fic for wintersdancer (5/5)
Part 4
**
Memory paints Ryu’s waking moments, splashing reds and yellows and blues across his daily existence until he can barely see anything through the bright patches of color.
There are moments they should have had, streaking in teal, and moments that he’ll never forget, in oranges and violets and golds. There are moments as fleeting at the full moon in the summer in vibrant silvers and blues.
If he could, Ryu would fill the rest of the space, until no bits of the canvas were blank, and Ryu was left awash in a sea of pigment far better than the white and gray of his everyday life.
**
Ryu dreams of the way the hospital sheets feel against the skin of his cheek, and the way Hayato, even when he’s so still that Ryu can barely feel his breathing, is so very warm.
**
When the doctor says that Hayato might not wake, Ryu’s world shifts.
Coma. Koma. From the Greek, Ryu learns. ‘A state of sleep.’
Hayato, Ryu wants to shout, wants to scream to the sky, to everyone and anyone who can or will listen, is not asleep.
When someone is asleep, Ryu thinks, you can wake them up. When Hayato sleeps, he tosses and turns and kicks Ryu in the shins and sometimes he chews on a piece of Ryu’s hair like he’s a horse and Ryu’s hair is particularly delicious hay. When Hayato sleeps, he mumbles things about milkshakes and growls and scratches and cuddles, just as actively as he does these things when he’s awake. When Hayato sleeps, Ryu can tiptoe to the bathroom and fill a cup with water, and splash it on Hayato’s face until he wakes up sputtering and swearing and so very, very alive.
Hayato, now, is not asleep. Hayato is somewhere so far away that Ryu can’t reach him, and Ryu has never felt so alone.
“He can’t respond to stimuli,” the doctor tells Hayato’s dad, as Taku stares at his brother’s form from the other side of the glass with an ashen face and shaking fingers hooked through his belt loops. Ryu’s hands are shaking too, so he hides them in his pockets and tries not to give anything away. “He can’t feel any pain right now, if that helps.”
It doesn’t help, Ryu wants to say, because Hayato is not asleep. Hayato is not asleep. Hayato is no stranger to pain, Ryu wants to tell the doctor. Hayato knows what pain feels like, and he’d never run away from it if he had the choice.
Hayato’d never leave Ryu alone.
“His skull is fractured,” the doctor says. “From a pipe, maybe. A baseball bat.” Yankumi had said baseball bats were only for playing baseball. Yankumi had said so, that time that Hayato had gone to take on Ara by himself. “His brain swelled, and there wasn’t enough oxygen… He might not make it through the night.”
It sounds like the buzzing of bees. It doesn’t make sense, or Ryu can’t make sense of it, only he knows Hayato is not asleep. He knows that Hayato is still. He knows that Hayato is too far away to reach.
It’s okay to feel, Hayato had told him, and Ryu feels too much. Taku’s arms wrap about his midsection, and it’s just like another time, when Hayato and Taku and Ryu had sat on the floor in the middle of the Yabuki apartment and mourned another loss. Ryu forgets to be stiff. Ryu forgets to be anything but terrified. It swamps him. Ryu feels too much.
“He’ll make it,” Ryu says fervently. “He’ll make it because Hayato never loses.”
Hayato makes it.
It’s okay to feel. And Ryu feels far too much.
Ryu keeps feeling too much, just keeps on until one day he wakes up with his back, sweaty and tight, pressed up against a wooden bench, Taku on his left and Tsucchi on his right, watching a testimony he doesn’t want to hear.
He shivers as Shinazaki takes the stand, because Shinazaki has cold eyes and perfect posture. He doesn’t look like a man on trial. He looks like he’s waiting for someone to take his order at a restaurant, or like he’s loitering outside a museum people watching, or like he’s doing any number of mundane, everyday things.
He doesn’t look like someone who hurt Hayato so bad Ryu couldn’t recognize his face through swollen bruises and the thin film of blood. He doesn’t look like a man who is afraid of punishment.
Worst of all, Ryu thinks, he doesn’t look like a man who feels remorse.
“Yabuki’d been with us too long,” Shinazaki says. ‘He knew too much, even if he stayed mostly on the right side of the law.” Shinazaki’s mouth curls. “Gangs aren’t like regular jobs. You can’t just leave because you’ve got a girlfriend.”
Ryu’s heart stutters, stops. Ryu’s blood runs cold. Ryu can’t breathe. Ryu wants, mostly, to wrap his hands around Shinazaki’s throat and squeeze until Shinazaki can’t breathe either.
An eye for an eye.
Ryu never really believed in it before, but Hayato had always believed in it. Hayato had cracked his knuckles and narrowed his eyes and taken back everything anyone ever tried to take from him.
Ryu wants to take back Hayato from Shinazaki, but life doesn’t work like that. Shinazaki might go to jail but Hayato will still be not-asleep, skin deathly white and eyes closed, lashes stark against skin with bruises long since faded, and Ryu… Ryu will still be this aching, feeling thing with nowhere to turn and all these emotions he can’t put away and can’t hide.
Ryu will start his first day as a teacher with wounds that won’t scab, and the memory of opening the results of his exam all by himself while Hayato lies with needles in his arm and a heartbeat so steady it’s like a stranger’s.
When Ryu was small, left to his own devices in his room as his mother worked in the garden and his father was off being important to everyone but Ryu, Ryu used to devour fairytales. He’d read them carefully, pouring over every detail and letting the story swallow him whole, and at the end of it all, Ryu would be left emptier than before, longing for something he’d never had.
Hayato… is Ryu’s fairytale, in so many ways. Hayato is Ryu’s Huntsman, his Prince Charming, his Tinkerbell, his Cinderella. Hayato is Ryu’s Arabian peasant and his magic carpet. Hayato is everything Ryu had ever dreamed about as a child, lonely and separate from the world, watching from afar and never taking part.
And now Hayato is Ryu’s Briar Rose, his Princess Aurora, and he’ll sleep for a hundred years and all Ryu can do is wait.
Except Hayato isn’t asleep. When people are asleep, you can wake them up.
Ryu doesn’t cry, because he doesn’t know how, but his eyes burn and burn and burn, and Hayato doesn’t move, and Ryu watches, and Ryu waits, and the days pass, and Ryu is so very cold.
**
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
**
Ryu doesn’t know why he expected Hayato to have moved.
“I’m going to do something really stupid today,” he tells Hayato, one hand brushing scraggly, overgrown bangs out of the man’s face. “Like, it’s so dumb that you would do it.”
He quiets, like he’s waiting for Hayato to respond, and then he laughs at himself, a little, a tiny, choking laugh that hurts more than it heals.
“One of the guys that got you; he’s going after my student.” Ryu curls a piece of Hayato’s hair around his finger. “Wish we could go after him together. We always made a good team.”
Ryu reaches for Hayato’s hand, and when he grips it, there’s… a tiny squeeze. Ryu blinks, twice. “I’m really losing it,” Ryu says to himself, nothing but a mumble. He squeezes Hayato’s hand back, and…
There it is again, a little return pressure. Like magic.
Ryu stands up and shouts, and then he thinks better of it, pressing the first floor call button to ring the front desk.
Later, the doctor pulls him aside, as Taku, who stopped by right when the commotion started, pokes at Hayato’s face with amazement. Ryu can see a fierce hope in Taku’s eyes. “This happens, sometimes,” the doctor says. “It doesn’t mean he’ll wake up.” This is not the same doctor.
The doctor who’d seen Hayato at his worst, swollen and broken and bleeding. This isn’t the doctor who’d seen Ryu the same. This isn’t the doctor who saw Hayato, against all odds, make it through the night.
“But he’s moving,” Ryu say stubbornly, jutting his jaw forward in a manner he probably stole from Hayato. “Hayato’s moving and you thought he wouldn’t.”
“Yes,” the doctor hedges. “But it still doesn’t mean-“
“If there’s a chance,” Ryu says, and now, his voice doesn’t waver. “If there’s a chance, Hayato will fight for it. Hayato might never have been the smartest, or the wisest, or the strongest.” Ryu shoves his hands in his pockets, licking his lips and shaking his hair out of his face. “But he never, ever gives up. Even if it’s a stupid, pointless fight,” Ryu says, and there’s that feeling, again, like there’s something burning in his eyes. “That dumb asshole never gives up. He’ll keep fighting, and fighting, until it’s all said and done.”
The doctor sighs. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” the doctor says softly. He has kind eyes, Ryu notes, and he looks like the sort of person you’d trust immediately. Ryu’s not predisposed to trusting people, in general, but if he was, the doctor would make it easier.
“When I was a kid,” Ryu says, slowly. “Hayato gave me a lot.” Ryu looks down at his perfectly shined shoes, with hems that fall just so. He remembers the dirt on Hayato’s face, and the way his smile shone like the sun. “The least I can give him is a little hope.”
“Fair enough,” the doctor replies, and smiles.
Ryu can feel his heart hammering in his chest though, even as he’s packing up to leave, leaning forward to crush Hayato’s hand in his own one more time hoping for that little squeeze back. Ha-ya-to, his heart says, in rapid beats, over and over again, and Ryu swallows it down.
“You’d better come back to me,” Ryu whispers. “You promised.”
**
“Hayato,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato doesn’t stir. The bed is too small for two people, but they’ve made it work, limbs threaded around each other and Hayato’s breath hot on Ryu’s neck.
It’s infinitely hotter than Canada, and it’s good like this, it’s right like this, and Ryu wonders if he can remain here, in the moment, forever, the button of Hayato’s jeans digging uncomfortably into his hip and pieces of his over-processed hair sneaking between Ryu’s lips.
Hayato’s palm rests flat on his belly, like he’s claiming Ryu. That’s silly, Ryu will tell him in the morning. I’m already yours.
“Hayato,” Ryu says, a little louder, and now he shifts, sighing and wriggling a bit.
“Hai, sensei?” he teases, words slurred because he’s not really awake, and Ryu wants to smile, because Hayato will probably call him that in jest all the time now, because he’s still a bit incredulous that Ryu’s chosen that job, of all jobs. “Sleepy.”
“You still got my button?” Ryu asks, and Hayato huffs, and drags a hand up to his neck. Ryu’s heart melts when it falls out on a thin chain.
“Course I do,” Hayato says. “I’d be a sucky best friend if I lost it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ryu says, and then thinks better of it, because he doesn’t want to think about those long weeks ever again.
“That was the last time,” Hayato mumbles. “The last time I’ll let you down. Unless you don’t let me go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” Ryu says, and he can’t help but rest his hand on top of Hayato’s on his stomach. “Sleep then.”
“You sleep too,” Hayato says. “We sleep together. I won’t leave you alone again. Promise.”
“It’s a promise,” Ryu agrees, and it’s like there are butterflies in his chest, and all these cliché things that make him still feel like a teenager. He wonders if it will always be like this. He hopes so. “Move in with me.”
“Okay,” Hayato says. “Remind me in the morning.”
“I will,” Ryu says, and he’s finally, finally come home.
**
It’s easy enough to find out where the gang spends most of their time. Ryu only has to ask around covertly about unsafe places to a few vendors down by the docks before he knows where he’ll find Shinazaki.
Twilight is quickly turning into night, and the air gets cooler, and Ryu shivers. He’s not sure if it’s the eerie quiet as he finds his way into back alleys, or if it’s the building apprehension Ryu has always felt walking into battle with out Hayato by his side.
“Yo, Ryu!” a voice calls, and Ryu almost jumps out of his skin before the familiarity of the voice sinks in.
“Tsucchi?” Ryu says, spinning around. “What the hell?”
“Losing your touch, Odagiri-sensei?” Take teases. “We’ve been behind you for the past ten minutes.”
“I must have known it was no threat,” Ryu throws right back, and Take feigns hurt.
“Ryu, I thought we were comrades in arms.”
“Yeah, Ryu, what’s with the cold reception?” Hyuuga tilts his head toward the garage door. “This the place?”
“Yes,” Ryu says. “They’re not too secretive, apparently. Everyone I asked confirmed this location.”
“Alright then,” Tsucchi says. “Then let’s go. Ahhh, this feeling of nostalgia…”
“You make it sound like we’re old,” Ryu says, with a tiny frown.
“You’ve been acting like you’re old for years,” Tsucchi replies. “Don’t get all sour about it now.”
“Yeah, Ryu, you’re the one that talks about things that happened four years ago as if they’re ancient history,” Hyuuga agrees, with a small smile.
Ryu wants to smile, but then he realizes, all of a sudden, that his friends are here. “What are you doing?” Ryu asks solemnly. “You’ve got, you know, careers now. This isn’t high school anymore.”
“You didn’t think we’d let you do something this nuts by yourself, did you?” Tsucchi says, spitting into the grass. “Hayato’d have our heads.” He picks up a piece of iron, refuse from the construction, probably, and bangs it against the garage door obnoxiously like he’s trying to break I down. There’s the sound of shouting behind the door and Ryu can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins even as he turns to regard his friends. “Plus, you know you can’t take out twelve guys by yourself. Not if Hayato got taken out by, what, seven of them?”
“They got him by surprise,” Ryu defends, and Tsucchi snorts.
“No one gets Hayato by surprise.”
Ryu looks at them with wide eyes, and then his face relaxes into a resigned grin. “Take…”
“Well,” Take says. “It’s not like I won’t graduate if I get into a fight.” He scratches his head. “And plus,” he adds. “I sort of owe you one.”
Hyuuga snorts. “We’d better not lose and get caught, Ryu. I’m a salary man these days. So we need to be the ones leaving on our own two feet.”
Ryu cracks his knuckles. “I’ve got no intention of losing,” Ryu says. “I won’t let them take someone else from me.”
Tsucchi looks at Ryu, tilting his head to the side. “You look…” Tsucchi starts, and then he laces his fingers together and stretches his hands up above his head, stretching out his arms.
“Look what?” Ryu queries.
“Like yourself,” Tsucchi says. “I dunno. Alive.”
“Feels like I’m doing something,” Ryu admits. “Something for Kamiyama. Something for Hayato. And…”
“And what?” Take asks, eyes narrowed as the garage door slowly opens. Ryu can taste the violence in the air, like acid on the back of his tongue as he anticipates battle.
“Something for myself, too,” Ryu says.
“Ryu is always strongest when he’s protecting someone,” Take agrees. “You’re always shining brightest then.”
Ryu crosses his arms as eight or nine men emerge from the garage. For a second, Ryu feels a little like he’s becoming like Yankumi after all, fighting to protect what’s important to him.
“Hope you haven’t gotten rusty,” Ryu says conversationally to Tsucchi as Tsucchi comes to stand by his left side. “I know it’s been a while.”
“I can still kick serious ass,” Tsucchi says, eyebrows drawn together in serious concentration. “Watch out for yourself, sensei.”
“You say sensei like that means something bad,” Ryu jokes. “I’m sure you remember that our teacher was a badass Yakuza heir with fists of steel.”
“Oh, I remember,” Tsucchi says. “But you’re no Yankumi.”
“He’s a Ryu,” Take says. “That’s even better.”
There’s no Hayato, Ryu thinks, but Hayato lingers, like a ghost at Ryu’s side, and for now, just for now, it’s enough.
**
Scenes included in the story of Sleeping Beauty:
“But don’t you remember? We’ve met before.”
Sleeping Beauty turns to the prince with wide, luminous eyes, a hand covering her mouth, open with surprise. “We have?”
“Of course,” said the prince. “You said so yourself… Once upon a dream.”
Scenes included in the abridged version of Ryu’s life:
“Am I dreaming?” Ryu asks, and Hayato chuckles, slipping into Ryu’s bed and wrapping one arm across his waist, face finding the hollow between Ryu’s neck and shoulder.
“Are you?” Hayato asks. “What makes you think this is a dream?”
“Because real life isn’t a fairytale,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s touch becomes cool, and as Ryu opens his eyes, the image is fading away.
And once again, Ryu is alone.
He misses Hayato so much it’s hard to breathe.
**
Hayato never sleeps with his back to the door.
It’s the kind of fear you can’t outgrow, the kind that lingers far past the end of danger.
For Hayato, who thrives on violence and adrenalines and shallow bursts of anger, maybe the danger never passes.
“Stop rushing headfirst into scary things,” Ryu growls. “Just… stop.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Hayato breathes back, and he’s straddling Ryu, and trying to hold Ryu’s arms down. Ryu’s strong, too, though, and Hayato’s hands on his wrists are too half-hearted, almost as weak as his glare.
“I was scared,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato’s surprised at his admission. Things between them have been strange, recently repaired with echoes of their separation, times Ryu spent alone, trying to make sense of a life where Hayato hated him and he had nothing left.
And now Hayato doesn’t hate him, but Ryu wonders, sometimes, if Hayato hates himself.
“I can take care of myself,” Hayato says, and Ryu feels anger pool in his belly, and Hayato doesn’t understand.
“Let me,” Ryu says. “Let me.”
“No,” Hayato says. “I won’t.” And then he leans down and catches Ryu’s mouth with his own, licking his way inside with determination, and Hayato’s fine. A bit battered, but fine, and Ryu frees his hands and wraps them around Hayato’s solid back.
“I’m angry,” Ryu says, but he can’t muster enough conviction, and Hayato laughs and smiles smugly against the skin of his cheek, and Ryu’s so warm.
“It’s just a job,” Hayato says. “It’s not a lifestyle. Not anymore.”
“Okay,” Ryu says, and he chooses to believe.
**
“Holy shit,” Uchiyama says. “Your face.”
“Ruggedly handsome?” Ryu ventures, and Uchiyama shakes his head.
“Ground beef,” he replies, and Shiratori gasps when she catches sight of the bruises.
“Odagiri-sensei!” she cries out, and it catches the vice-principal’s attention.
“What happened, sensei?” he asks, concerned.
“I was mugged,” Ryu lies with a straight face. Even if Ryu hadn’t been able to manage it, it’s unlikely, he thinks, that any expression he had let slip would have been distinguishable. His nose hasn’t been broken, though, and the bruises look a whole lot better than they’d looked yesterday as Ryu had pressed two packages of frozen vegetables to each side of his face to forestall some of the swelling.
“Oh dear,” the vice principal says, his expression becoming pitying. “Such dangerous times we live in.”
“Indeed,” Ryu replies, and Uchiyama watches the exchange incredulously. When the vice-principal returns to his desk, Uchiyama sits on the edge of Ryu’s and lift’s Ryu’s face.
“How do the other guys look?” he asks, in a low tone, and Ryu smiles, even though it hurts, pulling at the split skin of his lip and bruised cheeks.
“Much worse,” he replies, and then he forces his sore, battered body to stand, gathering his basket of materials and his jacket. “Let’s just say that they won’t be coercing my students to join their gang anytime soon. What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Nice,” Uchiyama says, and it’s accompanied by a low whistle as Ryu walks out the door, disguising the slight limp with bravado.
His students gasp as one when he appears, but Ryu’s glare is enough to silence them, and it’s the easiest Geometry lesson he’s ever taught, not even his rowdiest students standing from their seats. Ryu wonders if he should show up battered from fights more often if it makes his students behave.
After class, Kamiyama lingers. “Odagiri-sensei,” he says, and Ryu stares at him. Kamiyama’s bruises have almost faded away to nothing, and he’s taken his arm out of the sling, though he still holds it stiffly. “I heard…”
“What did you hear?” Ryu asks mildly, but there’s a bit of a warning laced with the words. Ryu can’t have his students gossiping about the fight, because if it gets to teachers that aren’t Uchiyama, Ryu could lose his job.
Ryu doesn’t want that.
“That those guys… Shinazaki’s guys, down at the docks…” he continues, catching his lower lip between his teeth. He hesitates, then barrels on. “I heard they all got arrested.”
“Did you?” Ryu says, and Kamiyama nods, turning to look out the window.
“Rumor has it they were found by the police, all beaten up. The small business owners down there all identified them as local criminals, and the police recognized Shinazaki.”
“Really?” Ryu asks, and he taps his fingers on the edge of the desk in a random pattern. “That’s interesting.”
“I hear he’s going away for a long time,” Kamiyama says. “I guess he won’t be able to… I guess it’s safe to walk home by myself again.” He awkwardly scratches at the back of his neck with his good arm. “I mean, I hear the other guys all got into a lot of trouble too. Lots of repeat offenders.”
“Guys in gangs usually are,” Ryu agrees. Kamiyama finally meets Ryu’s eyes, and he swallows as he takes in the bruises along Ryu’s face and neck, where he hasn’t bothered to do up the top two buttons of his dress shirt. “Anything else, Kamiyama?” Ryu’s voice isn’t harsh.
“Yeah,” Kamiyama says, and with his bad arm he clasps the flap of his bag and flips it back, while his other hand roots inside. He emerges with a handful of folded in half papers. “Homework.”
“Homework?” Ryu asks, confused. “We didn’t have any last night…”
“I couldn’t do the work from Spring Break, because of…” he trails off, but his eyes flicker down to his still swollen wrist, and Ryu gets it. “But.”
“Oh,” Ryu says, and it’s a warm feeling of accomplishment and pride that sneaks up on him, and leaves him a bit breathless. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Kamiyama says quietly, gruffly, and for a moment, he sounds… just like Hayato, and Ryu grips the edge of the table and refuses to look up.
“Go away,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama retreats. He lingers for a moment at the door though, and Ryu looks up to see Kamiyama trying to decide about something.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side, sensei,” Kamiyama says quickly, with a tiny, cheeky smile, and Ryu can’t help but laugh.
“Don’t you forget it,” he says quietly, and Kamiyama is gone, and Ryu is left with a pile of assignments, and a heart that feels a little lighter than it has in almost two years.
**
It’s never been that Ryu couldn’t survive without Hayato. It’s always been that Hayato made the world brighter, and made Ryu feel like there was a reason he opened his eyes in the morning.
Hayato made Ryu feel like there’s an adventure waiting around every corner, and like maybe they’d face it together.
Now Ryu’s got other reasons to open his eyes.
But it doesn’t always make the days less gloomy, and the echoing emptiness of the evenings aches like a war wound.
Ryu sits by the riverbank, wetness from a late winter rain that lingers on the grass sinking through his slacks, and contemplates the clear water below him.
“Hayato,” he says. “I miss you.”
There’s no answer, but Ryu’s come to expect that.
He stands, and dusts himself off, knowing that his khakis are too wet to be presentable and not caring even a little. He looks down where he’d sat, and there’s no imprint at all.
It’s almost like Ryu was never there, even though in his heart, he still sees the outline of two high school boys lying side by side sharing secrets in the twilight.
**
“I don’t want you to leave,” Hayato growls, tugging on Ryu’s school jacket so that Ryu falls into his chest. “I don’t even know where Canada is.”
“It’s right above America,” Ryu replies, muffled by Hayato’s hair, which has found it’s way into his mouth somehow. “I hear it’s colder than here.”
“You’ll have to start wearing coats,” Hayato says, and Ryu can feel his chest rumble with the words. “Or you’ll get sick and die, and I won’t have anyone’s ass to save.”
“Whatever, I save your ass more than you save mine,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s arms tighten around him.
“I…” Hayato starts, and then he huffs. It’s never been about words between them anyway, so Ryu understands.
“I’ll miss you too,” Ryu says, and Hayato turns his head to the side, stepping back.
“I never said that,” and Hayato reaches for Ryu’s jacket again, but this time, he doesn’t grab a fistful of it, he just drags long fingers along the front, snagging one of Ryu’s buttons and snapping the threads that hold it to his jacket.
It’s his second button. “That’s…” Ryu begins, but Hayato flushes a bit with embarrassment, fingering his metallic prize, and Ryu doesn’t finish his sentence. He just reaches up and closes Hayato’s hand around the button, and smirks. “I’ll let you hang on to it, then.”
”It’s my hostage,” Hayato says, and Ryu snorts, and Hayato shoves him. “Your dad’s a cop, so you know what that means.”
“My dad isn’t just a cop,” Ryu says, crossing his arms. He’s never been good with emotional moments; he might be even worse than Hayato is, really. “And I’ve never really talked to him long enough for him to teach me anything.” Ryu shrugs his shoulders, and wonders if they wear uniforms in Canada. He doesn’t think they do, because no one wears uniforms in university, right? His throat feels dry, and he shoves his hands into his pockets in case they’re shaking as much as he thinks they are. “Hostages are people, anyway.”
“I know that,” Hayato says, and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth. “You get the idea.”
“I do,” Ryu says, and night has fallen. His mother is probably watching the street from the window, waiting for Ryu to appear in front of the gates. Waiting fro Ryu to come home from his last day at Kurogin. “I’m…”
“You’ve gotta go, right?” Hayato says, and he kicks at a loose rock. “Daddy’s waiting by the door with a shotgun?”
“He’s not that invested.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“Maybe,” Ryu says, and he pushes one hand through his hair. It feels a little dry. It’s not fluffy like Hayato’s, which survives Hayato’s constant color-treatment somehow. “So this is it.”
“I just want to…” Hayato hesitates, and his hands are still playing with Ryu’s button. “You’re always going to be my best friend.”
“I know,” Ryu says, or tries to say, but then Hayato’s mouth is covering his own. It’s a goodbye kiss, but Ryu won’t let it be that. He doesn’t want it to be that. He wants it to be a ‘see you later’ kiss, because… Hayato is as much a part of his life as breathing, and the memory of those months without him… they still burn and sting like an open wound, raw. “See you later,” Ryu says, when they part for air, and he gasps the words, but he means them.
“Yeah,” Hayato says, and Ryu pretends he can’t see that Hayato’s eyes are a little wet with unshed tears. “Later.” Hayato shakes his head, and there’s so much hairspray that it barely moves, and it makes Ryu laugh a little, despite the fact that this is all a little sad.
It’s the end of something.
“I’m holding on to this,” Hayato reminds Ryu suddenly, even as he backs away. The button glints between his index finger and thumb. “So if you want it back you’d better be awesome in Canada so you’re allowed to come back.”
Ryu doesn’t want the button back. It’s Hayato’s anyway, just like Ryu’s heart.
Hayato offers him a half smile and a jaunty wave. “Bye, Ryu!”
Ryu’s heart isn’t as heavy as it could be. His lips still tingle. It’s the end of something, but it’s not the end of Hayato and Ryu. They’re connected, Ryu thinks. Like it’s destiny.
“I’ll be back,” Ryu says.
“I’ll be waiting,” Hayato says.
Maybe it’s not the end of anything. Maybe it’s a beginning.
**
“I heard you’re staying at Kurogin another year,” Take says, and Ryu smiles.
“Yes,” he says. “It infuriates my father, but that’s just a bonus.” Ryu stirs his milkshake. Behind him, two boys are fighting over a girl they both want to ask on a date on White Day. Ryu smirks, and remembers fighting with Hayato over who’d received more Valentine’s Day presents in those very same seats. The memory is as bittersweet as Ryu’s favorite kind of chocolate. “I feel like I’m… doing something at Kurogin.”
“Highest graduation rate for 3D since our class,” Take says. “I guess you are.”
“It’s close to Hayato, too,” Ryu says. “So I can keep an eye on him.”
“It is,” Take agrees. “It’s very close. Is there…”
“Mmm?” Ryu says, taking a sip of his milkshake. It’s still a little cold for milkshakes, but there’s enough heat in the café that Ryu can overlook the chill outside.
“Has there been anymore news on his condition?”
“He’s still somewhat responsive,” Ryu says. “If you squeeze his hand, sometimes he’ll squeeze back. Taku has been spending at least three afternoons a week there with me.”
“What does that mean?” Take asks, leaning forward a bit, resting his chin on the heel of his palm. “Anything?”
“The doctor says it doesn’t mean anything,” Ryu says. That sometimes patients like Hayato react but it’s not… it’s not indicative that they’ll wake up soon, or ever. But…”
“But?” Take says, and he purses his mouth in thought.
“But Hayato’s a fighter,” Ryu says. “If I think of his coma like it’s Ara High, or something, I think that there’s no way Hayato will back down.” Ryu laughs. “There’s no way Hayato will give up.”
“When you put it like that,” Take says, “I can’t help but agree with you.” He lifts his milkshake glass. “To never giving up,” he says, and Ryu clinks his glass against Take’s raised one.
“To never giving up,” he echoes, and outside, Ryu can see the sunlight, hinting at the beginning of spring.
**
It’s weird Ryu writes to Hayato, sitting in his dorm room, blanket across his lap as he types on his laptop. But even though we’re far apart, it sill feels like you’re here. Ryu waits for Hayato’s response. It’s early morning in Japan even if it’s night in Canada, and Hayato takes longer to reply to things if he’s not all the way awake yet.
Gay, Hayato replies, and then nothing for a few moments, just the scribbling pencil icon that signifies that he’s typing. Ryu imagines him typing and erasing, hand buried in his bedhair as he squints at the screen.
I’m serious, Ryu types. It’s really like you’re here.
I am there, Hayato’s response finally appears. I could be dead, and my ghost would still be telling you how dumb you look in a tie.
I do look very dumb in a tie, Ryu replies, and maybe he doesn’t feel so alone, since no matter where he is, Hayato is with him.
Loneliness isn’t a stranger to Ryu, but Hayato makes loneliness estranged.
**
Ryu dreams, sometimes, of Hayato’s fingers sliding slow and devious down his ribs. “I’m here,” Hayato says. “Can you feel me?”
“Yes,” Ryu whispers, and he doesn’t want this to be a dream, because when he wakes, Hayato’s warm coffee colored eyes won’t loom above him like this, monitoring Ryu’s heartbeat gasp by measured gasp.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Ryu says, and Hayato laughs.
“Don’t wake up,” Hayato replies, and Ryu tries his best.
Ryu wants to sleep a hundred years, and spend them all in this moment.
**
Hayato opens his eyes on the first day of spring, like he was just waiting for the turn of the seasons to bloom. It’s after 3rd year graduation, and Ryu has a few weeks off before he’s given a new class of troublemakers to wrestle with.
He spends them with Hayato.
Ryu's half-asleep, cheek pressed into the crumpled hospital sheets, hand linked with Hayato's beneath the cloth-weave blanket, hidden from the curious eyes of passers by.
Something wakes him, and he's not sure what; it might be the casual shift of Hayato's fingers between his own, or the way the bed moves. It might be that Ryu's heart, as usual, is two steps ahead of his mind, already leaping in his chest like a bird taking flight even as he stumbles toward some semblance of wakefulness.
“Hayato,” he says, and he presses a soft kiss to the corner of Hayato’s mouth, and Hayato… opens his eyes.
"Where?" Hayato asks, and it's barely a voice, more like a whisper, or the echo of words. But Ryu reads his lips, and his memory fills in the way it sounds, like it hasn't been over two years since he's heard it, gruff and mellow and perfectly him.
Like magic.
"You're at the hospital," Ryu said. "Dumbass."
Hayato frowns, and it's silent in the room as Ryu just takes in Hayato's eyes, open for the first time in so long. He looks so very alive, and Ryu feels like he's drinking him in. "What-” he starts, but then a nurse walks by, and she sees Hayato, and she drops her clipboard.
"Oh my goodness," she says, with rushed breaths. "Oh my goodness." She rushes in and Ryu steps back, dropping Hayato's hand and giving her space to check his pulse, and poke and prod him until Hayato has a full-blown scowl, lower lip in a full pout that Ryu remembers so vividly.
It feels like time has stopped, or maybe, Ryu thinks, like time has finally started again; it's like Ryu has been existing outside of it all, and everyone else was moving forward while Ryu was waiting, and now, now, Ryu doesn't have to wait anymore, because now it's okay to dive back into life.
A doctor comes, and seeing Hayato's eyes, open and alert, he's almost speechless. "I can't believe it," he keeps saying. "You really didn’t seem like you wanted to wake up."
"I told you," Ryu says, when the doctor pulls him outside to talk to Ryu about all sorts of things he should really be telling Hayato's dad and brother, but Hayato's dad is at work and Taku hasn't answered his cell yet-he probably hasn't noticed the understated text Ryu sent that doesn't really represent all the feelings bouncing around in his chest like giant basketballs, pounding against his ribs in a way that hurts, and in a way that makes Ryu feel alive. "Hayato hates to lose."
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Hayato says, when Ryu walks back into the room.
“You’re here, which means you’re not out there,” Ryu says, and it’s like no time has passed, somehow, and it aches and aches. “So out there, I can talk about you ‘like you’re not here’ all I want.”
“Details,” Hayato says. “Stupid ones.”
“You don’t care about that stuff, anyway,” Ryu says, and he’s a little embarrassed at how his voice cracks. “It was all me being lame.”
“You’re always lame,” Hayato says. “You’ve always been my best friend despite that.”
And there’re nurses hovering, and Ryu wants… all sorts of things, but he doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t want to step back from the bed and let the doctor do all of these routine things to make sure that Hayato’s really okay, like asking him questions about the last second he remembers, or if he knows who Ryu is, or all these other obvious things. He doesn’t want to, but he does, and Ryu feels like, somehow, all the brambles and thorns have parted, and he’s waiting, with bated breath, next to a cradle made of glass.
"I'm surprised you remember me, sleepyhead," Ryu says, in a moment of stillness, when the doctors have left them alone, and there is only Hayato and Ryu. It stings in Ryu's memory, because it makes Ryu remember the first real conversation they ever had, standing in the hallways of their junior high, Ryu's uniform perfectly arranged and Hayato's hands in his pockets, not a school supply to be found.
"Well, you remember me, don't you?" Hayato replies, and he smiles for the first time, big and wide, and even though Hayato is still trying to take everything in, he never misses one of Ryu's beats.
"You're pretty hard to forget," Ryu admits, and it's the closest he'll ever come to confessing the way he's been the past two years, almost unwilling to hope that this moment might ever come.
"Got me pretty good, didn't they?" Hayato says. "Those guys."
"Yes," Ryu says. "Looks like your fighting skills weren't up to the task without me."
"They'll suck even more now," Hayato says. "My body feels like jelly."
"Two years is a long time," Ryu says, and he stands up and walks to the other side of the room. "It's a really fucking long time."
"I know," Hayato says. "I wish... It had happened differently."
"I should have tried to," Ryu says quietly, and it feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. "I should have known that-”
"How were you supposed to know I'd get jumped like that?" Hayato growls, and his voice cracks. “I didn’t even know, and I was working for those guys.” He reaches a trembling hand toward the styrofoam cup of water on the bedside table, but his shaking hand knocks it to the floor. The plastic lid pops off, and water splatters everywhere, drenching the table and the floor. "Shit."
Ryu walks back to his side and picks up the cup, and he notices he's quivering almost as bad. "I don't know. We've always managed to save each other before. This time I failed."
"Bullshit," Hayato says. "You've had two years without me telling you you're stupid, that's why you're saying all this dumb shit, right?"
"Probably," Ryu says, and his throat is so tight he can barely get the words out. His heart is hammering in his chest, like he's a rabbit, and he disguises the way his eyes feel a little wet by getting a new styrofoam cup from beside the sink, and filling it with fresh water, sticking a straw in it. He returns to Hayato's side, and holds the cup close enough that Hayato can lean forward and drink. "Two years is a really long time."
Hayato, lips still wrapped around the straw, looks up at him through his eyelashes, and Ryu realizes, all over again, how beautiful the other man is, gorgeous even with his matted hair and dry cracked mouth. He leans back after a moment, to take in air, and Ryu sets the cup back on the table.
"Two years is a long time," Hayato says, and he closes his eyes and clenches his hands in the sheets, and his hospital gown slips from his shoulder, baring his clavicle and the top of a scar that Ryu remembers more for how it feels beneath his lips than how it looks. "Did you pass the teacher's exam?"
"Yes," Ryu says, and then he's laughing, and he wonders if it sounds as out of control and hysterical to Hayato as it sounds in his head. "Yes, I did. I teach at Kurogin, Hayato."
"Really?" Hayato says, and Ryu can't believe that he and Hayato are talking about his job right now, because Hayato is awake and responsive for the first time in two years.
And Ryu is still deeply, madly in love with him.
"Yeah," Ryu says, and Hayato is laughing too. "They're not nearly as awful as we were, in 3D. They're like puppies, really."
"We were the best at being the worst," Hayato says.
"We were," Ryu agrees.
"What the hell happened to your hair?" Hayato asks. "It looks boring as hell. Did being a teacher suck all the life out of you?" He's teasing, but Ryu notices that Hayato's hands are still holding onto the sheets for dear life, and even though he's laughing, there's something unsure in the set of his mouth.
"I have something," Ryu says, and he reaches up and grabs the button-necklace through his t-shirt, "that belongs to you."
Hayato tilts his head to the side, and his hair looks awful, grown wild and scraggly, and there's an uneven pattern of hair across his cheeks and above his lip where Taku had shaved him unevenly. "Yeah?"
Ryu reaches around his neck and unclasps the chain, pulling the necklace off. Hayato's eyes go round at the sight of it, and there's something bright in his eyes that makes Ryu feel full of hope. "They found it... When they found you," Ryu says, and Hayato's eyes are fixed on the button that dangles at the end of the chain. "If you still want it."
Hayato swallows, and looks longingly at his water, before he steels his jaw. "Two years, Ryu. Is there... Do you... Like, a girlfriend or..." his knuckles are white, and his lips are pressed so tightly together that they've turned white as well. Ryu studies the vein in his neck, and he almost wants to start laughing again, because he hasn't thought about much beside Hayato in two years, and it's ridiculous that Hayato could possibly think otherwise.
"Dumbass," Ryu says, and he leans forward and wraps the chain around Hayato's neck, lifting Hayato's sweaty hair from the skin and clasping the chain.
The button gleams in the fluorescent light, and it looks brighter around Hayato's neck, probably because it knows it's back where it belongs. Hayato studies it for a moment as it hangs down heavy on the front of the hospital gown, and then he exhales, slowly. "Yeah," Hayato says. "I guess I am."
Ryu gives into the urge to push Hayato's hair out of his face, and Hayato looks up at him, and for a moment, everything between them is electric.
Time is moving forward, and the second hand is ticking to the beating of their hearts.
"Your hair is a mess," Ryu murmurs, and Hayato winces.
"My mother would be disappointed," Hayato says, lifting a heavy arm to finger the overgrown tangled strands with dismay.
"I don't think you need to impress any more girls, anyway," Ryu says optimistically, and he's flying, soaring above the clouds and the atmosphere and the stars too, everything below him like an endless ocean.
He feels so light.
"You’re just saying that because even when I'm in coma, I get more chocolates than you on Valentine's Day," Hayato says, and if he had the energy, his arms would be crossed. Still, one of his eyebrows is proudly lifted, and Ryu smiles, and everything, right now, is perfect.
"You wish," Ryu says, and he reaches forward and finds Hayato's hand, putting his own atop it. Hayato blinks, twice, and then he turns his hand so his palm is facing up. Ryu relishes the feeling of their palms touching, and Hayato's fingers sliding between his own on their own power.
"I expect really good chocolate next year," Hayato says, and it's an acknowledgement of what it is between them that Ryu doesn't really need, but it feels good anyway, like warm green tea in December, or like a handmade scarf instead of a store-bought one.
"If you weren't in a hospital bed," Ryu says, and he suspects his voice is too soft, to soppy for them, but this is a special occasion, so he'll let himself get away with it just this once. "I'd punch you in the face for calling me your girlfriend, Yabuki."
"If I weren't in a hospital bed, you wouldn't even have a chance of success, Odagiri-sensei," Hayato retorts.
They'll fight it out later, Ryu figures. There will be plenty of time for everything, after all.
**
Ryu's dreams, now, are beautiful, like the slow unfurling of petals in the spring, full of hope and magic and Hayato's chocolate eyes, sparking with danger and mischief and blessed life.
The kingdom is rejoicing.
When Ryu's awake, it's just the same, and that's the most beautiful thing of all.
**
Shiratori’s desk is bare, all its contents in three, full-looking boxes beside it.
“It’s been a good run,” she says optimistically, but Ryu can see she’s upset. He pats her awkwardly on the shoulder, and she sniffles a bit. “Don’t be nice to me, I’m trying to get over you.”
“My bad,” Ryu says, and his mouth twitches in a smile. Everything is better now. Brighter. Full of color.
“Odagiri the lady-killer,” Uchiyama says. “I can’t say I get it.”
Ryu doesn’t get it either, since he’s pretty sure everything he does, nowadays, says taken. “You’ll be all right,” Ryu says. “Over at your new school.”
“I will,” Shiratori says. “One of my new colleagues is an old acquaintance of ours.”
“Oh?” Ryu asks.
“Yamaguchi-sensei,” Shiratori says, and Uchiyama whistles.
“Yankumi?” Uchiyama grins. “I’m sure she’ll have her hands full, as usual.”
“Yes,” Ryu says. “It seems you’ll be okay, after all.”
Shiratori’s friend arrives, twirling car keys around her finger and grabbing two of the three boxes to put in the trunk. Ryu starts to offer to help, but she glares and he quiets, turning his attention to his next semester class-list in lieu of watching her struggle with the boxes.
“Odagiri-sensei?” Shiratori says, catching Ryu’s attention as she takes her last box out to her friend’s car. “You look… happy. Good luck to you.”
“Thanks,” Ryu says, but he doesn’t need luck. He’s already got his happily ever after.
**
“Hey, Ryu?” Hayato asks, warm against Ryu’s side as they watch TV in Ryu’s apartment. It’s small with the both of them here. He'd never thought of it as this small, before, but suddenly space seems tight, and he and Hayato live practically on top of each other. Ryu can't say he minds. It's all they can afford, anyway, because Ryu's a second year teacher, after all, and Hayato doesn’t make much at his job, since he works all night at a bar that caters to foreigners, but they only need him four nights a week. He’s looking for something else to fill the rest of the time, but Hayato’s still searching for his passion. Ryu is willing to live in a small place until he finds it.
His father still isn’t too happy with Ryu’s career-path or his choice in roommates, but Ryu pays his own bills now, and Hayato’s warmth at his side is worth the frank disappointment in his father’s eyes on his rare trips home. Hayato, after all, has always been his real family.
“Yeah?” Ryu asks, his arm slipping around Hayato to pull Hayato closer into his side. Hayato presses his cheek into Ryu’s chest, then, and his hair, wild and uncombed, tickles at Ryu’s chin. (Because Hayato’s vain, but less a little less vain on Saturday mornings.)
“Do you think…” Hayato pauses, and then grabs at Ryu’s hand, his arm crossing Ryu’s waist to link their fingers together. Ryu looks down at him, but Hayato’s got a blush dusting across his cheeks. It makes Ryu smile. Hayato’s always the same. Ryu likes him that way. “Do you think, if we hadn’t met that day at the park… if we hadn’t wound up at the same middle school… If we hadn’t had any of that... Do you think we still would have found each other?” He’s mumbling, and Ryu can feel the anxiousness leaking out of him into the space between them. Hayato’s other hand, the one not caught with Ryu’s, fingers the button he still keeps on a chain about his neck.
The guys at the bar, Hayato’s told him, think it’s from a high school crush, because they aren’t Japanese, and don’t realize that only boys give away their second buttons. They think maybe Hayato’s got a secret girlfriend. As Hayato tells him this, face red and mouth in an awkward frown that stretches across his whole face that makes him look like he’s begging to be kissed, Ryu thinks they’re close enough.
Ryu swallows, tongue flicking out to lick at suddenly dry lips. Hayato breathes steadily at his side, and they are tangled together, limbs and hearts wrapped up completely in each other.
Ryu imagines a world without Hayato, without Kurogin and Yankumi and Takeda and Tsucchi and Hyuuga and all of 3D. A world where he’d lived an average life, and never stood up for anything, and never had to fight, sometimes literally, to find himself. He remembers how cold he'd felt, for two entire years, without Hayato by his side. He wonders what he would do, if he'd never met Hayato at all. Who he'd be. What he would see. If he would still live here. He’s not sure what his life would have been, could have been, among the infinite number of possibilities.
He can’t imagine any life other than this one, no matter how much he tries. Because Hayato is everything. Hayato’s been everything since the moment their hands clasped for the first time, on a random street, on a cold January day. Hayato’s pants had been too short. He’d had wild, untamable hair. Ryu can remember the cut under his eye.
Hayato sighs, and Ryu’s arm lifts and falls with the motion of Hayato’s chest. Hayato is always moving him, Ryu thinks, because Ryu and Hayato are connected. Their two hearts pulse as one, an endless rhythm of wonder, and Ryu finds completion in every single beat.
“Yes,” Ryu says, because no matter where they are, or what they do, Hayato was destined to be Ryu’s, just as Ryu was destined to be Hayato’s. “No matter what, I think I’d find you. I’d know you were out there, my heart would know you were out there, and I’d find you. I’d never give up.”
“Mmmm,” Hayato says, and shifts himself up, pressing a gentle kiss to Ryu’s jaw. It's the sort of moment their friends will never see. Never know about. “You're totally the girl.” Hayato smiles, and it illuminates the room, as it always does in Ryu’s love-struck eyes. "What a gay response."
Ryu rolls his eyes. "We're cuddling," Ryu says. "Obviously it's gay."
"We're not cuddling, don't call it that," Hayato says, burrowing deeper into Ryu's side. "Anyway, I think so too."
"Think what?" Ryu asks, distracted by the heat that floods his stomach as Hayato's breath tickles his neck.
"That we'd have met, somehow. After all, what were the odds we’d meet anyway?"
"Mm," Ryu says, and he resists the urge to drag his hand up Hayato's thigh.
“Besides, who’d bail you out of trouble?”
Ryu laughs, and squeezes Hayato’s hand where their fingers lie still interlocked. “I wouldn’t get in any trouble,” Ryu says. “I’d be straight-laced and working for the police.” The look in Hayato’s eyes now is like spun sugar, sweet and crystal clear, and Ryu feels his chest clench at how wonderful the world is when he’s looking at it with Hayato, soft and here. “The horror.”
“I… you’re…” Hayato says, and it’s… Well, it’s probably the closest they’ll ever get to a love confession, Ryu thinks, because they’re both too rough around the edges to know how to do it any better. Ryu is pretty sure, though, that it doesn’t get better than this, because Hayato’s lips are like a butterfly, fluttering an undemanding, lazy kiss to the side of Ryu’s neck. “You taste sweet,” Hayato says, tongue peeking out to taste Ryu’s skin. “Like frosting.”
“I think I’ll dye my hair,” Ryu says, but then Hayato is kissing him, and he’s drowning in the wet heat of Hayato’s eager mouth, and he forgets all about his hair, lost instead in the confectionary perfection of Hayato’s lips, and of Hayato’s love.
This is another beginning.
**
”At that moment she awoke, and with her the king and the queen, and all the attendants, and the horses and the dogs, and the pigeons on the roof, and the flies on the walls. The fire stood up and flickered, and then cooking the food. The roast sizzled away. The cook boxed the kitchen boy’s ears. And the maid finished plucking the chicken. Then the prince and Brier-Rose got married, and they lived long and happily until they died.”
--Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Brier Rose
**
And sometimes, life is like a fairytale. And maybe Ryu will wake up tomorrow morning, and Hayato will be asleep beside him. And he’ll kiss him on the mouth, and Hayato will wake up.
And maybe some things are endless.
**
Memory paints Ryu’s waking moments, splashing reds and yellows and blues across his daily existence until he can barely see anything through the bright patches of color.
There are moments they should have had, streaking in teal, and moments that he’ll never forget, in oranges and violets and golds. There are moments as fleeting at the full moon in the summer in vibrant silvers and blues.
If he could, Ryu would fill the rest of the space, until no bits of the canvas were blank, and Ryu was left awash in a sea of pigment far better than the white and gray of his everyday life.
**
Ryu dreams of the way the hospital sheets feel against the skin of his cheek, and the way Hayato, even when he’s so still that Ryu can barely feel his breathing, is so very warm.
**
When the doctor says that Hayato might not wake, Ryu’s world shifts.
Coma. Koma. From the Greek, Ryu learns. ‘A state of sleep.’
Hayato, Ryu wants to shout, wants to scream to the sky, to everyone and anyone who can or will listen, is not asleep.
When someone is asleep, Ryu thinks, you can wake them up. When Hayato sleeps, he tosses and turns and kicks Ryu in the shins and sometimes he chews on a piece of Ryu’s hair like he’s a horse and Ryu’s hair is particularly delicious hay. When Hayato sleeps, he mumbles things about milkshakes and growls and scratches and cuddles, just as actively as he does these things when he’s awake. When Hayato sleeps, Ryu can tiptoe to the bathroom and fill a cup with water, and splash it on Hayato’s face until he wakes up sputtering and swearing and so very, very alive.
Hayato, now, is not asleep. Hayato is somewhere so far away that Ryu can’t reach him, and Ryu has never felt so alone.
“He can’t respond to stimuli,” the doctor tells Hayato’s dad, as Taku stares at his brother’s form from the other side of the glass with an ashen face and shaking fingers hooked through his belt loops. Ryu’s hands are shaking too, so he hides them in his pockets and tries not to give anything away. “He can’t feel any pain right now, if that helps.”
It doesn’t help, Ryu wants to say, because Hayato is not asleep. Hayato is not asleep. Hayato is no stranger to pain, Ryu wants to tell the doctor. Hayato knows what pain feels like, and he’d never run away from it if he had the choice.
Hayato’d never leave Ryu alone.
“His skull is fractured,” the doctor says. “From a pipe, maybe. A baseball bat.” Yankumi had said baseball bats were only for playing baseball. Yankumi had said so, that time that Hayato had gone to take on Ara by himself. “His brain swelled, and there wasn’t enough oxygen… He might not make it through the night.”
It sounds like the buzzing of bees. It doesn’t make sense, or Ryu can’t make sense of it, only he knows Hayato is not asleep. He knows that Hayato is still. He knows that Hayato is too far away to reach.
It’s okay to feel, Hayato had told him, and Ryu feels too much. Taku’s arms wrap about his midsection, and it’s just like another time, when Hayato and Taku and Ryu had sat on the floor in the middle of the Yabuki apartment and mourned another loss. Ryu forgets to be stiff. Ryu forgets to be anything but terrified. It swamps him. Ryu feels too much.
“He’ll make it,” Ryu says fervently. “He’ll make it because Hayato never loses.”
Hayato makes it.
It’s okay to feel. And Ryu feels far too much.
Ryu keeps feeling too much, just keeps on until one day he wakes up with his back, sweaty and tight, pressed up against a wooden bench, Taku on his left and Tsucchi on his right, watching a testimony he doesn’t want to hear.
He shivers as Shinazaki takes the stand, because Shinazaki has cold eyes and perfect posture. He doesn’t look like a man on trial. He looks like he’s waiting for someone to take his order at a restaurant, or like he’s loitering outside a museum people watching, or like he’s doing any number of mundane, everyday things.
He doesn’t look like someone who hurt Hayato so bad Ryu couldn’t recognize his face through swollen bruises and the thin film of blood. He doesn’t look like a man who is afraid of punishment.
Worst of all, Ryu thinks, he doesn’t look like a man who feels remorse.
“Yabuki’d been with us too long,” Shinazaki says. ‘He knew too much, even if he stayed mostly on the right side of the law.” Shinazaki’s mouth curls. “Gangs aren’t like regular jobs. You can’t just leave because you’ve got a girlfriend.”
Ryu’s heart stutters, stops. Ryu’s blood runs cold. Ryu can’t breathe. Ryu wants, mostly, to wrap his hands around Shinazaki’s throat and squeeze until Shinazaki can’t breathe either.
An eye for an eye.
Ryu never really believed in it before, but Hayato had always believed in it. Hayato had cracked his knuckles and narrowed his eyes and taken back everything anyone ever tried to take from him.
Ryu wants to take back Hayato from Shinazaki, but life doesn’t work like that. Shinazaki might go to jail but Hayato will still be not-asleep, skin deathly white and eyes closed, lashes stark against skin with bruises long since faded, and Ryu… Ryu will still be this aching, feeling thing with nowhere to turn and all these emotions he can’t put away and can’t hide.
Ryu will start his first day as a teacher with wounds that won’t scab, and the memory of opening the results of his exam all by himself while Hayato lies with needles in his arm and a heartbeat so steady it’s like a stranger’s.
When Ryu was small, left to his own devices in his room as his mother worked in the garden and his father was off being important to everyone but Ryu, Ryu used to devour fairytales. He’d read them carefully, pouring over every detail and letting the story swallow him whole, and at the end of it all, Ryu would be left emptier than before, longing for something he’d never had.
Hayato… is Ryu’s fairytale, in so many ways. Hayato is Ryu’s Huntsman, his Prince Charming, his Tinkerbell, his Cinderella. Hayato is Ryu’s Arabian peasant and his magic carpet. Hayato is everything Ryu had ever dreamed about as a child, lonely and separate from the world, watching from afar and never taking part.
And now Hayato is Ryu’s Briar Rose, his Princess Aurora, and he’ll sleep for a hundred years and all Ryu can do is wait.
Except Hayato isn’t asleep. When people are asleep, you can wake them up.
Ryu doesn’t cry, because he doesn’t know how, but his eyes burn and burn and burn, and Hayato doesn’t move, and Ryu watches, and Ryu waits, and the days pass, and Ryu is so very cold.
**
The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
**
Ryu doesn’t know why he expected Hayato to have moved.
“I’m going to do something really stupid today,” he tells Hayato, one hand brushing scraggly, overgrown bangs out of the man’s face. “Like, it’s so dumb that you would do it.”
He quiets, like he’s waiting for Hayato to respond, and then he laughs at himself, a little, a tiny, choking laugh that hurts more than it heals.
“One of the guys that got you; he’s going after my student.” Ryu curls a piece of Hayato’s hair around his finger. “Wish we could go after him together. We always made a good team.”
Ryu reaches for Hayato’s hand, and when he grips it, there’s… a tiny squeeze. Ryu blinks, twice. “I’m really losing it,” Ryu says to himself, nothing but a mumble. He squeezes Hayato’s hand back, and…
There it is again, a little return pressure. Like magic.
Ryu stands up and shouts, and then he thinks better of it, pressing the first floor call button to ring the front desk.
Later, the doctor pulls him aside, as Taku, who stopped by right when the commotion started, pokes at Hayato’s face with amazement. Ryu can see a fierce hope in Taku’s eyes. “This happens, sometimes,” the doctor says. “It doesn’t mean he’ll wake up.” This is not the same doctor.
The doctor who’d seen Hayato at his worst, swollen and broken and bleeding. This isn’t the doctor who’d seen Ryu the same. This isn’t the doctor who saw Hayato, against all odds, make it through the night.
“But he’s moving,” Ryu say stubbornly, jutting his jaw forward in a manner he probably stole from Hayato. “Hayato’s moving and you thought he wouldn’t.”
“Yes,” the doctor hedges. “But it still doesn’t mean-“
“If there’s a chance,” Ryu says, and now, his voice doesn’t waver. “If there’s a chance, Hayato will fight for it. Hayato might never have been the smartest, or the wisest, or the strongest.” Ryu shoves his hands in his pockets, licking his lips and shaking his hair out of his face. “But he never, ever gives up. Even if it’s a stupid, pointless fight,” Ryu says, and there’s that feeling, again, like there’s something burning in his eyes. “That dumb asshole never gives up. He’ll keep fighting, and fighting, until it’s all said and done.”
The doctor sighs. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up,” the doctor says softly. He has kind eyes, Ryu notes, and he looks like the sort of person you’d trust immediately. Ryu’s not predisposed to trusting people, in general, but if he was, the doctor would make it easier.
“When I was a kid,” Ryu says, slowly. “Hayato gave me a lot.” Ryu looks down at his perfectly shined shoes, with hems that fall just so. He remembers the dirt on Hayato’s face, and the way his smile shone like the sun. “The least I can give him is a little hope.”
“Fair enough,” the doctor replies, and smiles.
Ryu can feel his heart hammering in his chest though, even as he’s packing up to leave, leaning forward to crush Hayato’s hand in his own one more time hoping for that little squeeze back. Ha-ya-to, his heart says, in rapid beats, over and over again, and Ryu swallows it down.
“You’d better come back to me,” Ryu whispers. “You promised.”
**
“Hayato,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato doesn’t stir. The bed is too small for two people, but they’ve made it work, limbs threaded around each other and Hayato’s breath hot on Ryu’s neck.
It’s infinitely hotter than Canada, and it’s good like this, it’s right like this, and Ryu wonders if he can remain here, in the moment, forever, the button of Hayato’s jeans digging uncomfortably into his hip and pieces of his over-processed hair sneaking between Ryu’s lips.
Hayato’s palm rests flat on his belly, like he’s claiming Ryu. That’s silly, Ryu will tell him in the morning. I’m already yours.
“Hayato,” Ryu says, a little louder, and now he shifts, sighing and wriggling a bit.
“Hai, sensei?” he teases, words slurred because he’s not really awake, and Ryu wants to smile, because Hayato will probably call him that in jest all the time now, because he’s still a bit incredulous that Ryu’s chosen that job, of all jobs. “Sleepy.”
“You still got my button?” Ryu asks, and Hayato huffs, and drags a hand up to his neck. Ryu’s heart melts when it falls out on a thin chain.
“Course I do,” Hayato says. “I’d be a sucky best friend if I lost it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Ryu says, and then thinks better of it, because he doesn’t want to think about those long weeks ever again.
“That was the last time,” Hayato mumbles. “The last time I’ll let you down. Unless you don’t let me go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” Ryu says, and he can’t help but rest his hand on top of Hayato’s on his stomach. “Sleep then.”
“You sleep too,” Hayato says. “We sleep together. I won’t leave you alone again. Promise.”
“It’s a promise,” Ryu agrees, and it’s like there are butterflies in his chest, and all these cliché things that make him still feel like a teenager. He wonders if it will always be like this. He hopes so. “Move in with me.”
“Okay,” Hayato says. “Remind me in the morning.”
“I will,” Ryu says, and he’s finally, finally come home.
**
It’s easy enough to find out where the gang spends most of their time. Ryu only has to ask around covertly about unsafe places to a few vendors down by the docks before he knows where he’ll find Shinazaki.
Twilight is quickly turning into night, and the air gets cooler, and Ryu shivers. He’s not sure if it’s the eerie quiet as he finds his way into back alleys, or if it’s the building apprehension Ryu has always felt walking into battle with out Hayato by his side.
“Yo, Ryu!” a voice calls, and Ryu almost jumps out of his skin before the familiarity of the voice sinks in.
“Tsucchi?” Ryu says, spinning around. “What the hell?”
“Losing your touch, Odagiri-sensei?” Take teases. “We’ve been behind you for the past ten minutes.”
“I must have known it was no threat,” Ryu throws right back, and Take feigns hurt.
“Ryu, I thought we were comrades in arms.”
“Yeah, Ryu, what’s with the cold reception?” Hyuuga tilts his head toward the garage door. “This the place?”
“Yes,” Ryu says. “They’re not too secretive, apparently. Everyone I asked confirmed this location.”
“Alright then,” Tsucchi says. “Then let’s go. Ahhh, this feeling of nostalgia…”
“You make it sound like we’re old,” Ryu says, with a tiny frown.
“You’ve been acting like you’re old for years,” Tsucchi replies. “Don’t get all sour about it now.”
“Yeah, Ryu, you’re the one that talks about things that happened four years ago as if they’re ancient history,” Hyuuga agrees, with a small smile.
Ryu wants to smile, but then he realizes, all of a sudden, that his friends are here. “What are you doing?” Ryu asks solemnly. “You’ve got, you know, careers now. This isn’t high school anymore.”
“You didn’t think we’d let you do something this nuts by yourself, did you?” Tsucchi says, spitting into the grass. “Hayato’d have our heads.” He picks up a piece of iron, refuse from the construction, probably, and bangs it against the garage door obnoxiously like he’s trying to break I down. There’s the sound of shouting behind the door and Ryu can feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins even as he turns to regard his friends. “Plus, you know you can’t take out twelve guys by yourself. Not if Hayato got taken out by, what, seven of them?”
“They got him by surprise,” Ryu defends, and Tsucchi snorts.
“No one gets Hayato by surprise.”
Ryu looks at them with wide eyes, and then his face relaxes into a resigned grin. “Take…”
“Well,” Take says. “It’s not like I won’t graduate if I get into a fight.” He scratches his head. “And plus,” he adds. “I sort of owe you one.”
Hyuuga snorts. “We’d better not lose and get caught, Ryu. I’m a salary man these days. So we need to be the ones leaving on our own two feet.”
Ryu cracks his knuckles. “I’ve got no intention of losing,” Ryu says. “I won’t let them take someone else from me.”
Tsucchi looks at Ryu, tilting his head to the side. “You look…” Tsucchi starts, and then he laces his fingers together and stretches his hands up above his head, stretching out his arms.
“Look what?” Ryu queries.
“Like yourself,” Tsucchi says. “I dunno. Alive.”
“Feels like I’m doing something,” Ryu admits. “Something for Kamiyama. Something for Hayato. And…”
“And what?” Take asks, eyes narrowed as the garage door slowly opens. Ryu can taste the violence in the air, like acid on the back of his tongue as he anticipates battle.
“Something for myself, too,” Ryu says.
“Ryu is always strongest when he’s protecting someone,” Take agrees. “You’re always shining brightest then.”
Ryu crosses his arms as eight or nine men emerge from the garage. For a second, Ryu feels a little like he’s becoming like Yankumi after all, fighting to protect what’s important to him.
“Hope you haven’t gotten rusty,” Ryu says conversationally to Tsucchi as Tsucchi comes to stand by his left side. “I know it’s been a while.”
“I can still kick serious ass,” Tsucchi says, eyebrows drawn together in serious concentration. “Watch out for yourself, sensei.”
“You say sensei like that means something bad,” Ryu jokes. “I’m sure you remember that our teacher was a badass Yakuza heir with fists of steel.”
“Oh, I remember,” Tsucchi says. “But you’re no Yankumi.”
“He’s a Ryu,” Take says. “That’s even better.”
There’s no Hayato, Ryu thinks, but Hayato lingers, like a ghost at Ryu’s side, and for now, just for now, it’s enough.
**
Scenes included in the story of Sleeping Beauty:
“But don’t you remember? We’ve met before.”
Sleeping Beauty turns to the prince with wide, luminous eyes, a hand covering her mouth, open with surprise. “We have?”
“Of course,” said the prince. “You said so yourself… Once upon a dream.”
Scenes included in the abridged version of Ryu’s life:
“Am I dreaming?” Ryu asks, and Hayato chuckles, slipping into Ryu’s bed and wrapping one arm across his waist, face finding the hollow between Ryu’s neck and shoulder.
“Are you?” Hayato asks. “What makes you think this is a dream?”
“Because real life isn’t a fairytale,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s touch becomes cool, and as Ryu opens his eyes, the image is fading away.
And once again, Ryu is alone.
He misses Hayato so much it’s hard to breathe.
**
Hayato never sleeps with his back to the door.
It’s the kind of fear you can’t outgrow, the kind that lingers far past the end of danger.
For Hayato, who thrives on violence and adrenalines and shallow bursts of anger, maybe the danger never passes.
“Stop rushing headfirst into scary things,” Ryu growls. “Just… stop.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Hayato breathes back, and he’s straddling Ryu, and trying to hold Ryu’s arms down. Ryu’s strong, too, though, and Hayato’s hands on his wrists are too half-hearted, almost as weak as his glare.
“I was scared,” Ryu whispers, and Hayato’s surprised at his admission. Things between them have been strange, recently repaired with echoes of their separation, times Ryu spent alone, trying to make sense of a life where Hayato hated him and he had nothing left.
And now Hayato doesn’t hate him, but Ryu wonders, sometimes, if Hayato hates himself.
“I can take care of myself,” Hayato says, and Ryu feels anger pool in his belly, and Hayato doesn’t understand.
“Let me,” Ryu says. “Let me.”
“No,” Hayato says. “I won’t.” And then he leans down and catches Ryu’s mouth with his own, licking his way inside with determination, and Hayato’s fine. A bit battered, but fine, and Ryu frees his hands and wraps them around Hayato’s solid back.
“I’m angry,” Ryu says, but he can’t muster enough conviction, and Hayato laughs and smiles smugly against the skin of his cheek, and Ryu’s so warm.
“It’s just a job,” Hayato says. “It’s not a lifestyle. Not anymore.”
“Okay,” Ryu says, and he chooses to believe.
**
“Holy shit,” Uchiyama says. “Your face.”
“Ruggedly handsome?” Ryu ventures, and Uchiyama shakes his head.
“Ground beef,” he replies, and Shiratori gasps when she catches sight of the bruises.
“Odagiri-sensei!” she cries out, and it catches the vice-principal’s attention.
“What happened, sensei?” he asks, concerned.
“I was mugged,” Ryu lies with a straight face. Even if Ryu hadn’t been able to manage it, it’s unlikely, he thinks, that any expression he had let slip would have been distinguishable. His nose hasn’t been broken, though, and the bruises look a whole lot better than they’d looked yesterday as Ryu had pressed two packages of frozen vegetables to each side of his face to forestall some of the swelling.
“Oh dear,” the vice principal says, his expression becoming pitying. “Such dangerous times we live in.”
“Indeed,” Ryu replies, and Uchiyama watches the exchange incredulously. When the vice-principal returns to his desk, Uchiyama sits on the edge of Ryu’s and lift’s Ryu’s face.
“How do the other guys look?” he asks, in a low tone, and Ryu smiles, even though it hurts, pulling at the split skin of his lip and bruised cheeks.
“Much worse,” he replies, and then he forces his sore, battered body to stand, gathering his basket of materials and his jacket. “Let’s just say that they won’t be coercing my students to join their gang anytime soon. What’s left of it, anyway.”
“Nice,” Uchiyama says, and it’s accompanied by a low whistle as Ryu walks out the door, disguising the slight limp with bravado.
His students gasp as one when he appears, but Ryu’s glare is enough to silence them, and it’s the easiest Geometry lesson he’s ever taught, not even his rowdiest students standing from their seats. Ryu wonders if he should show up battered from fights more often if it makes his students behave.
After class, Kamiyama lingers. “Odagiri-sensei,” he says, and Ryu stares at him. Kamiyama’s bruises have almost faded away to nothing, and he’s taken his arm out of the sling, though he still holds it stiffly. “I heard…”
“What did you hear?” Ryu asks mildly, but there’s a bit of a warning laced with the words. Ryu can’t have his students gossiping about the fight, because if it gets to teachers that aren’t Uchiyama, Ryu could lose his job.
Ryu doesn’t want that.
“That those guys… Shinazaki’s guys, down at the docks…” he continues, catching his lower lip between his teeth. He hesitates, then barrels on. “I heard they all got arrested.”
“Did you?” Ryu says, and Kamiyama nods, turning to look out the window.
“Rumor has it they were found by the police, all beaten up. The small business owners down there all identified them as local criminals, and the police recognized Shinazaki.”
“Really?” Ryu asks, and he taps his fingers on the edge of the desk in a random pattern. “That’s interesting.”
“I hear he’s going away for a long time,” Kamiyama says. “I guess he won’t be able to… I guess it’s safe to walk home by myself again.” He awkwardly scratches at the back of his neck with his good arm. “I mean, I hear the other guys all got into a lot of trouble too. Lots of repeat offenders.”
“Guys in gangs usually are,” Ryu agrees. Kamiyama finally meets Ryu’s eyes, and he swallows as he takes in the bruises along Ryu’s face and neck, where he hasn’t bothered to do up the top two buttons of his dress shirt. “Anything else, Kamiyama?” Ryu’s voice isn’t harsh.
“Yeah,” Kamiyama says, and with his bad arm he clasps the flap of his bag and flips it back, while his other hand roots inside. He emerges with a handful of folded in half papers. “Homework.”
“Homework?” Ryu asks, confused. “We didn’t have any last night…”
“I couldn’t do the work from Spring Break, because of…” he trails off, but his eyes flicker down to his still swollen wrist, and Ryu gets it. “But.”
“Oh,” Ryu says, and it’s a warm feeling of accomplishment and pride that sneaks up on him, and leaves him a bit breathless. “Thank you.”
“Thank you,” Kamiyama says quietly, gruffly, and for a moment, he sounds… just like Hayato, and Ryu grips the edge of the table and refuses to look up.
“Go away,” Ryu says, and Kamiyama retreats. He lingers for a moment at the door though, and Ryu looks up to see Kamiyama trying to decide about something.
“Remind me never to get on your bad side, sensei,” Kamiyama says quickly, with a tiny, cheeky smile, and Ryu can’t help but laugh.
“Don’t you forget it,” he says quietly, and Kamiyama is gone, and Ryu is left with a pile of assignments, and a heart that feels a little lighter than it has in almost two years.
**
It’s never been that Ryu couldn’t survive without Hayato. It’s always been that Hayato made the world brighter, and made Ryu feel like there was a reason he opened his eyes in the morning.
Hayato made Ryu feel like there’s an adventure waiting around every corner, and like maybe they’d face it together.
Now Ryu’s got other reasons to open his eyes.
But it doesn’t always make the days less gloomy, and the echoing emptiness of the evenings aches like a war wound.
Ryu sits by the riverbank, wetness from a late winter rain that lingers on the grass sinking through his slacks, and contemplates the clear water below him.
“Hayato,” he says. “I miss you.”
There’s no answer, but Ryu’s come to expect that.
He stands, and dusts himself off, knowing that his khakis are too wet to be presentable and not caring even a little. He looks down where he’d sat, and there’s no imprint at all.
It’s almost like Ryu was never there, even though in his heart, he still sees the outline of two high school boys lying side by side sharing secrets in the twilight.
**
“I don’t want you to leave,” Hayato growls, tugging on Ryu’s school jacket so that Ryu falls into his chest. “I don’t even know where Canada is.”
“It’s right above America,” Ryu replies, muffled by Hayato’s hair, which has found it’s way into his mouth somehow. “I hear it’s colder than here.”
“You’ll have to start wearing coats,” Hayato says, and Ryu can feel his chest rumble with the words. “Or you’ll get sick and die, and I won’t have anyone’s ass to save.”
“Whatever, I save your ass more than you save mine,” Ryu says, and Hayato’s arms tighten around him.
“I…” Hayato starts, and then he huffs. It’s never been about words between them anyway, so Ryu understands.
“I’ll miss you too,” Ryu says, and Hayato turns his head to the side, stepping back.
“I never said that,” and Hayato reaches for Ryu’s jacket again, but this time, he doesn’t grab a fistful of it, he just drags long fingers along the front, snagging one of Ryu’s buttons and snapping the threads that hold it to his jacket.
It’s his second button. “That’s…” Ryu begins, but Hayato flushes a bit with embarrassment, fingering his metallic prize, and Ryu doesn’t finish his sentence. He just reaches up and closes Hayato’s hand around the button, and smirks. “I’ll let you hang on to it, then.”
”It’s my hostage,” Hayato says, and Ryu snorts, and Hayato shoves him. “Your dad’s a cop, so you know what that means.”
“My dad isn’t just a cop,” Ryu says, crossing his arms. He’s never been good with emotional moments; he might be even worse than Hayato is, really. “And I’ve never really talked to him long enough for him to teach me anything.” Ryu shrugs his shoulders, and wonders if they wear uniforms in Canada. He doesn’t think they do, because no one wears uniforms in university, right? His throat feels dry, and he shoves his hands into his pockets in case they’re shaking as much as he thinks they are. “Hostages are people, anyway.”
“I know that,” Hayato says, and he sucks his lower lip into his mouth. “You get the idea.”
“I do,” Ryu says, and night has fallen. His mother is probably watching the street from the window, waiting for Ryu to appear in front of the gates. Waiting fro Ryu to come home from his last day at Kurogin. “I’m…”
“You’ve gotta go, right?” Hayato says, and he kicks at a loose rock. “Daddy’s waiting by the door with a shotgun?”
“He’s not that invested.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“Maybe,” Ryu says, and he pushes one hand through his hair. It feels a little dry. It’s not fluffy like Hayato’s, which survives Hayato’s constant color-treatment somehow. “So this is it.”
“I just want to…” Hayato hesitates, and his hands are still playing with Ryu’s button. “You’re always going to be my best friend.”
“I know,” Ryu says, or tries to say, but then Hayato’s mouth is covering his own. It’s a goodbye kiss, but Ryu won’t let it be that. He doesn’t want it to be that. He wants it to be a ‘see you later’ kiss, because… Hayato is as much a part of his life as breathing, and the memory of those months without him… they still burn and sting like an open wound, raw. “See you later,” Ryu says, when they part for air, and he gasps the words, but he means them.
“Yeah,” Hayato says, and Ryu pretends he can’t see that Hayato’s eyes are a little wet with unshed tears. “Later.” Hayato shakes his head, and there’s so much hairspray that it barely moves, and it makes Ryu laugh a little, despite the fact that this is all a little sad.
It’s the end of something.
“I’m holding on to this,” Hayato reminds Ryu suddenly, even as he backs away. The button glints between his index finger and thumb. “So if you want it back you’d better be awesome in Canada so you’re allowed to come back.”
Ryu doesn’t want the button back. It’s Hayato’s anyway, just like Ryu’s heart.
Hayato offers him a half smile and a jaunty wave. “Bye, Ryu!”
Ryu’s heart isn’t as heavy as it could be. His lips still tingle. It’s the end of something, but it’s not the end of Hayato and Ryu. They’re connected, Ryu thinks. Like it’s destiny.
“I’ll be back,” Ryu says.
“I’ll be waiting,” Hayato says.
Maybe it’s not the end of anything. Maybe it’s a beginning.
**
“I heard you’re staying at Kurogin another year,” Take says, and Ryu smiles.
“Yes,” he says. “It infuriates my father, but that’s just a bonus.” Ryu stirs his milkshake. Behind him, two boys are fighting over a girl they both want to ask on a date on White Day. Ryu smirks, and remembers fighting with Hayato over who’d received more Valentine’s Day presents in those very same seats. The memory is as bittersweet as Ryu’s favorite kind of chocolate. “I feel like I’m… doing something at Kurogin.”
“Highest graduation rate for 3D since our class,” Take says. “I guess you are.”
“It’s close to Hayato, too,” Ryu says. “So I can keep an eye on him.”
“It is,” Take agrees. “It’s very close. Is there…”
“Mmm?” Ryu says, taking a sip of his milkshake. It’s still a little cold for milkshakes, but there’s enough heat in the café that Ryu can overlook the chill outside.
“Has there been anymore news on his condition?”
“He’s still somewhat responsive,” Ryu says. “If you squeeze his hand, sometimes he’ll squeeze back. Taku has been spending at least three afternoons a week there with me.”
“What does that mean?” Take asks, leaning forward a bit, resting his chin on the heel of his palm. “Anything?”
“The doctor says it doesn’t mean anything,” Ryu says. That sometimes patients like Hayato react but it’s not… it’s not indicative that they’ll wake up soon, or ever. But…”
“But?” Take says, and he purses his mouth in thought.
“But Hayato’s a fighter,” Ryu says. “If I think of his coma like it’s Ara High, or something, I think that there’s no way Hayato will back down.” Ryu laughs. “There’s no way Hayato will give up.”
“When you put it like that,” Take says, “I can’t help but agree with you.” He lifts his milkshake glass. “To never giving up,” he says, and Ryu clinks his glass against Take’s raised one.
“To never giving up,” he echoes, and outside, Ryu can see the sunlight, hinting at the beginning of spring.
**
It’s weird Ryu writes to Hayato, sitting in his dorm room, blanket across his lap as he types on his laptop. But even though we’re far apart, it sill feels like you’re here. Ryu waits for Hayato’s response. It’s early morning in Japan even if it’s night in Canada, and Hayato takes longer to reply to things if he’s not all the way awake yet.
Gay, Hayato replies, and then nothing for a few moments, just the scribbling pencil icon that signifies that he’s typing. Ryu imagines him typing and erasing, hand buried in his bedhair as he squints at the screen.
I’m serious, Ryu types. It’s really like you’re here.
I am there, Hayato’s response finally appears. I could be dead, and my ghost would still be telling you how dumb you look in a tie.
I do look very dumb in a tie, Ryu replies, and maybe he doesn’t feel so alone, since no matter where he is, Hayato is with him.
Loneliness isn’t a stranger to Ryu, but Hayato makes loneliness estranged.
**
Ryu dreams, sometimes, of Hayato’s fingers sliding slow and devious down his ribs. “I’m here,” Hayato says. “Can you feel me?”
“Yes,” Ryu whispers, and he doesn’t want this to be a dream, because when he wakes, Hayato’s warm coffee colored eyes won’t loom above him like this, monitoring Ryu’s heartbeat gasp by measured gasp.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Ryu says, and Hayato laughs.
“Don’t wake up,” Hayato replies, and Ryu tries his best.
Ryu wants to sleep a hundred years, and spend them all in this moment.
**
Hayato opens his eyes on the first day of spring, like he was just waiting for the turn of the seasons to bloom. It’s after 3rd year graduation, and Ryu has a few weeks off before he’s given a new class of troublemakers to wrestle with.
He spends them with Hayato.
Ryu's half-asleep, cheek pressed into the crumpled hospital sheets, hand linked with Hayato's beneath the cloth-weave blanket, hidden from the curious eyes of passers by.
Something wakes him, and he's not sure what; it might be the casual shift of Hayato's fingers between his own, or the way the bed moves. It might be that Ryu's heart, as usual, is two steps ahead of his mind, already leaping in his chest like a bird taking flight even as he stumbles toward some semblance of wakefulness.
“Hayato,” he says, and he presses a soft kiss to the corner of Hayato’s mouth, and Hayato… opens his eyes.
"Where?" Hayato asks, and it's barely a voice, more like a whisper, or the echo of words. But Ryu reads his lips, and his memory fills in the way it sounds, like it hasn't been over two years since he's heard it, gruff and mellow and perfectly him.
Like magic.
"You're at the hospital," Ryu said. "Dumbass."
Hayato frowns, and it's silent in the room as Ryu just takes in Hayato's eyes, open for the first time in so long. He looks so very alive, and Ryu feels like he's drinking him in. "What-” he starts, but then a nurse walks by, and she sees Hayato, and she drops her clipboard.
"Oh my goodness," she says, with rushed breaths. "Oh my goodness." She rushes in and Ryu steps back, dropping Hayato's hand and giving her space to check his pulse, and poke and prod him until Hayato has a full-blown scowl, lower lip in a full pout that Ryu remembers so vividly.
It feels like time has stopped, or maybe, Ryu thinks, like time has finally started again; it's like Ryu has been existing outside of it all, and everyone else was moving forward while Ryu was waiting, and now, now, Ryu doesn't have to wait anymore, because now it's okay to dive back into life.
A doctor comes, and seeing Hayato's eyes, open and alert, he's almost speechless. "I can't believe it," he keeps saying. "You really didn’t seem like you wanted to wake up."
"I told you," Ryu says, when the doctor pulls him outside to talk to Ryu about all sorts of things he should really be telling Hayato's dad and brother, but Hayato's dad is at work and Taku hasn't answered his cell yet-he probably hasn't noticed the understated text Ryu sent that doesn't really represent all the feelings bouncing around in his chest like giant basketballs, pounding against his ribs in a way that hurts, and in a way that makes Ryu feel alive. "Hayato hates to lose."
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Hayato says, when Ryu walks back into the room.
“You’re here, which means you’re not out there,” Ryu says, and it’s like no time has passed, somehow, and it aches and aches. “So out there, I can talk about you ‘like you’re not here’ all I want.”
“Details,” Hayato says. “Stupid ones.”
“You don’t care about that stuff, anyway,” Ryu says, and he’s a little embarrassed at how his voice cracks. “It was all me being lame.”
“You’re always lame,” Hayato says. “You’ve always been my best friend despite that.”
And there’re nurses hovering, and Ryu wants… all sorts of things, but he doesn’t want to leave, doesn’t want to step back from the bed and let the doctor do all of these routine things to make sure that Hayato’s really okay, like asking him questions about the last second he remembers, or if he knows who Ryu is, or all these other obvious things. He doesn’t want to, but he does, and Ryu feels like, somehow, all the brambles and thorns have parted, and he’s waiting, with bated breath, next to a cradle made of glass.
"I'm surprised you remember me, sleepyhead," Ryu says, in a moment of stillness, when the doctors have left them alone, and there is only Hayato and Ryu. It stings in Ryu's memory, because it makes Ryu remember the first real conversation they ever had, standing in the hallways of their junior high, Ryu's uniform perfectly arranged and Hayato's hands in his pockets, not a school supply to be found.
"Well, you remember me, don't you?" Hayato replies, and he smiles for the first time, big and wide, and even though Hayato is still trying to take everything in, he never misses one of Ryu's beats.
"You're pretty hard to forget," Ryu admits, and it's the closest he'll ever come to confessing the way he's been the past two years, almost unwilling to hope that this moment might ever come.
"Got me pretty good, didn't they?" Hayato says. "Those guys."
"Yes," Ryu says. "Looks like your fighting skills weren't up to the task without me."
"They'll suck even more now," Hayato says. "My body feels like jelly."
"Two years is a long time," Ryu says, and he stands up and walks to the other side of the room. "It's a really fucking long time."
"I know," Hayato says. "I wish... It had happened differently."
"I should have tried to," Ryu says quietly, and it feels like a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. "I should have known that-”
"How were you supposed to know I'd get jumped like that?" Hayato growls, and his voice cracks. “I didn’t even know, and I was working for those guys.” He reaches a trembling hand toward the styrofoam cup of water on the bedside table, but his shaking hand knocks it to the floor. The plastic lid pops off, and water splatters everywhere, drenching the table and the floor. "Shit."
Ryu walks back to his side and picks up the cup, and he notices he's quivering almost as bad. "I don't know. We've always managed to save each other before. This time I failed."
"Bullshit," Hayato says. "You've had two years without me telling you you're stupid, that's why you're saying all this dumb shit, right?"
"Probably," Ryu says, and his throat is so tight he can barely get the words out. His heart is hammering in his chest, like he's a rabbit, and he disguises the way his eyes feel a little wet by getting a new styrofoam cup from beside the sink, and filling it with fresh water, sticking a straw in it. He returns to Hayato's side, and holds the cup close enough that Hayato can lean forward and drink. "Two years is a really long time."
Hayato, lips still wrapped around the straw, looks up at him through his eyelashes, and Ryu realizes, all over again, how beautiful the other man is, gorgeous even with his matted hair and dry cracked mouth. He leans back after a moment, to take in air, and Ryu sets the cup back on the table.
"Two years is a long time," Hayato says, and he closes his eyes and clenches his hands in the sheets, and his hospital gown slips from his shoulder, baring his clavicle and the top of a scar that Ryu remembers more for how it feels beneath his lips than how it looks. "Did you pass the teacher's exam?"
"Yes," Ryu says, and then he's laughing, and he wonders if it sounds as out of control and hysterical to Hayato as it sounds in his head. "Yes, I did. I teach at Kurogin, Hayato."
"Really?" Hayato says, and Ryu can't believe that he and Hayato are talking about his job right now, because Hayato is awake and responsive for the first time in two years.
And Ryu is still deeply, madly in love with him.
"Yeah," Ryu says, and Hayato is laughing too. "They're not nearly as awful as we were, in 3D. They're like puppies, really."
"We were the best at being the worst," Hayato says.
"We were," Ryu agrees.
"What the hell happened to your hair?" Hayato asks. "It looks boring as hell. Did being a teacher suck all the life out of you?" He's teasing, but Ryu notices that Hayato's hands are still holding onto the sheets for dear life, and even though he's laughing, there's something unsure in the set of his mouth.
"I have something," Ryu says, and he reaches up and grabs the button-necklace through his t-shirt, "that belongs to you."
Hayato tilts his head to the side, and his hair looks awful, grown wild and scraggly, and there's an uneven pattern of hair across his cheeks and above his lip where Taku had shaved him unevenly. "Yeah?"
Ryu reaches around his neck and unclasps the chain, pulling the necklace off. Hayato's eyes go round at the sight of it, and there's something bright in his eyes that makes Ryu feel full of hope. "They found it... When they found you," Ryu says, and Hayato's eyes are fixed on the button that dangles at the end of the chain. "If you still want it."
Hayato swallows, and looks longingly at his water, before he steels his jaw. "Two years, Ryu. Is there... Do you... Like, a girlfriend or..." his knuckles are white, and his lips are pressed so tightly together that they've turned white as well. Ryu studies the vein in his neck, and he almost wants to start laughing again, because he hasn't thought about much beside Hayato in two years, and it's ridiculous that Hayato could possibly think otherwise.
"Dumbass," Ryu says, and he leans forward and wraps the chain around Hayato's neck, lifting Hayato's sweaty hair from the skin and clasping the chain.
The button gleams in the fluorescent light, and it looks brighter around Hayato's neck, probably because it knows it's back where it belongs. Hayato studies it for a moment as it hangs down heavy on the front of the hospital gown, and then he exhales, slowly. "Yeah," Hayato says. "I guess I am."
Ryu gives into the urge to push Hayato's hair out of his face, and Hayato looks up at him, and for a moment, everything between them is electric.
Time is moving forward, and the second hand is ticking to the beating of their hearts.
"Your hair is a mess," Ryu murmurs, and Hayato winces.
"My mother would be disappointed," Hayato says, lifting a heavy arm to finger the overgrown tangled strands with dismay.
"I don't think you need to impress any more girls, anyway," Ryu says optimistically, and he's flying, soaring above the clouds and the atmosphere and the stars too, everything below him like an endless ocean.
He feels so light.
"You’re just saying that because even when I'm in coma, I get more chocolates than you on Valentine's Day," Hayato says, and if he had the energy, his arms would be crossed. Still, one of his eyebrows is proudly lifted, and Ryu smiles, and everything, right now, is perfect.
"You wish," Ryu says, and he reaches forward and finds Hayato's hand, putting his own atop it. Hayato blinks, twice, and then he turns his hand so his palm is facing up. Ryu relishes the feeling of their palms touching, and Hayato's fingers sliding between his own on their own power.
"I expect really good chocolate next year," Hayato says, and it's an acknowledgement of what it is between them that Ryu doesn't really need, but it feels good anyway, like warm green tea in December, or like a handmade scarf instead of a store-bought one.
"If you weren't in a hospital bed," Ryu says, and he suspects his voice is too soft, to soppy for them, but this is a special occasion, so he'll let himself get away with it just this once. "I'd punch you in the face for calling me your girlfriend, Yabuki."
"If I weren't in a hospital bed, you wouldn't even have a chance of success, Odagiri-sensei," Hayato retorts.
They'll fight it out later, Ryu figures. There will be plenty of time for everything, after all.
**
Ryu's dreams, now, are beautiful, like the slow unfurling of petals in the spring, full of hope and magic and Hayato's chocolate eyes, sparking with danger and mischief and blessed life.
The kingdom is rejoicing.
When Ryu's awake, it's just the same, and that's the most beautiful thing of all.
**
Shiratori’s desk is bare, all its contents in three, full-looking boxes beside it.
“It’s been a good run,” she says optimistically, but Ryu can see she’s upset. He pats her awkwardly on the shoulder, and she sniffles a bit. “Don’t be nice to me, I’m trying to get over you.”
“My bad,” Ryu says, and his mouth twitches in a smile. Everything is better now. Brighter. Full of color.
“Odagiri the lady-killer,” Uchiyama says. “I can’t say I get it.”
Ryu doesn’t get it either, since he’s pretty sure everything he does, nowadays, says taken. “You’ll be all right,” Ryu says. “Over at your new school.”
“I will,” Shiratori says. “One of my new colleagues is an old acquaintance of ours.”
“Oh?” Ryu asks.
“Yamaguchi-sensei,” Shiratori says, and Uchiyama whistles.
“Yankumi?” Uchiyama grins. “I’m sure she’ll have her hands full, as usual.”
“Yes,” Ryu says. “It seems you’ll be okay, after all.”
Shiratori’s friend arrives, twirling car keys around her finger and grabbing two of the three boxes to put in the trunk. Ryu starts to offer to help, but she glares and he quiets, turning his attention to his next semester class-list in lieu of watching her struggle with the boxes.
“Odagiri-sensei?” Shiratori says, catching Ryu’s attention as she takes her last box out to her friend’s car. “You look… happy. Good luck to you.”
“Thanks,” Ryu says, but he doesn’t need luck. He’s already got his happily ever after.
**
“Hey, Ryu?” Hayato asks, warm against Ryu’s side as they watch TV in Ryu’s apartment. It’s small with the both of them here. He'd never thought of it as this small, before, but suddenly space seems tight, and he and Hayato live practically on top of each other. Ryu can't say he minds. It's all they can afford, anyway, because Ryu's a second year teacher, after all, and Hayato doesn’t make much at his job, since he works all night at a bar that caters to foreigners, but they only need him four nights a week. He’s looking for something else to fill the rest of the time, but Hayato’s still searching for his passion. Ryu is willing to live in a small place until he finds it.
His father still isn’t too happy with Ryu’s career-path or his choice in roommates, but Ryu pays his own bills now, and Hayato’s warmth at his side is worth the frank disappointment in his father’s eyes on his rare trips home. Hayato, after all, has always been his real family.
“Yeah?” Ryu asks, his arm slipping around Hayato to pull Hayato closer into his side. Hayato presses his cheek into Ryu’s chest, then, and his hair, wild and uncombed, tickles at Ryu’s chin. (Because Hayato’s vain, but less a little less vain on Saturday mornings.)
“Do you think…” Hayato pauses, and then grabs at Ryu’s hand, his arm crossing Ryu’s waist to link their fingers together. Ryu looks down at him, but Hayato’s got a blush dusting across his cheeks. It makes Ryu smile. Hayato’s always the same. Ryu likes him that way. “Do you think, if we hadn’t met that day at the park… if we hadn’t wound up at the same middle school… If we hadn’t had any of that... Do you think we still would have found each other?” He’s mumbling, and Ryu can feel the anxiousness leaking out of him into the space between them. Hayato’s other hand, the one not caught with Ryu’s, fingers the button he still keeps on a chain about his neck.
The guys at the bar, Hayato’s told him, think it’s from a high school crush, because they aren’t Japanese, and don’t realize that only boys give away their second buttons. They think maybe Hayato’s got a secret girlfriend. As Hayato tells him this, face red and mouth in an awkward frown that stretches across his whole face that makes him look like he’s begging to be kissed, Ryu thinks they’re close enough.
Ryu swallows, tongue flicking out to lick at suddenly dry lips. Hayato breathes steadily at his side, and they are tangled together, limbs and hearts wrapped up completely in each other.
Ryu imagines a world without Hayato, without Kurogin and Yankumi and Takeda and Tsucchi and Hyuuga and all of 3D. A world where he’d lived an average life, and never stood up for anything, and never had to fight, sometimes literally, to find himself. He remembers how cold he'd felt, for two entire years, without Hayato by his side. He wonders what he would do, if he'd never met Hayato at all. Who he'd be. What he would see. If he would still live here. He’s not sure what his life would have been, could have been, among the infinite number of possibilities.
He can’t imagine any life other than this one, no matter how much he tries. Because Hayato is everything. Hayato’s been everything since the moment their hands clasped for the first time, on a random street, on a cold January day. Hayato’s pants had been too short. He’d had wild, untamable hair. Ryu can remember the cut under his eye.
Hayato sighs, and Ryu’s arm lifts and falls with the motion of Hayato’s chest. Hayato is always moving him, Ryu thinks, because Ryu and Hayato are connected. Their two hearts pulse as one, an endless rhythm of wonder, and Ryu finds completion in every single beat.
“Yes,” Ryu says, because no matter where they are, or what they do, Hayato was destined to be Ryu’s, just as Ryu was destined to be Hayato’s. “No matter what, I think I’d find you. I’d know you were out there, my heart would know you were out there, and I’d find you. I’d never give up.”
“Mmmm,” Hayato says, and shifts himself up, pressing a gentle kiss to Ryu’s jaw. It's the sort of moment their friends will never see. Never know about. “You're totally the girl.” Hayato smiles, and it illuminates the room, as it always does in Ryu’s love-struck eyes. "What a gay response."
Ryu rolls his eyes. "We're cuddling," Ryu says. "Obviously it's gay."
"We're not cuddling, don't call it that," Hayato says, burrowing deeper into Ryu's side. "Anyway, I think so too."
"Think what?" Ryu asks, distracted by the heat that floods his stomach as Hayato's breath tickles his neck.
"That we'd have met, somehow. After all, what were the odds we’d meet anyway?"
"Mm," Ryu says, and he resists the urge to drag his hand up Hayato's thigh.
“Besides, who’d bail you out of trouble?”
Ryu laughs, and squeezes Hayato’s hand where their fingers lie still interlocked. “I wouldn’t get in any trouble,” Ryu says. “I’d be straight-laced and working for the police.” The look in Hayato’s eyes now is like spun sugar, sweet and crystal clear, and Ryu feels his chest clench at how wonderful the world is when he’s looking at it with Hayato, soft and here. “The horror.”
“I… you’re…” Hayato says, and it’s… Well, it’s probably the closest they’ll ever get to a love confession, Ryu thinks, because they’re both too rough around the edges to know how to do it any better. Ryu is pretty sure, though, that it doesn’t get better than this, because Hayato’s lips are like a butterfly, fluttering an undemanding, lazy kiss to the side of Ryu’s neck. “You taste sweet,” Hayato says, tongue peeking out to taste Ryu’s skin. “Like frosting.”
“I think I’ll dye my hair,” Ryu says, but then Hayato is kissing him, and he’s drowning in the wet heat of Hayato’s eager mouth, and he forgets all about his hair, lost instead in the confectionary perfection of Hayato’s lips, and of Hayato’s love.
This is another beginning.
**
”At that moment she awoke, and with her the king and the queen, and all the attendants, and the horses and the dogs, and the pigeons on the roof, and the flies on the walls. The fire stood up and flickered, and then cooking the food. The roast sizzled away. The cook boxed the kitchen boy’s ears. And the maid finished plucking the chicken. Then the prince and Brier-Rose got married, and they lived long and happily until they died.”
--Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Little Brier Rose
**
And sometimes, life is like a fairytale. And maybe Ryu will wake up tomorrow morning, and Hayato will be asleep beside him. And he’ll kiss him on the mouth, and Hayato will wake up.
And maybe some things are endless.