Fic for misao_duo (1/2)
Title: and life goes on (let me warm your numb hands)
Author: randomicicle
Pairing: Hayato/Ryu
Word count: 11,500
Rating: R
Warnings: Babies, nonlinear timeline, mandatory baby fluff, not enough baby fluff. Tried to stay canon, but canon isn't exactly compliant with itself, so there may be a couple of liberties within (and easily identifiable fanon!canon too).
Notes:
- For misao_duo. You asked for pretty much anything Akame but that was before they became a little (extra) complicated. Taking a leap here with GII fic. Hopefully it'll cater to your preferences and you enjoy it :)
- For Title+OST notes: drinking warm soup when the night comes, for tomorrow too will surely be cold (c) and all Diana Krall.
Summary: Hayato has a baby.
It's Tsucchi who tells him. There is some veiled accusation in his tone, but he is Tsucchi and everything is fine as long as his fan isn't pointed at Ryu's chest. The fact his hair is gently framing his face makes him less menacing than the spike-headed punk that towered above everyone in high school.
"Saya is three months old, Ryu."
Ryu wants to laugh, he really wants to.
Instead, he asks for Hayato's address.
+
The slowing footsteps give him away. His hands, thrust deep inside his coat pockets, feel cold and clammy, fingers numb; he wishes he wasn't wearing gloves so he could at least feel the skin of his fingers touching. A tall two-headed figure appears at the end of the hallway dragging two bags with it, and stops two meters away from the doorstep Ryu has been staring at, willing it to miraculously open.
"Odagiri."
It's like conjuring his father. And maybe that's how Ryu looks now. Old and stoic and all costumed up in a clean-cut suit that feels itchy around the edges, on his elbows and behind his knees. He came straight from work and it's cold.
"Yabuki."
Nostalgia washes over him as they stare in silence; it leaves his skin dry and a metallic taste on his tongue. He feels restricted, chest tightening. Static sounds echo around him and Hayato is not moving.
Then the second head moves and babbles, and it all snaps. Hayato hurries to the door, goes inside.
He doesn't close it behind him, so Ryu follows.
+
"She's asleep," is the second thing Hayato says to him that night. This is unfamiliar, the stiffness in his back. Ryu moves awkwardly when Hayato passes by him, like he's been burned, and Hayato avoids a glance that is both questioning and stroppy.
Ryu peeks inside the darkened bedroom. There's a bundle of pink blankets inside a fortress made of pillows in the middle of the futon, and it doesn't make much sense how Hayato is so gentle when he tugs on her blankets. There is softness to his movements that wasn't there before.
Not that Ryu would know.
Hayato shifts between watching the kettle, dishevelling his hair, and staring at the spot on the floor Ryu has settled on, like Ryu would jump up and steal something before running off. The last time Ryu saw him, his hair was longer and untamed, not this light, barely hiding Hayato's neckline and the rigid set of his spine as he taps fingers on the counter.
He says thanks for the cup of tea when Hayato sits in front of him, and wants to snort about what a good host he has become.
Hayato stares.
"So you're back."
Ryu swallows. Like a bomb dropping on a rice field in the middle of the night. And Hayato never stops staring.
The laughter startles him.
"You bastard, you should've told me sooner," he tells him, and Ryu doesn't get it, how Hayato is laughing without laughter, and saying they ought to celebrate. It's simple and tempting to curl his mouth up in a smile, neither fight nor question but shrug it off, say he's been back for less than a week and Tsucchi was the only one who'd kept the same phone number.
(He doesn't say Tsucchi is the only one he contacted, and Hayato's eyes tell him he sees through the lie, but Hayato doesn't call him on it)
And it's easy, so easy, to play the fool and smile; eat combini bentos under their hushed slanted conversation and drink the cheap beer Hayato keeps in his small fridge. He enjoys it, the fleeting moment where Hayato is content just eating, and Ryu is a regular teacher back from grad school, and everything is bright and funny, sugar-coated and warmly fragile.
"Back for good or just -?"
"I'm teaching here this year," Ryu replies, and it could mean anything. That's why he's all dressed up, he wants to add. That's why he has a suit, feet clad in polished black leather shoes and hair cut, unbleached, and combed. Ryu looks older than Hayato, in his worn-out trousers and large navy sweater.
He feels ancient.
"An all-boys high school. Ryujin."
Hayato chuckles, relaxing slightly. "3D?"
Ryu smiles, pushes the asparagus and tomatoes neatly out of his box. "Almost. 2D."
It is too comfortable to play pretend and remember when they were the kids, when they spent hours sitting around playing Tekken on Ryu's old console. He pretends it doesn't sink low in his stomach, seeing the lines of politeness on Hayato's face that were never there before.
He leaves when they run out of beer and memories that are only happy. Hayato fakes a yawn, too large, too loud (because Hayato may think otherwise but his acting is crap), and that is Ryu's cue to leave.
"It was good to see you."
Hayato nods. "You too."
On his way to the station, Ryu replays that last look in the genkan again and again and again. His hands are colder and clammier, stomach tied in heavy knots; he keeps seeing relief.
+
The first punch had hurt. Never as much as his chest being torn apart, but Hayato packed a mean punch. His father's words buzzed in his mind, clear and cold. "A fight seems more important than you, I see," he had said, and Ryu flinched because he didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to think about it, even though this was his father and he'd never get it.
"Those are your friends".
It was not by chance he found Frentzen.
Ryu had wanted to fill his mind with something. Otherwise, all he saw were two little kids with huge overused markers, milkshakes split in two tiny cups, and a white sheet of paper where a scrawny Ryu was holding hands with a (rather disproportionately) tall Hayato, huge toothy grins on both their faces. Hayato had said they would be friends forever; that nothing in the world would ever, ever, tear them apart.
That was the first broken promise that hurt.
+
He really thought he wouldn't hear from Hayato again for a long time. Stupid confusing hard-to-deal-with Hayato whom he'd last spoken to years ago, before barging on his place with combini bento and stories that were never told.
"You're such a bastard," slurs the voice on the phone. "You- fuck, jerk, leaving like that. You- I hate you. Asshole."
Ryu is paralyzed.
He only hangs up after the dial tone has been beeping for a while.
+
"Isn't she the cutest?!" coos Take over the baby's bassinet, out of place with the cans of beer open in front of them. Her name is Saya, but Ryu's mind keeps calling her the baby, as if that would put a barrier between them. A part of Hayato's life he doesn't want to comment on nor deal with; like Take's girlfriends he used to barely tolerate. Or Hyuuga's hideous shirts.
Only she is a little baby girl, and Ryu knows he is being irrational.
Tsucchi bumps against his side when he moves; no one pays attention to the beer sloshed on Ryu's pants.
"She's grown so much, Hayato," he says. Her hands look like a doll's; fingers wrapped tightly around one of Tsucchi's, but can't yet close completely around it. Take bats his hands in front of her, willing her to grab his fingers too.
Hayato preens.
Ryu sits there awkwardly, in silence, playing with the can of beer dangling from his hand. It goes unnoticed because it has always been like this; his quiet unassuming presence in the middle of the entire hubbub. But it has never felt like this before. This detachment. He almost wants to thank Hayato (Take, not Hayato; it was Take who invited him) and go home.
Tsucchi plays with a stuffed duck, making silly face as it flies above the bassinet, and Take's baby talk starts to drill through his brain like a high-pitched scream directly in his ears when Hayato stands and goes to get the takoyaki leftovers. He doesn't realize it's Saya who wails until Hayato rushes back and pushes him further to the side to pick her up, brow furrowed in concern. "Hey, baby, what's wrong?"
Ryu is tempted to move further away, but she opens her eyes. Large and brown and baby-like, looking straight at him. Ryu feels, more than sees, four pairs of eyes on him in the middle of the sudden careful silence, Saya's teary wails reduced to nothing but big-eyed curiosity pinning him down all the way from Hayato's arms.
Ryu squirms.
She giggles. And bounces a little. Her chubby hand jerks against Hayato's jawbone.
"Mouuu・girls always like Ryu the most!"
They laugh, and ignore Hayato's complaints, how he moves and Saya loses sight of Ryu (and groanwails until he's back in her sight). Tsucchi pokes his shoulder, tells Take not to despair, that he has a wife. Ryu focuses on the pocketsize human in Hayato's arms, covered in a blue onesie with bright red trucks; there's a spit bubble at the corner of her mouth. It pops.
He snorts, but he's smiling.
She giggles again.
+
If Hayato wants to play pretend, Ryu is fine with that.
He used to think, back in Vancouver, and especially during particularly bad snowstorms, that he should call. He tried not to think of the irony, the years spent fighting with all his might to stay as far away from Canada as possible and then how he'd latched onto the opportunity; tried not to think of his father's surprised (but approving) face when he mentioned it, or his mom's soft smile, and how she used to smooth his hair when it was bedtime and tell him she and his father knew better, always did.
Instead, he'd focused on his reasons, but the need was still there, titillating and exploding. He'd brave the wind outside and find a convenience store that sold long distance phonecards, nose red and ears hurting behind the snow mask. Back in his shared apartment, he'd tuck his legs under himself on the sofa, fingers playing with the phone cord of the old landline they had there. When he was feeling braver, he would get as a far as entering the code and phone number. The call had gone through just once・
・straight to a voicemail.
(He'd never considered time zones, given the fickle nature of the calls)
Ryu never really admitted it, but there were times the ache had been like a hollow pitch in his stomach that he'd filled with Coronas and Marlboros and Kitkats; and typing emails that remained stuck on his draft box.
That hollow pitch had turned into a huge black hole he'd satiated with memories during forlorn wintry nights. He would dream of sitting in that patch of grass those rare times it was just the two of them, where Hayato had allowed himself to mourn his mom and Ryu had admitted it was his dad's fingers imprinted on his cheek; where they first made plans to move in together after graduation, and Ryu would go to college and Hayato would get a job at Kuma's and become honorary chef (or employee of the month).
He'd always woken up drenched in cold sweat, and with a wider dark gap in the middle of his chest.
It was the worst fucking time of his life.
+
Take emailed him about Hayato's wedding.
He never got an invitation.
+
Ryu came back in July. It was ridiculously hot. And nothing was the same.
+
It's a couple of days after, while he's planning a math lesson on square roots and imaginary numbers, that his phone vibrates on his study desk. Ryu keeps his books sprawled on the floor because it's easier to focus when his desk is clear and tidy, and having his everyday work there would mean a constant eye-level mess. He piles them up underneath once he's done, chair hiding them from view, and works lying on his futon, pens and markers and post-it notes scattered, a habit he picked up when Matt-the-roommate started an internship at 3M and got a ridiculous amount of free notepads.
"Hey," Hayato's voice says. There's the sound of a door and microwave buttons, and Saya jabbers nonsense in the background; Hayato must be making her formula. He hesitates, but Ryu waits patiently. Hayato used to call without being sure whether he had something to say or not, and Ryu had learned to keep the phone close even when it was silent and expectant.
"Sa-chan seemed to like you, so・
Ryu doesn't ask whether Hayato feels the same way. Still feels the same way.
He nods in understanding. "Is Friday okay?"
The beep of the microwave is louder than Hayato's silence, or else he's just distracted while balancing the phone and Saya and a bottle of formula because it sounds like he dropped the phone.
"Yes," comes a bit later, kind of hurried and distant. Ryu is probably on speaker now. "I have to pick her up from Taku's, but we could have lunch?"
"We could, yes."
Ryu can't focus on complex numbers after that.
+
Complex numbers are stupid anyway.
+
He asks for the afternoon off that Friday because he forgot he does have a full-time job now. The director frowns upon him, the new teacher that is far too young and doesn't wear formal suits but sweaters and boots; who looks 22 when he's nearing 30, and just came back from overseas with a diploma that says he ought to be paid more while he experiments with all these 'new' methods that are borderline outside the curricula of a pretty plain high school math class.
She grudgingly agrees when he says he only has hallway duty and that Megumi-san volunteered to cover for him.
(The director frowns deeper and mumbles, annoyed, about doting teachers and responsibilities and how Ryu shouldn't get used to this. Ryu takes it in solemn silence because he has learned that there are fights not worth fighting if he has already won what matters.)
He stops by a store on his way to Hayato's. He grimaces at his account balance, but still gets veggies and noodles and some kind of meat he finds on sale. Beers, too. There is a tiny store hidden between a large boutique and a corporative-looking building. The girl behind the counter seems more focused on her idol magazine than the customers, unplugged from the world with her ear buds in, so it takes Ryu three tries to steal her attention from the glittery pop idols she's scanning. Grudgingly, she stands up and grabs the item from the window case, wraps it up in brown crinkly paper, and Ryu side eyes the blue string she ties it with but thinks it may be counterproductive to ask for another one.
Laden with bags and boxes on Hayato's doorstep, he almost turns around.
"You arrived," Hayato greets. He seems surprised Ryu is there, and his expression matches Ryu's in his shock. Ryu hasn't seen Hayato's hair clipped back in over ten years.
"What's all that?"
Ryu shifts, shuffling out of his shoes as Hayato takes the bag with the veggies. "Food," he replies, shoves the brown paper package with the sketchy blue string at Hayato's chest. "This is for her."
It's light, and Ryu stops feeling like an idiot when Hayato grins, hovering above Saya's pack-and-play, and telling her "uncle Ryu brought her a present".
Ryu hears the paper tearing up while he stacks the beers in the fridge, and Hayato ignores him in favour of Saya's delighted giggles. She's too tiny yet, too fragile, and drools and babbles nonsense, but her little arms packed with baby fat weave in the air where the turtle plushie flies above her.
She gurgles, and closes her fist on the tail.
"It's safe," Ryu explains when three quarters of turtle nose end up in Saya's mouth. "I checked."
Hayato nods. His eyes are soft, little wrinkles around his eyes smoothed out in a way that is still unfamiliar for Ryu. He only spares him a glance, murmurs, "Thank you," and it's still awkward, maybe, but not so much. Not anymore.
+
To be honest, Ryu wouldn't mind being uncle Ryu.
+
They aren't done yet when Saya demands to be carried out of the pack-and-play. It has a removable bassinet and a changer and musical mobile figures on top. Hayato mentions he bought it at some sketchy place where foreigners get rid of things before leaving the country. It's second-hand, but in a good enough condition and all Saya has in the place, furniture-wise. Hayato's bedroom though is packed with large diaper bags and piles of pastel garments and clean cotton towels and bedsheets and pillowcases.
She wails loud enough to startle them both and Hayato picks her up, pressing his hollow, pale face to the baby's cheek. He pats and coos at her, looks gentler than he's ever looked.
There's a softness in his hands that reminds Ryu of Hayato's mom.
Saya is some months old; and has fat little cheeks and fat tiny arms and legs and toes that look like a doll's. A miniature version of what Hayato could've been as a baby, and she looks like him, vaguely. Ryu never knew her mom, but hopes she takes after her dad. She has large avid eyes that stare intensely at everything.
Except when Ryu is around. Then, she only stares at him.
"Told you," Hayato snickers casually. He comes closer and Ryu's stomach tightens. "Hold her?"
It's like carrying a crystal doll packed in water balloons. Ryu doesn't know where or how to hold her and Hayato laughs at him, moves his hand to the back of her neck and the small of her back, and Ryu stops holding his breath when Saya doesn't seem about to slip from his hands and twist away to the floor like a slinky. She grips his shirt instinctively, probably feeling Ryu's incompetence in baby carrying, and Ryu brushes the thin hair at the base of her neck, feels the soft skin and the warm dribble that falls on his shoulder.
He looks up, and Hayato is staring. His eyes, for once, disclose nothing.
"I didn't know you were this bad with babies."
Ryu scowls.
(He's not really angry)
+
Weeks go by and Ryu goes from school to his one room apartment to school again the next day. He eyes his phone and jumps with each call, expectation pooling like an obnoxious poking stomach bug. He gets a message from Take once saying he's sitting for Saya-chan on a Friday night (sHE IS SOOoo cute >__< <33333333!!!!!!!) and Ryu is in an awful mood all weekend because Take is old and still texts like a 15 year-old bimbo, and Hayato didn't call him and went out and left Saya with Take and his wife when she obviously would've preferred to stay with Ryu.
Then he gets mad for getting mad about that.
He makes a pretty impossible test for that Monday, which 80% of the class fails, and ends up taking home almost 20 optional essays on angles and Cartesian planes and things he hates. It's all Hayato's fault.
+
It's Sunday and his head throbs. The izakaya pub last night had been unavoidable, one of those times he wasn't fast enough to decline his co-workers' insistence with a quick-witted excuse. He'd ended up numbing himself with sake to the impossibly dull chitchat and gossip about students and staff and future plans he had no intention being a part of.
He groans again and rolls over, a sharp ringing drilling inside his head, and dully remembers taking a cab home with another teacher (Sakamoto-san?) and being helped up the stairs. He doesn't remember anything past the foyer and would've cursed, but that damned ringing slices through his brain again.
Hayato looks angry.
"What is the matter with you?!" he demands as soon as he crosses the genkan. His voice is too loud, so loud Vancouver Matt probably heard him, so Ryu closes his eyes and leans against the wall.
Hayato huffs. "You reek of alcohol."
Ryu groans again, fingers pressing on the arch of his nose, for a moment cursing Hayato's Father of the Year tone. It's such a bizarre situation he would laugh if his skull weren't threatening to split in half at the thought.
"Let me shower," he mumbles, and maybe it's his voice, hoarse and miserable, that makes Hayato nod with pursed lips and plop down on the dining room floor.
The shower helps a bit. At least he doesn't feel disgusting anymore.
"Here," Hayato hands him a mug of coffee and his stomach twists. Coffee doesn't sit well with him and hangovers; he needs rice and water, and maybe some really cold Coke, but he still takes a sip from it. The acrid taste makes him frown, and Hayato glares at his disgusted face when he pushes the coffee across the counter and as far away from him as possible.
He doesn't stop the glowering.
"What?" Ryu asks.
It's too early for this.
"What do you mean what?" Hayato snaps. More like explodes. Ryu is scared he may actually need to argue. "You vanished, you jerk."
Ryu lowers his gaze and it makes his brain press against the front of his skull. It hurts, but it's better.
"For two fucking years. Gone. From the face of the Earth- what the fuck, Ryu?!"
It cuts so deep he cringes. Ryu sighs audibly, shaky, and rests his face on the balls of his hands, elbows set on the counter.
"What do you want, Hayato?"
Hayato's glare only intensifies.
"An explanation. Obviously."
Ironic, that the one thing he can't explain comes rushing to smack him in the face.
"You got married-"
"You VANISHED."
Ryu grunts, scrunches up his shoulders as if making himself tiny enough would help him disappear. It's hard to explain how he had needed that, a trip to neverwhere when he touched a wall; no family, no friends, no undesirable feelings or thoughts. That scholarship had been a lifesaver in the middle of an open sea storm that no one had seemed to spot.
"What happened?" Hayato presses, and Ryu feels cornered even though Hayato hasn't moved an inch. "What was so bad? Why did I never hear a word about it?"
"It- I don't know," he starts, and he's honest, but Hayato flares up again. "But not you. It was not you."
There is something that makes Ryu scared of Hayato sometimes, of what flashes behind his eyes that unveils everything he is capable of. Which is silly, because Ryu can match that and more, but Ryu doesn't lie to himself nowadays. Hayato shouldn't be scary to him; not junior high scary anymore. He also shouldn't look as if he'll throw himself across the table and either strangle or ravish him.
He does neither.
Instead, he draws a large intake of breath, too big and too loud, like he wants to empty and replace himself with air. His hand is trembling when he stands up and walks to Ryu's tiny balcony full of drying laundry.
"You're a bastard, you know that."
Ryu nods, because he is and he knows it. Hayato isn't looking at him though; he sits on the balcony floor and Ryu brings his legs closer to his chest to warm himself up. He stares at the street below, at the smoke outlined against the greying morning as Hayato lights up the first cigarette.
They haven't shared one in ages.
+
If someone asked Ryu to describe their relationship, Hayato and Ryu, he would say quiet. It sounds like a joke, with how loud and boisterous Hayato can be, but Ryu knows better.
He is thinking along the lines of their usual rendezvous, way more frequent back when Ryu was in college and Hayato only had to worry about himself and his third of the expenses at home. How they consisted of sitting close and sharing extended silences while they drank the pineapple Calpis Hayato was obsessed with. It has always been about patting his back without being told to, or backing each other up in mindless fights. It was like that before Hayato was bullied, became a bully, and especially after Yabuki-mama died. He remembers the full body warmth, and how it became the warmth he compares all warmth to. That clingy hug with Hayato after running out onto the street, to the spot she used to bring them to collect snails when they'd just met and she was wearing that beautiful bright floral dress that made her the most beautiful and perfect and coolest mom in the whole world (she was always like that no matter which dress she wore, but Ryu thought she looked especially awesome in it).
Ryu's mom had understood his distress, but his father had thought it stupid, a kid's thing, worrying over other's tragedies that had nothing to do with them.
(His father was so evil back then)
They had hugged, Hayato clutching Ryu's shirt like a drowning man, and Ryu had cried soundlessly on Hayato's shoulder.
They don't talk about it.
They don't talk about a lot of things. But a small touch on the inside of his wrist, a hand on his elbow, a sustained gaze-
It used to be enough.
+
"What happened?"
Ryu raises his head. He's been lying on his floor, curled up near the kotatsu now because it got chilly.
"To us?" Hayato adds and looks down at him from his place on the balcony. He's on his third cigarette and Ryu wants to ask if this is because he can't smoke around Saya. He shakes his head when Hayato extends it toward him. "We used to be Hayato and Ryu."
"Now we're Hayato・and Ryu," Hayato adds.
Ryu chuckles softly, but Hayato's face is solemn and quite upset. His face is curled in an angry grimace, and Ryu smiles, salty and sad. Hayato turns to him again; it's fierce and it chills him. Ryu sighs.
And just like that, Hayato puffs his cheeks, nostrils flaring, and a dead tense silence falls over both of them. The dim light colours them purple and orange, and Ryu sees Hayato's grip tighten on his arm, wonders if it'll leave angry, reddening crescent marks on his skin. His sweater looks very thick though.
When Hayato turns again, he looks deflated and blue, and Ryu pushes up on his left arm.
"An entire decade・ he mumbles. Then he laughs, breathy, sans humour. "Yankumi would be ashamed."
Ryu smirks. It's bittersweet but it closes the cycle. Words remain unsaid, but this time, they both get it.
+
There used to be a small spot of grass behind some large water containers that was perfect for looking over everything without being disturbed. Ivy had crawled up the concrete structures and kept it mostly hidden and much like a real hideout.
Ryu goes there, wonders if it's still there, and gasps in delight when it is. He doesn't care about his trousers getting grass stained, and sits there, thinking. Wondering. He remembers the five of them here, ditching classes and smoking cigarettes they could get because they were so cool, and drinking the beer Hyuuga managed to sneak out of his house. How different they were from those other times, when he'd lain with Hayato in absolute silence.
It was some time after Kudo's mess that they had come together, alone, and sat here; elbows on knees, exhaustion and relief tightly entwined in their bellies. Hayato's fingertips were sudden, feathery light on his spine. He didn't look at Ryu, and Ryu never really turned to look back at him lying on the grass beside, but the memory of warm spots on his back is clear and heavily imprinted on his mind, and comes fleeting and vivid when he thinks of warm, and calm, and safe.
Three wuthering lines along the bare skin at the small of his back, and Hayato's steady breathing, the smell of grass mingling with the moist scent of morning dew, and the blinding light of the sun despite being quite cold.
Ryu lies back on the grass now, extends a hand over the empty patch of grass on his left. And wishes Hayato were there.
+
It becomes a pattern.
After Hayato walks out of Ryu's that day to pick up Saya from Taku's, and Ryu doesn't hear from them for a couple of weeks. Saya is so much bigger when he sees her again, he wants to complain about it, but what is that, really (and who is he to complain)? She doesn't seem to recognize him at first, just as Hayato laughs at his shorter hair.
"School regulations," Ryu grunts, fingers self-consciously moving up to touch the shorter locks curling near his ear.
Hayato smirks. "Since when do you follow school regulations?"
Ryu snorts. He thinks about Yankumi and stuff.
"Since they pay me for it."
And before Hayato launches into an indignant speech, he makes sure to entertain himself with Saya and her newly acquired toy snake. She seems to love it, though whether that's due to the bright colours or how it twists all awkward and jerky when she shakes it around is a mystery.
Ryu still stops by the grocery store, and Hayato makes Saturdays their day. Then, it's also Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays because he lost one of his part-time jobs and Ryu doesn't have to be in school so late into the afternoon (Hayato denies this and insists he quit, but Ryu catches him frowning at the bills and scrawling sloppy numbers with red ink on the envelopes; numbers 1 and 3 had been taken care of, but there were still a couple pending). Ryu rearranges his own budget; sometimes, on Tuesdays, he buys enough to last until he comes back on Saturdays.
It is an odd pattern because they never discuss it. Ever. And Ryu doesn't want them to. He's tired, and Hayato seems content, Saya on his knee, arms spread out like a plane while she giggles and kicks the air beneath her feet.
As he sits down, latex gloves now near the sink, he frowns at the tiny speakers near the pair and hopes Hayato will get the message. There's a demented song looping on the player because some lady in a second-hand store told them it was some kind of program for child stimulation.
"It only stimulates suicidal tendencies," Hayato huffs. And puts on some idol band that, for Ryu, sounds exactly the same.
+
Ryu watches Hayato curl up in the futon around Saya, a huge round lump of faded green cuddling a freshly soft fluffy white bundle with yellow and pink dots. She is asleep, but her face is turned towards Hayato, her little fists close to her chest even though her body is slightly turned. There's a trail of drool on Hayato's left cheek and Ryu laughs softly.
When he grabs Saya, is Hayato who stirs and wakes up, instantly alert.
"It's me," Ryu whispers, and smiles when Saya curls in on herself in his arms. She doesn't wake up, nor does Hayato move.
"Tired?" Ryu doesn't ask, but Hayato squeezes his eyes tights before stretching. He doesn't need to ask.
"I'm exhausted," he puffs out and bonelessly rolls onto his back. The futon is for two; that's Saya and Hayato. Ryu feels like he's intruding, even though it was Hayato who opened the door.
"How were your kids?"
Someone had set fire to a notebook in the back, broken a window during lunch and he found a large obscene chalk drawing on the board. "The same," he mutters, because they were not as wild as they once were; his kids were just immature, not unnecessary active. They were too lazy to be delinquents.
Hayato sneers. And it's like a night at his dad's again, when Ryu sneaked through the window and they snuggled on Hayato's tiny futon. Back then, it wasn't as warm though, he didn't have a soft bundle breathing against his collarbone.
When fingers stretch to brush over the tiny tresses of hair, they brush Ryu's jaw, innocently. Hayato doesn't seem to notice.
It definitely wasn't as warm back then.
+
It's an emergency, he says. His shift was changed last minute and no one can take care of Saya and it's Friday so Ryu doesn't have to wake up early the next day.
Ryu doesn't think twice (and it's not like he has time to before Hayato hangs up). He feels oddly satisfied that he won't be getting Take's emoji-infested texts on how cute Saya is during his sessions as self-appointed Master of Babysitters.
(In a normal world, no 30 year-old would boast about that, but this is Take and Ryu and Hayato, and competition is always more important than what it is they're competing over)
Saya has wispy black hair so thin she looks bald. Ryu imagines she'd look cute with scrunchies and headbands and Take's barrettes. Hayato thinks she's the cutest bald baby in the world. They both buy her beanies and knitted hats until she has a small tiny pile of pastel-coloured headwear on top of Hayato's dresser. Ryu eyes the basket with freshly washed pocket-sized onesies and makes a tiny pyramid on top out of the tiny folded socks he's rolling into tiny cotton balls. Saya is fast asleep on his chest.
He falls asleep without noticing.
Hours later, his eyes feel heavy. There's an opaque cold light glowing behind the too-thin curtains of Hayato's bedroom, and a warmth in the middle of his chest that surrounds him with a sweet peachy scent as soon as he breathes in. There's another, larger, presence beside him; Hayato's hair tickles his jaw, because it's long again and he doesn't tie it up when he sleeps. His arm is heavy over Ryu's stomach, but his fingers curl delicately around one of Saya's cotton-clad feet, thumb moving soothingly up and down, sliding against Ryu's belly sometimes, fleetingly.
Ryu squirms, pretends to wake up, and Hayato stirs. His hand moves up to rub circles on Saya's back and only then, Ryu dares to open one eye.
A definitely gross shabby Hayato smirks sloppily at him, still a little sleepy.
" 'morning," he mumbles half into the pillows.
And Ryu is back in free-fall again.
+
Ryu levels Hayato with a glare. The hell was that? is what he's aiming to get across.
Hayato's wide eyes seem not to understand what tiny scrawny Ryu is so horrified about, because he keeps saying it was only tongue in cheek and friends do it all the time, he's seen it on TV, and Ryu "is so dumb".
They're 11. And they are starting to get love letters; scraps of paper with pink and red scribbles from girls that have pretty ponytails, whose voices Ryu can't remember nor can he recognize. Hayato's mom, according to Hayato, told him that once you have those special rings, the love letters will stop, and so 穆ince Ryu could very well do without them- he agrees.
He's not so sure anymore.
It's not long before they both notice how their pinky rings don't stop the letters. Hayato insists they must have done something wrong because Hayato's mama is wise and perfect and she shows them an old and painfully boring VCR.
(Ryu wants to say Yabuki-mama looks like a princess, but he doesn't want Hayato to mock him for it.)
They notice their mistake though; and decide to try again.
Ryu closes his eyes and concentrates, really concentrates, on the super special powers their rings should have (because Yabuki-mama also talked about support and love and tons of other warm pretty things Ryu heard about in movies and felt when she patted his head after he'd helped her set the table, while Hayato chased Taku around trying put a stocking on his head, because he wanted to see how Taku would look bald).
Then Hayato's lips touch his. And he loses all focus. There is nothing but a large white buzzing, and Hayato's lips are feathery light, barely, barely there, and everything is yucky and stupid all of a sudden.
The rings never work. Hayato is mad at his mom for days.
Ryu never tells him it's his fault they don't have super magical rings. Instead, he hides the letters he finds on his desk or in Hayato's locker, until Hayato thinks they have some power after all and makes Ryu promise to never, ever, take his off.
+
Ryu never does. But he exchanges it for a larger one when his hands are not an 11 year-old's anymore.
(He still keeps that first one.)
+
"Your dad got married," Ryu mutters.
He's looking down at Saya, sleeping peacefully on the futon. She's all wrapped up in that Doraemon blanket Hayato found on an old part-time job housekeeping at a hotel. It was forgotten and unclaimed ("and clean! I washed it twice!"). It's all blue and red and yellow, and the only bright colourful spot in the otherwise pale messy bedroom. Saya is clutching her turtle plushie by the neck because her hands are not so tiny anymore, only chubby, and the nose is oddly discoloured in patches where the fabric has given out under the relentless drool attacks. Saya sighs, low and wheezy, head turning into the fist trapping the toy; Ryu strokes her back until she settles again.
"I did," comes from the door. It startles Ryu. Hayato's arms are crossed, his face obscure with the contrast of the brightly lit room behind him. "You weren't there."
You weren't here, is what Ryu hears.
His face is all kinds of soft when he pushes himself off the doorframe, and crouches next to Ryu.
"Not invited," Ryu whispers, and arranges the pillows around her. Hayato gives him a look Ryu ignores, and rubs his temples. "I'm going," he mutters.
It has a sense of finality, as it ought to, only it feels wrong. But Ryu has an apartment that is not this one but a larger one, without strewn cubes and half-chewed turtles and giraffes and baby seals in the dining room. One so cold and empty he dreads, but owns, and it's like Hayato's has come to mean 'home' all over again.
"You could stay," Hayato murmurs back in the genkan, back to the wall, crossed arms over his chest and sounding too casual to be casual.
Ryu turns with an incredulous eyebrow arched, and reaches for the doorknob, but Hayato stops him. His presence lingers heavily on Ryu's back, his breath warm and nervous on his neck, and Ryu feels the weight of the words as Hayato presses his forehead to Ryu's hair. Hayato's hand doesn't move from the door; keeping it locked like everything else around them.
"You should stay," Hayato repeats.
Ryu sees the downward spiral in front of him, but pushes lightly against Hayato's chest and, for a second, he is not free-falling anymore.
+
Part 2
Author: randomicicle
Pairing: Hayato/Ryu
Word count: 11,500
Rating: R
Warnings: Babies, nonlinear timeline, mandatory baby fluff, not enough baby fluff. Tried to stay canon, but canon isn't exactly compliant with itself, so there may be a couple of liberties within (and easily identifiable fanon!canon too).
Notes:
- For misao_duo. You asked for pretty much anything Akame but that was before they became a little (extra) complicated. Taking a leap here with GII fic. Hopefully it'll cater to your preferences and you enjoy it :)
- For Title+OST notes: drinking warm soup when the night comes, for tomorrow too will surely be cold (c) and all Diana Krall.
Summary: Hayato has a baby.
It's Tsucchi who tells him. There is some veiled accusation in his tone, but he is Tsucchi and everything is fine as long as his fan isn't pointed at Ryu's chest. The fact his hair is gently framing his face makes him less menacing than the spike-headed punk that towered above everyone in high school.
"Saya is three months old, Ryu."
Ryu wants to laugh, he really wants to.
Instead, he asks for Hayato's address.
+
The slowing footsteps give him away. His hands, thrust deep inside his coat pockets, feel cold and clammy, fingers numb; he wishes he wasn't wearing gloves so he could at least feel the skin of his fingers touching. A tall two-headed figure appears at the end of the hallway dragging two bags with it, and stops two meters away from the doorstep Ryu has been staring at, willing it to miraculously open.
"Odagiri."
It's like conjuring his father. And maybe that's how Ryu looks now. Old and stoic and all costumed up in a clean-cut suit that feels itchy around the edges, on his elbows and behind his knees. He came straight from work and it's cold.
"Yabuki."
Nostalgia washes over him as they stare in silence; it leaves his skin dry and a metallic taste on his tongue. He feels restricted, chest tightening. Static sounds echo around him and Hayato is not moving.
Then the second head moves and babbles, and it all snaps. Hayato hurries to the door, goes inside.
He doesn't close it behind him, so Ryu follows.
+
"She's asleep," is the second thing Hayato says to him that night. This is unfamiliar, the stiffness in his back. Ryu moves awkwardly when Hayato passes by him, like he's been burned, and Hayato avoids a glance that is both questioning and stroppy.
Ryu peeks inside the darkened bedroom. There's a bundle of pink blankets inside a fortress made of pillows in the middle of the futon, and it doesn't make much sense how Hayato is so gentle when he tugs on her blankets. There is softness to his movements that wasn't there before.
Not that Ryu would know.
Hayato shifts between watching the kettle, dishevelling his hair, and staring at the spot on the floor Ryu has settled on, like Ryu would jump up and steal something before running off. The last time Ryu saw him, his hair was longer and untamed, not this light, barely hiding Hayato's neckline and the rigid set of his spine as he taps fingers on the counter.
He says thanks for the cup of tea when Hayato sits in front of him, and wants to snort about what a good host he has become.
Hayato stares.
"So you're back."
Ryu swallows. Like a bomb dropping on a rice field in the middle of the night. And Hayato never stops staring.
The laughter startles him.
"You bastard, you should've told me sooner," he tells him, and Ryu doesn't get it, how Hayato is laughing without laughter, and saying they ought to celebrate. It's simple and tempting to curl his mouth up in a smile, neither fight nor question but shrug it off, say he's been back for less than a week and Tsucchi was the only one who'd kept the same phone number.
(He doesn't say Tsucchi is the only one he contacted, and Hayato's eyes tell him he sees through the lie, but Hayato doesn't call him on it)
And it's easy, so easy, to play the fool and smile; eat combini bentos under their hushed slanted conversation and drink the cheap beer Hayato keeps in his small fridge. He enjoys it, the fleeting moment where Hayato is content just eating, and Ryu is a regular teacher back from grad school, and everything is bright and funny, sugar-coated and warmly fragile.
"Back for good or just -?"
"I'm teaching here this year," Ryu replies, and it could mean anything. That's why he's all dressed up, he wants to add. That's why he has a suit, feet clad in polished black leather shoes and hair cut, unbleached, and combed. Ryu looks older than Hayato, in his worn-out trousers and large navy sweater.
He feels ancient.
"An all-boys high school. Ryujin."
Hayato chuckles, relaxing slightly. "3D?"
Ryu smiles, pushes the asparagus and tomatoes neatly out of his box. "Almost. 2D."
It is too comfortable to play pretend and remember when they were the kids, when they spent hours sitting around playing Tekken on Ryu's old console. He pretends it doesn't sink low in his stomach, seeing the lines of politeness on Hayato's face that were never there before.
He leaves when they run out of beer and memories that are only happy. Hayato fakes a yawn, too large, too loud (because Hayato may think otherwise but his acting is crap), and that is Ryu's cue to leave.
"It was good to see you."
Hayato nods. "You too."
On his way to the station, Ryu replays that last look in the genkan again and again and again. His hands are colder and clammier, stomach tied in heavy knots; he keeps seeing relief.
+
The first punch had hurt. Never as much as his chest being torn apart, but Hayato packed a mean punch. His father's words buzzed in his mind, clear and cold. "A fight seems more important than you, I see," he had said, and Ryu flinched because he didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to think about it, even though this was his father and he'd never get it.
"Those are your friends".
It was not by chance he found Frentzen.
Ryu had wanted to fill his mind with something. Otherwise, all he saw were two little kids with huge overused markers, milkshakes split in two tiny cups, and a white sheet of paper where a scrawny Ryu was holding hands with a (rather disproportionately) tall Hayato, huge toothy grins on both their faces. Hayato had said they would be friends forever; that nothing in the world would ever, ever, tear them apart.
That was the first broken promise that hurt.
+
He really thought he wouldn't hear from Hayato again for a long time. Stupid confusing hard-to-deal-with Hayato whom he'd last spoken to years ago, before barging on his place with combini bento and stories that were never told.
"You're such a bastard," slurs the voice on the phone. "You- fuck, jerk, leaving like that. You- I hate you. Asshole."
Ryu is paralyzed.
He only hangs up after the dial tone has been beeping for a while.
+
"Isn't she the cutest?!" coos Take over the baby's bassinet, out of place with the cans of beer open in front of them. Her name is Saya, but Ryu's mind keeps calling her the baby, as if that would put a barrier between them. A part of Hayato's life he doesn't want to comment on nor deal with; like Take's girlfriends he used to barely tolerate. Or Hyuuga's hideous shirts.
Only she is a little baby girl, and Ryu knows he is being irrational.
Tsucchi bumps against his side when he moves; no one pays attention to the beer sloshed on Ryu's pants.
"She's grown so much, Hayato," he says. Her hands look like a doll's; fingers wrapped tightly around one of Tsucchi's, but can't yet close completely around it. Take bats his hands in front of her, willing her to grab his fingers too.
Hayato preens.
Ryu sits there awkwardly, in silence, playing with the can of beer dangling from his hand. It goes unnoticed because it has always been like this; his quiet unassuming presence in the middle of the entire hubbub. But it has never felt like this before. This detachment. He almost wants to thank Hayato (Take, not Hayato; it was Take who invited him) and go home.
Tsucchi plays with a stuffed duck, making silly face as it flies above the bassinet, and Take's baby talk starts to drill through his brain like a high-pitched scream directly in his ears when Hayato stands and goes to get the takoyaki leftovers. He doesn't realize it's Saya who wails until Hayato rushes back and pushes him further to the side to pick her up, brow furrowed in concern. "Hey, baby, what's wrong?"
Ryu is tempted to move further away, but she opens her eyes. Large and brown and baby-like, looking straight at him. Ryu feels, more than sees, four pairs of eyes on him in the middle of the sudden careful silence, Saya's teary wails reduced to nothing but big-eyed curiosity pinning him down all the way from Hayato's arms.
Ryu squirms.
She giggles. And bounces a little. Her chubby hand jerks against Hayato's jawbone.
"Mouuu・girls always like Ryu the most!"
They laugh, and ignore Hayato's complaints, how he moves and Saya loses sight of Ryu (and groanwails until he's back in her sight). Tsucchi pokes his shoulder, tells Take not to despair, that he has a wife. Ryu focuses on the pocketsize human in Hayato's arms, covered in a blue onesie with bright red trucks; there's a spit bubble at the corner of her mouth. It pops.
He snorts, but he's smiling.
She giggles again.
+
If Hayato wants to play pretend, Ryu is fine with that.
He used to think, back in Vancouver, and especially during particularly bad snowstorms, that he should call. He tried not to think of the irony, the years spent fighting with all his might to stay as far away from Canada as possible and then how he'd latched onto the opportunity; tried not to think of his father's surprised (but approving) face when he mentioned it, or his mom's soft smile, and how she used to smooth his hair when it was bedtime and tell him she and his father knew better, always did.
Instead, he'd focused on his reasons, but the need was still there, titillating and exploding. He'd brave the wind outside and find a convenience store that sold long distance phonecards, nose red and ears hurting behind the snow mask. Back in his shared apartment, he'd tuck his legs under himself on the sofa, fingers playing with the phone cord of the old landline they had there. When he was feeling braver, he would get as a far as entering the code and phone number. The call had gone through just once・
・straight to a voicemail.
(He'd never considered time zones, given the fickle nature of the calls)
Ryu never really admitted it, but there were times the ache had been like a hollow pitch in his stomach that he'd filled with Coronas and Marlboros and Kitkats; and typing emails that remained stuck on his draft box.
That hollow pitch had turned into a huge black hole he'd satiated with memories during forlorn wintry nights. He would dream of sitting in that patch of grass those rare times it was just the two of them, where Hayato had allowed himself to mourn his mom and Ryu had admitted it was his dad's fingers imprinted on his cheek; where they first made plans to move in together after graduation, and Ryu would go to college and Hayato would get a job at Kuma's and become honorary chef (or employee of the month).
He'd always woken up drenched in cold sweat, and with a wider dark gap in the middle of his chest.
It was the worst fucking time of his life.
+
Take emailed him about Hayato's wedding.
He never got an invitation.
+
Ryu came back in July. It was ridiculously hot. And nothing was the same.
+
It's a couple of days after, while he's planning a math lesson on square roots and imaginary numbers, that his phone vibrates on his study desk. Ryu keeps his books sprawled on the floor because it's easier to focus when his desk is clear and tidy, and having his everyday work there would mean a constant eye-level mess. He piles them up underneath once he's done, chair hiding them from view, and works lying on his futon, pens and markers and post-it notes scattered, a habit he picked up when Matt-the-roommate started an internship at 3M and got a ridiculous amount of free notepads.
"Hey," Hayato's voice says. There's the sound of a door and microwave buttons, and Saya jabbers nonsense in the background; Hayato must be making her formula. He hesitates, but Ryu waits patiently. Hayato used to call without being sure whether he had something to say or not, and Ryu had learned to keep the phone close even when it was silent and expectant.
"Sa-chan seemed to like you, so・
Ryu doesn't ask whether Hayato feels the same way. Still feels the same way.
He nods in understanding. "Is Friday okay?"
The beep of the microwave is louder than Hayato's silence, or else he's just distracted while balancing the phone and Saya and a bottle of formula because it sounds like he dropped the phone.
"Yes," comes a bit later, kind of hurried and distant. Ryu is probably on speaker now. "I have to pick her up from Taku's, but we could have lunch?"
"We could, yes."
Ryu can't focus on complex numbers after that.
+
Complex numbers are stupid anyway.
+
He asks for the afternoon off that Friday because he forgot he does have a full-time job now. The director frowns upon him, the new teacher that is far too young and doesn't wear formal suits but sweaters and boots; who looks 22 when he's nearing 30, and just came back from overseas with a diploma that says he ought to be paid more while he experiments with all these 'new' methods that are borderline outside the curricula of a pretty plain high school math class.
She grudgingly agrees when he says he only has hallway duty and that Megumi-san volunteered to cover for him.
(The director frowns deeper and mumbles, annoyed, about doting teachers and responsibilities and how Ryu shouldn't get used to this. Ryu takes it in solemn silence because he has learned that there are fights not worth fighting if he has already won what matters.)
He stops by a store on his way to Hayato's. He grimaces at his account balance, but still gets veggies and noodles and some kind of meat he finds on sale. Beers, too. There is a tiny store hidden between a large boutique and a corporative-looking building. The girl behind the counter seems more focused on her idol magazine than the customers, unplugged from the world with her ear buds in, so it takes Ryu three tries to steal her attention from the glittery pop idols she's scanning. Grudgingly, she stands up and grabs the item from the window case, wraps it up in brown crinkly paper, and Ryu side eyes the blue string she ties it with but thinks it may be counterproductive to ask for another one.
Laden with bags and boxes on Hayato's doorstep, he almost turns around.
"You arrived," Hayato greets. He seems surprised Ryu is there, and his expression matches Ryu's in his shock. Ryu hasn't seen Hayato's hair clipped back in over ten years.
"What's all that?"
Ryu shifts, shuffling out of his shoes as Hayato takes the bag with the veggies. "Food," he replies, shoves the brown paper package with the sketchy blue string at Hayato's chest. "This is for her."
It's light, and Ryu stops feeling like an idiot when Hayato grins, hovering above Saya's pack-and-play, and telling her "uncle Ryu brought her a present".
Ryu hears the paper tearing up while he stacks the beers in the fridge, and Hayato ignores him in favour of Saya's delighted giggles. She's too tiny yet, too fragile, and drools and babbles nonsense, but her little arms packed with baby fat weave in the air where the turtle plushie flies above her.
She gurgles, and closes her fist on the tail.
"It's safe," Ryu explains when three quarters of turtle nose end up in Saya's mouth. "I checked."
Hayato nods. His eyes are soft, little wrinkles around his eyes smoothed out in a way that is still unfamiliar for Ryu. He only spares him a glance, murmurs, "Thank you," and it's still awkward, maybe, but not so much. Not anymore.
+
To be honest, Ryu wouldn't mind being uncle Ryu.
+
They aren't done yet when Saya demands to be carried out of the pack-and-play. It has a removable bassinet and a changer and musical mobile figures on top. Hayato mentions he bought it at some sketchy place where foreigners get rid of things before leaving the country. It's second-hand, but in a good enough condition and all Saya has in the place, furniture-wise. Hayato's bedroom though is packed with large diaper bags and piles of pastel garments and clean cotton towels and bedsheets and pillowcases.
She wails loud enough to startle them both and Hayato picks her up, pressing his hollow, pale face to the baby's cheek. He pats and coos at her, looks gentler than he's ever looked.
There's a softness in his hands that reminds Ryu of Hayato's mom.
Saya is some months old; and has fat little cheeks and fat tiny arms and legs and toes that look like a doll's. A miniature version of what Hayato could've been as a baby, and she looks like him, vaguely. Ryu never knew her mom, but hopes she takes after her dad. She has large avid eyes that stare intensely at everything.
Except when Ryu is around. Then, she only stares at him.
"Told you," Hayato snickers casually. He comes closer and Ryu's stomach tightens. "Hold her?"
It's like carrying a crystal doll packed in water balloons. Ryu doesn't know where or how to hold her and Hayato laughs at him, moves his hand to the back of her neck and the small of her back, and Ryu stops holding his breath when Saya doesn't seem about to slip from his hands and twist away to the floor like a slinky. She grips his shirt instinctively, probably feeling Ryu's incompetence in baby carrying, and Ryu brushes the thin hair at the base of her neck, feels the soft skin and the warm dribble that falls on his shoulder.
He looks up, and Hayato is staring. His eyes, for once, disclose nothing.
"I didn't know you were this bad with babies."
Ryu scowls.
(He's not really angry)
+
Weeks go by and Ryu goes from school to his one room apartment to school again the next day. He eyes his phone and jumps with each call, expectation pooling like an obnoxious poking stomach bug. He gets a message from Take once saying he's sitting for Saya-chan on a Friday night (sHE IS SOOoo cute >__< <33333333!!!!!!!) and Ryu is in an awful mood all weekend because Take is old and still texts like a 15 year-old bimbo, and Hayato didn't call him and went out and left Saya with Take and his wife when she obviously would've preferred to stay with Ryu.
Then he gets mad for getting mad about that.
He makes a pretty impossible test for that Monday, which 80% of the class fails, and ends up taking home almost 20 optional essays on angles and Cartesian planes and things he hates. It's all Hayato's fault.
+
It's Sunday and his head throbs. The izakaya pub last night had been unavoidable, one of those times he wasn't fast enough to decline his co-workers' insistence with a quick-witted excuse. He'd ended up numbing himself with sake to the impossibly dull chitchat and gossip about students and staff and future plans he had no intention being a part of.
He groans again and rolls over, a sharp ringing drilling inside his head, and dully remembers taking a cab home with another teacher (Sakamoto-san?) and being helped up the stairs. He doesn't remember anything past the foyer and would've cursed, but that damned ringing slices through his brain again.
Hayato looks angry.
"What is the matter with you?!" he demands as soon as he crosses the genkan. His voice is too loud, so loud Vancouver Matt probably heard him, so Ryu closes his eyes and leans against the wall.
Hayato huffs. "You reek of alcohol."
Ryu groans again, fingers pressing on the arch of his nose, for a moment cursing Hayato's Father of the Year tone. It's such a bizarre situation he would laugh if his skull weren't threatening to split in half at the thought.
"Let me shower," he mumbles, and maybe it's his voice, hoarse and miserable, that makes Hayato nod with pursed lips and plop down on the dining room floor.
The shower helps a bit. At least he doesn't feel disgusting anymore.
"Here," Hayato hands him a mug of coffee and his stomach twists. Coffee doesn't sit well with him and hangovers; he needs rice and water, and maybe some really cold Coke, but he still takes a sip from it. The acrid taste makes him frown, and Hayato glares at his disgusted face when he pushes the coffee across the counter and as far away from him as possible.
He doesn't stop the glowering.
"What?" Ryu asks.
It's too early for this.
"What do you mean what?" Hayato snaps. More like explodes. Ryu is scared he may actually need to argue. "You vanished, you jerk."
Ryu lowers his gaze and it makes his brain press against the front of his skull. It hurts, but it's better.
"For two fucking years. Gone. From the face of the Earth- what the fuck, Ryu?!"
It cuts so deep he cringes. Ryu sighs audibly, shaky, and rests his face on the balls of his hands, elbows set on the counter.
"What do you want, Hayato?"
Hayato's glare only intensifies.
"An explanation. Obviously."
Ironic, that the one thing he can't explain comes rushing to smack him in the face.
"You got married-"
"You VANISHED."
Ryu grunts, scrunches up his shoulders as if making himself tiny enough would help him disappear. It's hard to explain how he had needed that, a trip to neverwhere when he touched a wall; no family, no friends, no undesirable feelings or thoughts. That scholarship had been a lifesaver in the middle of an open sea storm that no one had seemed to spot.
"What happened?" Hayato presses, and Ryu feels cornered even though Hayato hasn't moved an inch. "What was so bad? Why did I never hear a word about it?"
"It- I don't know," he starts, and he's honest, but Hayato flares up again. "But not you. It was not you."
There is something that makes Ryu scared of Hayato sometimes, of what flashes behind his eyes that unveils everything he is capable of. Which is silly, because Ryu can match that and more, but Ryu doesn't lie to himself nowadays. Hayato shouldn't be scary to him; not junior high scary anymore. He also shouldn't look as if he'll throw himself across the table and either strangle or ravish him.
He does neither.
Instead, he draws a large intake of breath, too big and too loud, like he wants to empty and replace himself with air. His hand is trembling when he stands up and walks to Ryu's tiny balcony full of drying laundry.
"You're a bastard, you know that."
Ryu nods, because he is and he knows it. Hayato isn't looking at him though; he sits on the balcony floor and Ryu brings his legs closer to his chest to warm himself up. He stares at the street below, at the smoke outlined against the greying morning as Hayato lights up the first cigarette.
They haven't shared one in ages.
+
If someone asked Ryu to describe their relationship, Hayato and Ryu, he would say quiet. It sounds like a joke, with how loud and boisterous Hayato can be, but Ryu knows better.
He is thinking along the lines of their usual rendezvous, way more frequent back when Ryu was in college and Hayato only had to worry about himself and his third of the expenses at home. How they consisted of sitting close and sharing extended silences while they drank the pineapple Calpis Hayato was obsessed with. It has always been about patting his back without being told to, or backing each other up in mindless fights. It was like that before Hayato was bullied, became a bully, and especially after Yabuki-mama died. He remembers the full body warmth, and how it became the warmth he compares all warmth to. That clingy hug with Hayato after running out onto the street, to the spot she used to bring them to collect snails when they'd just met and she was wearing that beautiful bright floral dress that made her the most beautiful and perfect and coolest mom in the whole world (she was always like that no matter which dress she wore, but Ryu thought she looked especially awesome in it).
Ryu's mom had understood his distress, but his father had thought it stupid, a kid's thing, worrying over other's tragedies that had nothing to do with them.
(His father was so evil back then)
They had hugged, Hayato clutching Ryu's shirt like a drowning man, and Ryu had cried soundlessly on Hayato's shoulder.
They don't talk about it.
They don't talk about a lot of things. But a small touch on the inside of his wrist, a hand on his elbow, a sustained gaze-
It used to be enough.
+
"What happened?"
Ryu raises his head. He's been lying on his floor, curled up near the kotatsu now because it got chilly.
"To us?" Hayato adds and looks down at him from his place on the balcony. He's on his third cigarette and Ryu wants to ask if this is because he can't smoke around Saya. He shakes his head when Hayato extends it toward him. "We used to be Hayato and Ryu."
"Now we're Hayato・and Ryu," Hayato adds.
Ryu chuckles softly, but Hayato's face is solemn and quite upset. His face is curled in an angry grimace, and Ryu smiles, salty and sad. Hayato turns to him again; it's fierce and it chills him. Ryu sighs.
And just like that, Hayato puffs his cheeks, nostrils flaring, and a dead tense silence falls over both of them. The dim light colours them purple and orange, and Ryu sees Hayato's grip tighten on his arm, wonders if it'll leave angry, reddening crescent marks on his skin. His sweater looks very thick though.
When Hayato turns again, he looks deflated and blue, and Ryu pushes up on his left arm.
"An entire decade・ he mumbles. Then he laughs, breathy, sans humour. "Yankumi would be ashamed."
Ryu smirks. It's bittersweet but it closes the cycle. Words remain unsaid, but this time, they both get it.
+
There used to be a small spot of grass behind some large water containers that was perfect for looking over everything without being disturbed. Ivy had crawled up the concrete structures and kept it mostly hidden and much like a real hideout.
Ryu goes there, wonders if it's still there, and gasps in delight when it is. He doesn't care about his trousers getting grass stained, and sits there, thinking. Wondering. He remembers the five of them here, ditching classes and smoking cigarettes they could get because they were so cool, and drinking the beer Hyuuga managed to sneak out of his house. How different they were from those other times, when he'd lain with Hayato in absolute silence.
It was some time after Kudo's mess that they had come together, alone, and sat here; elbows on knees, exhaustion and relief tightly entwined in their bellies. Hayato's fingertips were sudden, feathery light on his spine. He didn't look at Ryu, and Ryu never really turned to look back at him lying on the grass beside, but the memory of warm spots on his back is clear and heavily imprinted on his mind, and comes fleeting and vivid when he thinks of warm, and calm, and safe.
Three wuthering lines along the bare skin at the small of his back, and Hayato's steady breathing, the smell of grass mingling with the moist scent of morning dew, and the blinding light of the sun despite being quite cold.
Ryu lies back on the grass now, extends a hand over the empty patch of grass on his left. And wishes Hayato were there.
+
It becomes a pattern.
After Hayato walks out of Ryu's that day to pick up Saya from Taku's, and Ryu doesn't hear from them for a couple of weeks. Saya is so much bigger when he sees her again, he wants to complain about it, but what is that, really (and who is he to complain)? She doesn't seem to recognize him at first, just as Hayato laughs at his shorter hair.
"School regulations," Ryu grunts, fingers self-consciously moving up to touch the shorter locks curling near his ear.
Hayato smirks. "Since when do you follow school regulations?"
Ryu snorts. He thinks about Yankumi and stuff.
"Since they pay me for it."
And before Hayato launches into an indignant speech, he makes sure to entertain himself with Saya and her newly acquired toy snake. She seems to love it, though whether that's due to the bright colours or how it twists all awkward and jerky when she shakes it around is a mystery.
Ryu still stops by the grocery store, and Hayato makes Saturdays their day. Then, it's also Tuesdays and sometimes Thursdays because he lost one of his part-time jobs and Ryu doesn't have to be in school so late into the afternoon (Hayato denies this and insists he quit, but Ryu catches him frowning at the bills and scrawling sloppy numbers with red ink on the envelopes; numbers 1 and 3 had been taken care of, but there were still a couple pending). Ryu rearranges his own budget; sometimes, on Tuesdays, he buys enough to last until he comes back on Saturdays.
It is an odd pattern because they never discuss it. Ever. And Ryu doesn't want them to. He's tired, and Hayato seems content, Saya on his knee, arms spread out like a plane while she giggles and kicks the air beneath her feet.
As he sits down, latex gloves now near the sink, he frowns at the tiny speakers near the pair and hopes Hayato will get the message. There's a demented song looping on the player because some lady in a second-hand store told them it was some kind of program for child stimulation.
"It only stimulates suicidal tendencies," Hayato huffs. And puts on some idol band that, for Ryu, sounds exactly the same.
+
Ryu watches Hayato curl up in the futon around Saya, a huge round lump of faded green cuddling a freshly soft fluffy white bundle with yellow and pink dots. She is asleep, but her face is turned towards Hayato, her little fists close to her chest even though her body is slightly turned. There's a trail of drool on Hayato's left cheek and Ryu laughs softly.
When he grabs Saya, is Hayato who stirs and wakes up, instantly alert.
"It's me," Ryu whispers, and smiles when Saya curls in on herself in his arms. She doesn't wake up, nor does Hayato move.
"Tired?" Ryu doesn't ask, but Hayato squeezes his eyes tights before stretching. He doesn't need to ask.
"I'm exhausted," he puffs out and bonelessly rolls onto his back. The futon is for two; that's Saya and Hayato. Ryu feels like he's intruding, even though it was Hayato who opened the door.
"How were your kids?"
Someone had set fire to a notebook in the back, broken a window during lunch and he found a large obscene chalk drawing on the board. "The same," he mutters, because they were not as wild as they once were; his kids were just immature, not unnecessary active. They were too lazy to be delinquents.
Hayato sneers. And it's like a night at his dad's again, when Ryu sneaked through the window and they snuggled on Hayato's tiny futon. Back then, it wasn't as warm though, he didn't have a soft bundle breathing against his collarbone.
When fingers stretch to brush over the tiny tresses of hair, they brush Ryu's jaw, innocently. Hayato doesn't seem to notice.
It definitely wasn't as warm back then.
+
It's an emergency, he says. His shift was changed last minute and no one can take care of Saya and it's Friday so Ryu doesn't have to wake up early the next day.
Ryu doesn't think twice (and it's not like he has time to before Hayato hangs up). He feels oddly satisfied that he won't be getting Take's emoji-infested texts on how cute Saya is during his sessions as self-appointed Master of Babysitters.
(In a normal world, no 30 year-old would boast about that, but this is Take and Ryu and Hayato, and competition is always more important than what it is they're competing over)
Saya has wispy black hair so thin she looks bald. Ryu imagines she'd look cute with scrunchies and headbands and Take's barrettes. Hayato thinks she's the cutest bald baby in the world. They both buy her beanies and knitted hats until she has a small tiny pile of pastel-coloured headwear on top of Hayato's dresser. Ryu eyes the basket with freshly washed pocket-sized onesies and makes a tiny pyramid on top out of the tiny folded socks he's rolling into tiny cotton balls. Saya is fast asleep on his chest.
He falls asleep without noticing.
Hours later, his eyes feel heavy. There's an opaque cold light glowing behind the too-thin curtains of Hayato's bedroom, and a warmth in the middle of his chest that surrounds him with a sweet peachy scent as soon as he breathes in. There's another, larger, presence beside him; Hayato's hair tickles his jaw, because it's long again and he doesn't tie it up when he sleeps. His arm is heavy over Ryu's stomach, but his fingers curl delicately around one of Saya's cotton-clad feet, thumb moving soothingly up and down, sliding against Ryu's belly sometimes, fleetingly.
Ryu squirms, pretends to wake up, and Hayato stirs. His hand moves up to rub circles on Saya's back and only then, Ryu dares to open one eye.
A definitely gross shabby Hayato smirks sloppily at him, still a little sleepy.
" 'morning," he mumbles half into the pillows.
And Ryu is back in free-fall again.
+
Ryu levels Hayato with a glare. The hell was that? is what he's aiming to get across.
Hayato's wide eyes seem not to understand what tiny scrawny Ryu is so horrified about, because he keeps saying it was only tongue in cheek and friends do it all the time, he's seen it on TV, and Ryu "is so dumb".
They're 11. And they are starting to get love letters; scraps of paper with pink and red scribbles from girls that have pretty ponytails, whose voices Ryu can't remember nor can he recognize. Hayato's mom, according to Hayato, told him that once you have those special rings, the love letters will stop, and so 穆ince Ryu could very well do without them- he agrees.
He's not so sure anymore.
It's not long before they both notice how their pinky rings don't stop the letters. Hayato insists they must have done something wrong because Hayato's mama is wise and perfect and she shows them an old and painfully boring VCR.
(Ryu wants to say Yabuki-mama looks like a princess, but he doesn't want Hayato to mock him for it.)
They notice their mistake though; and decide to try again.
Ryu closes his eyes and concentrates, really concentrates, on the super special powers their rings should have (because Yabuki-mama also talked about support and love and tons of other warm pretty things Ryu heard about in movies and felt when she patted his head after he'd helped her set the table, while Hayato chased Taku around trying put a stocking on his head, because he wanted to see how Taku would look bald).
Then Hayato's lips touch his. And he loses all focus. There is nothing but a large white buzzing, and Hayato's lips are feathery light, barely, barely there, and everything is yucky and stupid all of a sudden.
The rings never work. Hayato is mad at his mom for days.
Ryu never tells him it's his fault they don't have super magical rings. Instead, he hides the letters he finds on his desk or in Hayato's locker, until Hayato thinks they have some power after all and makes Ryu promise to never, ever, take his off.
+
Ryu never does. But he exchanges it for a larger one when his hands are not an 11 year-old's anymore.
(He still keeps that first one.)
+
"Your dad got married," Ryu mutters.
He's looking down at Saya, sleeping peacefully on the futon. She's all wrapped up in that Doraemon blanket Hayato found on an old part-time job housekeeping at a hotel. It was forgotten and unclaimed ("and clean! I washed it twice!"). It's all blue and red and yellow, and the only bright colourful spot in the otherwise pale messy bedroom. Saya is clutching her turtle plushie by the neck because her hands are not so tiny anymore, only chubby, and the nose is oddly discoloured in patches where the fabric has given out under the relentless drool attacks. Saya sighs, low and wheezy, head turning into the fist trapping the toy; Ryu strokes her back until she settles again.
"I did," comes from the door. It startles Ryu. Hayato's arms are crossed, his face obscure with the contrast of the brightly lit room behind him. "You weren't there."
You weren't here, is what Ryu hears.
His face is all kinds of soft when he pushes himself off the doorframe, and crouches next to Ryu.
"Not invited," Ryu whispers, and arranges the pillows around her. Hayato gives him a look Ryu ignores, and rubs his temples. "I'm going," he mutters.
It has a sense of finality, as it ought to, only it feels wrong. But Ryu has an apartment that is not this one but a larger one, without strewn cubes and half-chewed turtles and giraffes and baby seals in the dining room. One so cold and empty he dreads, but owns, and it's like Hayato's has come to mean 'home' all over again.
"You could stay," Hayato murmurs back in the genkan, back to the wall, crossed arms over his chest and sounding too casual to be casual.
Ryu turns with an incredulous eyebrow arched, and reaches for the doorknob, but Hayato stops him. His presence lingers heavily on Ryu's back, his breath warm and nervous on his neck, and Ryu feels the weight of the words as Hayato presses his forehead to Ryu's hair. Hayato's hand doesn't move from the door; keeping it locked like everything else around them.
"You should stay," Hayato repeats.
Ryu sees the downward spiral in front of him, but pushes lightly against Hayato's chest and, for a second, he is not free-falling anymore.
+
Part 2