you’re a magnet or something? Or, not even bad things. Just - things don’t work out,” he spilled out. “And it’s like it’s just what you deserve? Because you’re just you.” 

He was rambling now, and it’d be more mortifying if Satoru didn’t cling onto every word he spoke like a beam of light. 

“I told myself that it just made sense,” Suguru said. “That I couldn’t move on, but you were still going.” 

“Suguru,” Satoru insisted. “I would’ve waited if you’d just told me.” 

And now, a second heartbeat was settling back into his bones. It slipped back into a childhood bed that had long grown too small, a closet stuffed too full with useless memories and hand-me-downs. The world had ended somewhere between the moment he’d stepped out to sea and the second Satoru barreled back into his life - at thirteen, at eighteen, at a sorry twenty-five.

And he felt the full weight of an apocalyptic realization now, crushing his lungs, stealing his breath, shrinking him down into some unnamed thing too small for his clothes, too small to hold onto anything. 

It was shameful. It was unbearable. 

Suguru flung Satoru’s hand off him like it burned and staggered to his feet.

“Stop it,” he spat. Foolishly, he felt like a kid again, counting up his losses and bruises before anyone else could do it for him. “Stop being nice.” 

He needed to go. Somewhere, anywhere, he thought feverishly as he began to head down the shoreline, toward those waters again, toward the sea that would hold the dirty and unkind as carefully as it would any sun - 

But Satoru stopped him anyway. 

His hand, warm and callused, grabbed onto Suguru’s elbow, yanking him back. 

“I said yes to Yuki because the only way I was going to try any of this again was with you.” He spoke in a flood, and Suguru could taste the spring-sorrowful honesty in his own mouth. “That was it. That’s all it ever was.” 

And helpless, he could only stand still. Maelstroms swirled at his feet, or maybe that was just the outcome of mercy he’d never known how to handle. 

“Why?” he whispered harshly. “Why don’t you hate me?” 

Tides slapped against their clumsily intertwined bodies, cascading through raw doorways and wounds flung open. 

Satoru opened his mouth to say something else, but Suguru cut him off. He could only shake his head, and feebly tug at his anchor. 

“I haven’t been kind to you.”

“You were,” Satoru immediately denied. “You are.” 

“I made a story about you and convinced myself it was true.” Suguru wanted to yell, but he could only manage something incomplete. “What part about that was kind?”

Satoru squeezed his elbow. He could feel the jolt in his bone. 

“You were trying to survive, weren’t you?”

It was like their first meeting all over again. Suguru, a cornered animal, hellbent on licking his blood clean in private. 

And Satoru, always seeing, always knowing. 

When he tried to yank himself away again, plunging out of the shallows and toward the gaping open, it was no use. 

It seemed wherever he went, Satoru just kept following.

“Stop. Hey, hey, stop,” he was saying, pulling Suguru back. “We both ruined something, okay?”

Couldn’t he just see? That was just the problem. 

Because what if it really didn’t have to end up like this?

What if Suguru could’ve spent all those loneliest years at his best friend’s side? He already had once - so what was another time? 

But even worse than that -

What if the world had always been at his back, had always seen his unlovely parts and treasured them anyway? 

All this time he’d spent sore and angry and confused, determined to wreck his own life if it meant he’d at least have a say in it. All this time he’d convinced himself Satoru had never cared for July or sunflowers or jade promises like he had. All this time he’d told himself he’d made a home for two that Satoru would unerringly trample into one. 

All this time, when his fury had just been something miserable. 

(All this time they could’ve had). 

((All this time he’d skipped like stones into nothing)). 

All of it, all the waste, surged up in his throat like bile. 

“That doesn’t bring anything back!” 

The sound echoed down the empty beach like a gunshot. 

But Satoru just reached forward and clutched onto his other arm, hauling him over. 

“Suguru,” he said, urgent. “When you said it was over, I didn’t just lose you.” 

“Stop.” 

“We were partners, but you were my best friend first.”

“Don’t say that - ”

“You’re always going to be my best friend,” he said. “You’re the only one.” 

Fingers dug gently into his arms, thumbs rubbing circles over freezing skin. Suguru felt something in him cascade hopelessly downward, as Satoru blew the life right back into their sullied gardens.

In the wake of it all, he could only hear the sound of his own trembling breaths, the roar of his pulse in his ears. Tides waltzed around their bare ankles, kissing their shins. Satoru’s clothes were tainted by the spray - 

But he paid no attention to the rest of the beckoning world.

Hands curling into fists, pinned at his sides, all Suguru could manage was a shuddering sigh.

“Shit taste in friends,” he said brokenly.

Still, Satoru lightened with relief, like he’d just told a brilliant joke and managed to squeeze a chuckle out of him on a horrible day.

“Bit late in the game to find a new one,” he said. 

He just wasn’t understanding. He wasn’t understanding. 

“But you could,” Suguru argued, helpless. “You could find someone else. You’re only twenty-five, you’d find someone. They’d love you.”

At that, Satoru just shook his head again. A denial of the simplest kind. Turn left instead of right. No. 

Sing a song for me. No.

Love another. Love another. Love another.

No. No. Never.

“Who would know me like you?” he breathed.

Suguru closed his eyes, lest the waters in him overflow. Something kept welling up inside him, and if it wasn’t blood, then it was equally as unseemly.

“You just have to give it time,” he gritted out.

Satoru just smiled again, shook his head gently. It was only with all the infinite sadness and joy there existed. 

“Then that’s all time wasted,” he said. 

When Suguru finally burst free from his hold, he raised his hands. Moved to seize Satoru’s shoulders. Distantly, he knew he meant to shove him away, to prove him wrong once and for all, wrong turn, wrong direction, wrong decision -

At least you’ll have something to blame ten years later, when you’re still just as miserable and stuck - 

Fists trembling, gripping wrinkled handfuls of Satoru’s shirt, Suguru could only let out a shattered noise, deep from within. 

When he slumped forward, forehead pressed to Satoru’s chest, he felt hands come up to cup the back of his head. Trembling, they barely touched him. 

“Oh - what should we do now?” Satoru spoke rapidfire now, heart shuddering up a quake against Suguru’s skull. “Do we hug? Just hug it out? Are we okay?” 

His fingers had settled against his shaking back now, and they traced circles into seaglass skin and dragonfly wings. 

Muscle memory screamed for Suguru to storm away, but he did not let go of Satoru, didn’t think he could move if he even tried. 

“Are we okay? We’re okay now, right?” he asked again, hushed, and Suguru just kept shaking his head. Miserably, he landed a punch to Satoru’s shoulder without any force.

“You’re an idiot, Satoru,” he could only repeat, words pressed right to his heart. “You’re a fucking idiot.” 

Sunlight brushed unfelt kisses over the crowns of their heads as it hauled itself out of the waters, holding on right till the last second. 

So Suguru clung to the world with bleeding nails too. For the first and last time, the sky glowed like the heart of a brilliant shell - 

And the world cradled him right back, unforgotten, like he had always been its pearl.

(There were no oil spills, really. There was nowhere to drown, never anywhere else to go). 

((Adoration somehow survived their hurricanes. 

And in the battered afterglow, floating above a singing sea, they were fallen leaves)). 

HOKKAIDO

Most of Suguru’s earliest memories were gone. 

He did not remember the day he was born, only told that it had been the first sunny day to pierce a clementine winter. 

Nor did he remember his first several years, or even a few more after that. Stories returned in flashes - darting after dragonflies down the crumbling street, attempting to plump up the neighborhood cat, standing on his tiptoes to stick mismatched socks onto a swaying clothesline.

Tokyo occupied the bulk of his remembrances now, only because he had grown cognizant enough to care. All the towering cityscapes had felt crushing, yet terrifyingly freeing, for a boy who had grown up with a horizon the size of his pinky.

But sometime a few years ago, after decades spent away, his parents had moved back to Hokkaido. They were aging now, and they longed for something they still knew dearly. In his college years, he’d never bothered visiting or calling home anyway, so there was simply no point in staying in the city any longer.

So childhood was unfrozen again. 

It left a gaping, fleshy wound on the side of the road as Suguru hovered by the steps of a familiar garden. 

(“We can leave, if you want,” Satoru had told him, hushed, where they sat in the backseat. Suguru had shaken his head no, but thank you. 

“Should we come with you?” Yuuta had offered from the front. Suguru shook his head again. No. 

Yuki had only laughed. “Aw, don’t tell me you’re ashamed of us, Geto-kun!” she teased).

((That had been the point he’d slammed the door behind him)).

Their rented van was idling just around the corner, barely out of view, and he wasn’t sure if they could actually see him from there.

Better if they didn’t. 

The window to the kitchen was wide open, and the panes were still cracked in the corner - apparently his parents had never bothered getting it fixed. The front door was right there, a bit grown over from uncut vines, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move. 

It wasn’t as if his visit was a huge surprise, really. He’d texted his mom a few days ago, before they left Okinawa behind, that he’d be in the area. She’d replied with something about making dinner in case he wanted to come by, about making his bed if he wanted to stay over too, about understanding if he was too busy for all of that. 

(That had been his usual excuse, anyway).

((He figured Shoko would have a field day if she found out where he was)).

Sweat pooled, clammy and cold, between the lightning strike lines of his palms. He wished he could blame it on the flight over, or the post-show adrenaline, but he told himself he was done blaming the wrong things.

It wasn’t the flight, nor was it the show. 

The sun was sinking below the horizon, and he was terrified of going home.

About eight breaths and one line of swears under his breath later, he finally forced his leaden arm up and pressed his knuckles to the wooden door. He left behind three sharp knocks. 

The sound of running water, drifting from the open window, shut off. 

Suguru barely had time to step back before the door swung open, almost just as quickly.

Time had been kind to his mother. A few new wrinkles had settled at the corners of her eyes, folding them neatly as she smiled, but she had those all along, because she always smiled. Sunspots darkened the apples of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose, where her freckles were fading into a deeper tan. She’d cut her hair short for the summer, like she always did every year, and a few strands of gray curled by her temple.

She still looked the same, really, Suguru realized heavily. 

It was just - 

She was smaller than he remembered.

(Or maybe he’d just gotten taller).

His mother’s eyes swept him all over too, wide and nearly dewy beneath the amber light. 

“Oh,” she finally breathed, breaking their rustling silence. “Suguru.” 

A tight ring squeezed around his throat, as he swallowed dryly, uselessly.

“Hi,” was all he managed.

When she stumbled over the doorstep, arms outstretched, she stopped just before him. Her hands hovered over his sides, untouching, unsure. 

She wouldn’t know where to put them anymore.

“You’ve grown so much, Suguru,” she burst out, fingers closing around thin air. “Oh, you’re - you’re so big now!”

“Yeah,” Suguru said, and internally winced. “I got tall.” 

“You must be exhausted. It’s a long flight, right? How long are you here for?” 

Pressing his hands to his jeans again, he shifted his weight to and fro. It was so hard to look at her. It didn’t use to be so hard. 

“We’re going back to Tokyo tomorrow, actually,” he said. “We have two shows left.”

“Oh - ! It went by so quickly.” 

“Yeah. It’s - it goes by fast.” 

Her fingers closed around the hem of her own sweater as she chewed at her lip. She was only a few steps away from him, but the air between them ached like a laceration.

It was almost painful, how clumsily they scraped their way around one another now. 

“What comes after?” 

She asked it quietly. Hopefully. Suguru’s nails bit into his stiff hands. 

“I might stay in the city,” he mumbled, shrugging one shoulder. “I don’t know yet.” 

She frowned. 

“You don’t know? Do you have a place to stay?”

“I’ve got a flat.”

“Have you been sleeping?”

He nodded.

“You’re eating well?”

He nodded.

“Are they giving you enough? Your friends. They’re your friends, right?”

He nodded. 

“How are you?” 

“I’m okay,” Suguru managed. 

Something hollow collapsed in her face as she took him in. Maybe she was realizing he hadn’t managed to grow that much after all. His hair was still the same old white, even though she’d berated him for hours after spontaneously bleaching it and bought him the exact conditioner he needed the next day. He still had that same old problem in his left wrist, the one that never went away even when she’d packed him the braces and heat packs he’d never used in college. 

All that sameness, all that wounded stagnance. All that changed and all that stayed untouched.

And still, he - 

“Why didn’t you come home sooner, Suguru?” she asked softly.

Really, he could start with anything. He thought about telling her about his best friend she’d adored so much who had blinked out of his years. He thought about the devastation of realizing that he’d snuffed that out himself. He thought about an empty beach in Okinawa, where the first light to flicker back into his life had not been the sun, but Satoru. 

Then, he thought about all those years in school. All the fights he’d gotten himself into, all the nights he’d spent blacked out or pawning cigarettes off of strangers, because he’d convinced himself that it wasn’t a problem unless he started buying them on his own. He thought about the loneliness, the empty beds, the ink-black suitcase. 

Of course, he thought about how the first band he’d ever been part of had only been a promise between his dearest friends. He thought about the second one too, some oddball thing wedged between a miracle and a curse that he’d never planned on trying again. 

Mostly, he thought about her. 

About the shadowed eyes and the lost baby fat and the new ink and metal and broken goods. 

About everything she’d think or say. 

And suddenly, it was all too much. 

Scenes clipped back and forth through his twinging heart, a film reel bursting out of control. The good and the bad, the lonesomeness and the togetherness, the joy and the sadness, oh, the sadness. It all melded into a faded sepia mess, and all he could say was - 

All he could say - 

“Um. I guess I just - ”

His eyes were burning, his vision blurring. 

When something warm slipped down his cheek, he let out a mortified breath. 

Her eyes widened as she realized at the same time he did, and now heat was burning furiously beneath his cheeks, in his ears, as he reached up to press shaking hands to his eyes. It did nothing to staunch the flow. 

“Ah. Um.” A humiliated laugh burst wetly through his lungs as he kept wiping at his cheeks, uselessly. “This wasn’t - this wasn’t supposed to - ”

The sky was growing blue around the mouth, and nearby, crickets erupted into a chirping symphony. 

Their porch light flickered on, and all he could do was cover his face, a keening sound breaking forth.  

“Mama, it was bad,” he said in a hiccuping whisper. “It was really bad.” 

Arms were wrapping around his back before he could bother turning away. The distance between them shut in the blink of an eye as Suguru felt callused palms reach up to cradle his head, fingers carding through his tangled hair. 

“Oh, my baby. My baby,” she murmured. “Why don’t you just call? Don’t you know we look for you all the time?”

When he finally broke, it was an ugly thing. 

Sobs tore through his sandpaper throat without abandon or shame, as he collapsed forward. Years of everything he’d tried holding back burst forth, not as sudden as it was fated, finally stuttering to the end of a long road. And he was losing control, quickly. His breaths grew short and jagged, crashing into one another, as she shushed him - the same way she used to when he’d come to her for anything. Scraped knees, bellyaches, someone mean. 

Blindly reaching up to clutch at her sweater, Suguru buried his face into her shoulder. Tears stained fuzzy fabric, a rainstorm polluting fields of peaches and honey, and - 

“I’m sorry,” he thought he cried out, words indistinct among his wails. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” 

She hushed him again, rubbing soothing circles between his shoulders. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay. You came back,” she kept saying, rocking him back and forth. “It’s okay.”

It was probably the most embarrassing thing he’d ever done, save for the one day he’d gone home with the most hideous color of hair and a sheepish excuse that he’d only wanted to match his friend’s stupidity. 

But Suguru was still a tall child these days, folding himself into a paper crane for his mother to cherish or throw aside.

She only tucked his papercut edges between careful fingers, gentle as he wept. And he wept, for everything. For the things that still held him indiscriminately, and for home that still had an open door.

For all of it, and in spite of it.

TOKYO 1

Summer began to dwindle like candlelight.

But it seemed like the sun had set right into the center of the crowded stadium. The heat of bodies pressed together was as stifling as a syrupy July afternoon, and the gathering crowds hummed just beyond the closed doors. 

Suguru stayed slumped on the couch, absently rolling out his wrist, as the rest of his tiny, not-yet-witnessed world paced around backstage, fiddling with guitar pegs and earpieces. 

Irony left a cough syrup aftertaste on his tongue as he watched them, artificial cherry and honey. 

Of course, only now that everything was coming to an end, did the ties between them feel forged out of anything more than sheer pain or desperation.

They hadn’t left Hokkaido without meeting his family - his mother had insisted. Suguru had been more embarrassed going to get them than the prospect of them humiliating him back. But no one had said anything about his reddened eyes or tear-streaked face when he’d pulled open the van door. Yuki only landed a squeeze to his shoulder with a small grin, like she’d known that would happen too.

When Satoru had stepped over the doorstep, into the home he’d never been around to witness but had heard all about, his mother had pulled him into a hug just as tight, as if he were her own. 

“Oh, you haven’t changed one bit, Satoru,” she’d said as he bent over and held her back, squeezing his eyes shut. “My good boy.” 

(What they’d unearthed, among waltzing tides and seaside pearls, they hadn’t bothered naming. At least, not yet). 

((But when Suguru met forget-me-not eyes across the dinner table, soft over cups of steaming tea and bowls of fresh noodles - 

Their blue hour peace, tentative as it was, bloomed unspoken anyway)).

“Alright, Special Grades!” 

When Yuki cleared her throat loudly, he slipped his way out of his reverie the way one shed a worn sweater. 

She stood beneath a buzzing ceiling light, hands on her hips. There was something sharp in her eyes as her gaze swept over them - Suguru on the couch, Satoru and Yuuta by the entrance.

Then, she held up her arms with a grin.

“Bring it in, boys.”

The group huddle was an attempt at best. Suguru slotted himself easily between Yuki and Satoru, though they all had to hunch awkwardly for their resident keyboardist. 

“Last ones, best ones, okay?” she said, knocking their heads together, fingers curling over Suguru’s shoulder. “And if I never see you again - ”

“Why’re you talking like we’re dead?” Yuuta muttered.

“ - it was a hell of a time. Probably more hell than not, but I’m a forgiving person.” 

Before the doors swung open at last, letting in the wild screaming of fans fresh out of Shibuya, she poured them each some leftover sake to seal it off, raising their glasses in a toast.

(Suguru had swiped Yuuta’s shot, muttering something about, “Babies shouldn’t drink.”) 

((He’d just gotten an indignant, “I’m twenty,” hurled at his back for that)).

From the beginning, Yuki had promised Tokyo would usher in their two biggest days. It seemed she was right all along. 

Spread before them, burning like wildfire yet undulating in tides, were rows upon rows of hands. As their show barreled on, crashing and unwavering, camera flashes sparked like gunfire. 

From his vantage point up on the platform, Suguru could see everything. Lights illuminated what felt like thousands of faces he’d never know or see again, except in this moment. Tiny tremors bolted through the ground as the crowd jumped to the beat, mouths wide open in song. 

He could not hear any other voices save for three, ringing like a choir in his ears, telling him what to do, yet - 

There was that glass feeling in his chest again, as all the words that used to be their little secrets were thrown into the wide open.

Sometimes, he blinked and saw the world shift. He was back in a dingy basement instead of a stadium stuffed to the brim. Shows were just a means to keep in touch - a flimsy excuse to chase after drinks and cabs, guitars and pedals clinking against textbooks and stray notebook papers in their bags. 

Then, when he faltered once more everything else melted away, and he was every age all over again. Before knowing music, before knowing anything. 

Back then, the world was only as big as their shoulders pressed together, as they waited for the streetlight to change to green. Existence was only as frightening as the brazen yet tender ways they touched each other, because they’d had no other vocabulary with which to call themselves other than my one. 

(Of course that was never going to stay. They’d put each other through too much anyway).

((He’d bottled up those years in amber memories, scrawled into letters a home address that had become the tail-end numbers of only a few special years)).

But Suguru watched his bandmates dance onstage, well into their final song, wild and uncaring of anybody else for the next few minutes. 

There had to have been some parts that had followed him all this way.

It had to have been there, when Yuki sought him out in some back corner of a stranger’s apartment, asking no one else because she’d seen things in him he’d thought had gone extinct long ago. It had to have been there, when Yuuta matched and even indulged in his caustic meanness, when probably most of it, if not all, was unwarranted.

It had to have been there, when for some reason still - 

Satoru turned toward him, mic pressed close to his mouth. 

He lifted his hand. Palm up, fingers trembling almost unnoticeably beneath the glistening spotlight. 

When he pointed toward Suguru, the world sought him out not in bruises, but lunar tides.

There you are, he seemed to sing, though those weren’t the words at all. There you always are.

And as the lights danced over his head, as Satoru cupped him in his hand, Suguru stood. Attention glimmered across his sweat-slicked skin, but for once, it didn’t burn, didn’t corner him in shame. 

Reaching up, he pulled out his in-ear for just a moment. The roars of their hearts on display flooded his senses almost immediately, and he would’ve been unmoored if Satoru hadn’t already sought him out in the midst of a churning sea.

So instead, he raised his arm. Hefted his sticks high up in the air. When cheers swelled up in one hissing wave, it didn’t feel world-ending at all.

He felt a breathless smile flicker across his face. 

And he thought he meant it.

TOKYO 2

The last hours before their final show were hushed.

And the last day of August seeped headily through the open bus doors as Suguru sprawled over his mattress, reaching up to pluck down the crumpled band posters he’d painstakingly stuck to the wall of his bunk. He’d amassed quite a collection since the first night he’d spent on the road - store receipts, post cards from each city, the occasional photo he’d taken with a fan who recognized him. 

It felt more like mementos gathered over years than mere months.

Light streamed in through tinted windows, casting blocks of muted gold against the gleaming aluminum floor. It was all cleaned up now - no more overturned cup noodles or stray setlists or misplaced playing cards. The other bunks were stripped down too, Yuki’s dark pink comforter gone, Satoru’s rows upon rows of collected CDs all put away.

Only dust motes danced wildly in the sunlit beams as Suguru leaned down, zipping up his bag, careful not to crumple up the souvenirs inside.

But before he moved to hop off the bus for good - 

Something held him in his place, gently urged him back around.

They were parked right behind the stadium, its luminous shadow towering over the otherwise empty parking lot. 

On their other side, the city swelled like an orchid.

Suguru counted the distant rush of traffic darting back and forth, tires and headlights shimmering as heat waves rippled beneath lilac towers and lavender bridges.

With a soft thump, the bag slipped off his shoulder to the floor.

Getting to the top of the bus was an endeavor that took climbing to the top of the bunks, several colorful curses, and at least one near-death fall. 

Eventually, Suguru managed to shove the emergency exit door open, white-knuckling air in one hand and his lighter in the other, as he precariously pulled himself up.

September promised a late return, hanging heavy in the air as he clumsily emerged into the late afternoon.

He’d tied his hair in a messy bun that day, leaving the rest of the tangled ends dangling over his chest. Sweat gathered at the back of his neck as he swung his legs over the teetering edge. He was nowhere high enough to die from a fall by a longshot, but he pressed his palms hard to the slippery roof anyway. 

Above his head, the sky was the warmest blue he’d ever seen. 

Rose seeds had already begun to sprout, impatient, at the horizon. Save for the occasional car horn or airplane whirring by, everything else was soft. Tokyo rustled drowsily beneath the sunbeams, and Suguru snapped a picture of its bruised skyline. 

The photo, brutal lens flare and all, went straight to his mom. 

Immediately, his phone buzzed with a response. His lips twitched in a languid smile as he set it down and leaned back on his hands. 

Just then, sitting there with a balmy wind snaking beneath baggy clothes, sweeping loose hair rudely across his face, it felt strangely like the end of another school year. 

If he wasn’t atop a bus, he could imagine himself on the swings instead. Untied sneakers traced lines through heated sand as his chest threatened to shatter with some odd mix of relief or sadness, or both.

(But that time was far behind him, and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it). 

((It seemed he just kept picking childhood out from his teeth, like pulp)).

Reaching into his pocket, he curled his fingers around the dented pack of cigarettes sitting there. He stuck one into his mouth and flicked open his lighter, pressing the burst of flame to the end. The stench of it crowded his nose and throat, fumes he once would’ve readily thrown aside before even possibly contemplating ingesting them.

He’d stop after finishing the pack off, he told himself. He already paid for them, anyway.

(Or, Satoru did, he guessed).

Nicotine settled upon his tongue like a deadweight. Chased away the honeyed syrup of missing things that did not yet exist - 

But only for a second.

Beneath him, the sound of a pebble ricocheting off the concrete sounded. 

When someone cleared their throat loudly, he nearly jumped and dropped the smoke altogether.

“What’re you doing up there?”

Satoru was staring up at him from the street, hand held over his eyes to shield them from the waning light. He wore a pair of torn jeans that Suguru recognized vaguely to be his own, and a yellow tank top, the collar sagging beneath a pair of unworn sunglasses.

Suguru glanced down at him, feeling his fingers, sweaty and unsteady, begin to slip around his cigarette.

“Waiting for the sunset,” he decided.

“You know you’re not supposed to use the emergency exit for that,” Satoru chastised without meaning it. He was already heading toward the beckoning doors. 

Suguru scooched to the side as, not even a moment later, a hand shot up from inside. He didn’t bother helping as Satoru hauled himself up with a quiet grunt.

He was graceful enough on his own, anyway.

They sat close enough together that he could make out the faintest hints of cologne clinging to Satoru’s wrists - which was something new. It wasn’t strong enough to induce misery or queasiness, only a faint stirring in Suguru’s chest over notes of citrus and sea. 

Almost self-consciously, he reached up to toy with the ends of his hair. Meanwhile, the fabric of his shirt, the same one he’d snatched from Yuki and never bothered returning, brushed against Satoru’s bare arm whenever the wind blew just right. The sun kissed the slow hills and dips of his muscles, settling blue beneath the slight jut of his elbow. Light ignited the soft hairs of his arm in shining gold.

“What do you think you’re going to do after this?”

The same way ripe clementines bruised themselves on the ground, his question drifted between them like fallen sakura. 

Satoru shrugged, reaching up to scratch at his reddening shoulder.

“Not sure,” he said as he squinted into the steadily dimming sun. “I’ve been writing.” 

Suguru found himself nodding anyway.

“Good.”

“What do you think?” Satoru asked him. “Think you’ll stay in Tokyo?”

It wasn’t something he’d paid much mind to until lately. 

So determined to claw his way through the last couple months, he’d never anticipated a good ending to them. 

“I guess.” An aborted sigh cleaved its way through Suguru’s chest. “I don’t know. Yuki and I agreed on only a year.” 

He glanced at Satoru out of the corner of his eye, tapping ember crumbs off his cigarette. 

“It’s been a couple now,” he added softly.

One long beat passed, then another. Satoru looked confused at first, mouth twitching like he was unsure if he wanted to laugh or not. 

Then, something heavy crashed into his gaze, as if precious things had just shattered upon the floor of his ribs.

“Shit,” he said. “You’re not actually leaving the band, are you?”

“What?” The laugh Suguru let out, unexpected yet incredulous, scrunched up his nose. “Relax. When’d I say that?”

Tearing his gaze away, Satoru pursed his lips. 

“Quite often, actually,” he muttered.

When his expression didn’t change, and when he didn’t start claiming a punchline, Suguru felt his amusement dribble away, bit by bit. Almost instinctively, he bristled.

“Satoru,” he reminded him. “We have a show in three hours.”

He just kept fiddling with the hem of his shirt, biting through the skin on his lip. 

As Suguru gazed at him, for one sorry moment, he thought the sight was nearly funny now.

Back when Satoru had sprung the idea of starting a band on him, in the middle of a sweltering summer, he’d been the one curled into his own shyness, the one who needed the poking and prodding into enacting promises. 

Here, their new reversal fit them awkwardly, a set of clothes too big, a guest left uninvited. 

They still hadn’t quite grown into it.

“You can, you know.”

Satoru’s voice was bruised now, folded around the edges like the pages of a worn notebook.

“...Hm?” 

“Leave, if you want,” he said quietly. “If it makes you unhappy.”

If you’re unhappy. 

There was a time, not too far away ago, that Suguru would’ve taken those words as all the permission he ever needed. He would’ve curled his lip, brandished the poison on his tongue. He would’ve marched off without any hesitation, some sort of I-told-you-so hot on his mouth just to seal the deal - 

Even when his heart would’ve kept on bleeding itself right out. 

Seaglass only stirred in his brittle chest now, poking tiny stars into his lungs. Air whistled distant tunes through the empty constellations as he inhaled deeply. This time, he didn’t taste iron - 

Only something bittersweet.

“If I left,” he said, “who would you replace me with?”

“No one.” Satoru’s answer was immediate. “I’d tell Yuki you’re breaking up the band, and it’s over.”

And Suguru, despite himself, leaned forward, forward, forward, until their elbows knocked together at the bone.

“I know a guy,” he said lowly.

Satoru scowled at him.

“Stop lying. You don’t talk to anyone else.”

This time, when he laughed, he felt it flutter in his heart. It beat gossamer wings over his tongue as it took off, and Suguru watched it go, far away, farther than he could’ve ever imagined. 

It didn’t feel like a loss.

Something buzzed against his thigh. Yuki’s name flashed on his phone where it’d been lying on his lap. 

soundcheck soon, she’d texted in their group chat. gtfo wherever u r and come. DONT BE LATE!!!!! 

Huffing, he sent her back a string of emojis, including but not limited to a few knives and a green water gun, before tossing his phone aside.

Satoru’s gaze weighed on him the whole time. But this time, he didn’t suffocate. 

No. 

It was an honor, to be witnessed by light.

“I’m not - unhappy,” Suguru sighed.

Satoru made a quiet noise, as if in protest, a sound molten in the center.

“That’s not happy, either,” he said.

Lifting his cigarette back to his mouth, Suguru closed his eyes for a second and breathed in. 

“What can I do?” he said, letting out a plume of smoke. “I’m trying.”

Ahead, the sun had just barely began to brush against a forget-me-not city. Birds flitted back and and forth over towering electric polls, painted inky black against an atmosphere of shells. Contrails etched scabs through the clouds, crisscrossing over skyscrapers and plum complexes.

As he took in everything, the heated river tracing through the streets, the shared air that they kept breathing, the sunset that somehow looked identical to one he would’ve seen on the rooftop of his old house in the beginning of his life - 

A hollow ache bloomed quietly in the neglected corner of his ribs.

(Nostalgia kept begging attention, left him with the noisiest little injuries).

((Turned him back into childhood.

Into a bodyache in its entirety)).

“Satoru.” He spoke around sore lungs, around a sunset that lasted seven years-long. “You miss it too, right?” 

He could feel Satoru’s gaze land on the side of his face, tracing over the curve of his cheek.

“Miss what?” 

“How it used to be.” 

A dull thud sounded, as Satoru’s heel bumped against the tour bus window.

“You really don’t like it now?”

His voice was a quiet murmur, and it was so unlike the boy Suguru had grown up with. That boy had never been afraid of him or what he had to say. That boy had never known he could hurt him.

“Sure I do.” Suguru’s tongue curled around the misshapen honesty, as he shrugged helplessly. “But it’s different.” 

“What do you mean?” 

In one graceless motion, he stubbed his cigarette out on the roof. It left behind a smudged circle. 

He stared at the ashen eclipse, and he thought about fumbling over missed beats and straw-yellow hair and clumsy hands. He thought about clothespins pinching the tip of his nose and patchy bleach staining his father’s old T-shirt. He thought about secrets, shared and sworn - just-the-two-of-us - in broad daylight. 

He thought about being small and not mattering and how lovely that all had been.

He thought about being known. Shamelessly. 

And entirely.

“It was so different back then,” he said softly. “Nobody knew us or thought we would be anything. I could be bad. I could be bad and not care about it. Before we made it, we could do everything.” 

He met Satoru’s gaze. What-once-was, sickening and familiar, the same red line forever tying their oldest promises together, sank through the gentle slant of his mouth. 

“Wasn’t it fun?” Suguru whispered. 

He knew better than to think those were tears pooling in Satoru’s bluebell eyes. 

But they glistened beneath a long-remembered sunset anyway, a sight just cruelly close enough to the dusks that used to greet them, when they had lived like spring.

“It was,” Satoru promised him. “It was the best time of my life.”

When his fingers curled around Suguru’s, popped blisters and tiny scars pressing into his own splintered skin, he didn’t pull away. 

Satoru brushed his thumb over a ragged terrain of not-quite-fallen scabs and bruises, squeezing his hand tightly.

“We can still do that now,” he said.

Nearly helpless, Suguru found himself shaking his head again.

“I just said it’s not the same anymore,” he breathed.

“We can try. And if we can’t, then we can try to try.” 

Satoru brought up their hands, hopelessly entangled. Pressed the ridge of Suguru’s knuckles to the center of his chest - barely hard enough to bruise, much less break his heart again, but letting him risk it all anyway.

“Just say you want to,” he whispered. “Tell me you still want to.”

Stunned into silence, Suguru felt every rise and fall of Satoru’s breaths, rushing against the valleys of his hand. Two pulses settled back into his own body, a childhood bed rendered too small - 

But a childhood bed nonetheless.

They weren’t so lucky as seashells. No, the same sea would not greet them when they tried to call.

The landlines taking them back home had long disconnected, sometime when they hadn’t been looking. Only tin can phones remained, crude wires stretching across cracked street blocks and golden years.

If he cupped it to his ear, he wouldn’t hear a thing. Not the tides, not a single voice. 

(No one was on the other end to answer him anymore). 

((They were all on the other side now)).

So he put it down, as unused to letting go as he was. He let its open mouth, marred with claw marks and all his little fears, swallow the sun whole - at least for a moment.

Because the moon had not abandoned him.

It had chased him heartfirst every night, across every stage. 

And the first thing he said, unobscured from hollow lines and dropped calls, to the world; to the first and final best friend he still had; to the one he’d loved, dizzy and rough and true, since thirteen, was a vow all the same - 

“I do,” he said, and squeezed Satoru’s hand right back. “Yeah, I do.”