For ohnaganoes
For: ohnaganoes
From: ltgmars
Title: Bootcamp
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Kamisen friendship, mentions of Tonisen and some others
Warnings: Awkward teenager (just one).
Summary: Okada's a new cadet at the Kitagawa Police Academy. He makes friends but has trouble really feeling like he fits in.
Notes: This is, in my mind, a high school/SP friendship fic, but it's neither high school nor SP. I hope you enjoy it! ♥ Thank you to the mod for being so incredible during this process. It was lots of fun to be here for the inaugural run. :D
Okada had always had romantic notions about what dorm life would be like. He'd walk into his room for the first time and be greeted by a friendly face, a warm handshake, a calming voice that would help suppress his urge to vomit his nerves all over the floor. There'd be a quick introduction and an easy friendship that would settle into place right away. Okada would coast through the rest of the year knowing he had someone there looking out for him, and they'd hang out and play games and maybe study now and then when they felt like it. It'd be comfortable and perfectly at ease, and he wouldn't have to tell his parents that he'd made the wrong decision in coming, because his roommate would be there to make him feel like everything was just right.
The face that actually greets him when he gets to his room isn't particularly friendly. It does a poor job of greeting him in the first place, turned toward the far wall and peering into a cell phone screen.
"Weren't we supposed to keep our personal effects in our lockers?" Okada mumbles from the doorway, just loud enough for his new roommate to start pressing the keys harder. "Oh, sorry. I'm just not sure."
The other boy doesn't respond.
Okada walks toward the unoccupied side of the room and surveys his living space: a simple desk and chair setup, a lamp, a dresser, and a firm-looking bed with perfectly folded hospital corners, which he drops his duffel bag onto. "My name is Okada Junichi," Okada says as he turns to his roommate, making the decision to be friendly even if it's a one-sided affair.
"Ah." Click-click-click.
Okada nods at the floor, feeling awkward and out of place and the tiniest bit nauseated. Just as he's bending his knees to sit on his bed, probably the only place he'll ever feel at home in that room, the door bursts open and suddenly everything's as loud and fast as Okada's heart rate.
"Oi, want to check out the grounds in a bit?" the newcomer says, crushing Okada's fragile uncertain atmosphere with a sledgehammer of bright noise. He catches Okada's eye and grins. "You weren't being unfriendly with your roommate, were you?" he says without breaking eye contact, still addressing his friend.
"No," Okada's roommate says, a pout in his voice. Okada's eyes flick toward him and then back at the newcomer.
"You'll have to excuse him. He looks like a punk, but he's actually really shy."
Okada nods slowly.
"At ease, cadet. Decide whether you want to sit or stand. Don't squat in limbo like you're going to shit on your own bed."
Okada's roommate snickers, and Okada drops to his butt, his duffel bag hopping with the weight of his body. The newcomer laughs a stuttering laugh that makes Okada's stomach flip, and it makes him want to throw up all over again.
"What's your name anyway?"
"Okada Junichi," Okada's roommate responds with a nod at his phone, closing it and finally turning his attention to the others in the room. "I'm Morita Go. And this is --"
"Miyake Ken," Morita's friend says, smiling and extending a hand.
"-- the biggest pain in the ass you'll ever know."
Miyake swats at Morita's head and Okada chuckles, finally comfortable enough for it, extending his own hand in greeting. "Nice to meet you, Miyake-kun."
*
The Kitagawa Police Academy is the best in Tokyo. With a perfect combination of state-of-the-art classroom equipment and old-fashioned sweat and tears, cadets go in soft and come out hard, chiseled bodies and minds ready to protect the streets of Japan.
Okada doesn't have anything chiseled in his life, with the exception of a wood-carved bear he'd received from a mysterious man and dreams of becoming a Security Police officer.
"I want to do that," he'd said to himself while watching a television drama, the main character twisting through an intricately choreographed fight scene. "I want to protect people."
The first person he'd start with, in theory, would be himself, but it's hard when the people he has to protect himself from are the ones he's gotten stuck being friends with.
Okada knows he's in trouble as soon as they walk into their homeroom together and the homeroom teacher lets out the longest, most anguished sigh he's heard since his own that morning, when Miyake had jumped onto his bed to wake him up for class. "Why are you always in here?" Okada had wailed, pushing Miyake away with flimsy arms.
"Because Go's here, and my roommate's weird."
The weird one, Okada imagines, is the one getting wary glances from the teacher as they walk toward their row of desks at the center of the classroom.
"Did you do something to him?" Okada whispers curiously, taking his seat. "Already?"
"Ken's done lots of things to him," Go answers with a grin. "We all grew up in the same neighborhood and used to hang out together."
Ken flops his wrist dismissively. "I didn't do anything bad. He was actually the mastermind most of the time."
Okada nods, pretending not to be completely overwhelmed and frightened by what assuredly was his new friend group of loan shark yakuza junior henchmen hoping to infiltrate the country's security from the inside. So young to be doing it, too.
"Good morning!" the teacher chimes, a cheerful smile on his face. He doesn't look like a bad guy, which makes things that much worse. The nation will be in need of a strong SP force now more than ever. "I'm Inohara, and I'll be your homeroom teacher for the year." Inohara narrows his eyes at Miyake and then at Morita, and the two curl into their seats, giggling. Completely unsubtle for a yakuza operation.
Inohara starts to explain the training regimen for their year at the academy, and Miyake and Morita get more and more excited at the mention of marksmanship and martial arts, all the skills they'll use to ignite a government implosion. Okada needs to get away from his new friend group real quick.
*
"Okada," Miyake drawls, lying across the spot on the floor that very quickly became "Ken's spot" in Okada's and Go's room. "Teach me a way to remember these historical dates."
Okada shrugs, turning the page in his textbook. He's not very good at teaching people things that come naturally to him. "Teach me how to be better at languages, and maybe I'll consider it."
Miyake narrows his eyes and makes a pensive noise. "It seems we're at an impasse. Go, beat it out of him."
"Wait, what?" Okada stammers, just to be knocked sideways to the floor by a snickering Morita, hands out, ready for a tickle attack.
It had taken a brave proclamation to Miyake and Morita that Okada would block all corruption and a month of subsequent teasing from the not-actually-loan-shark-yakuza-junior-henchmen in question, but Okada was finally convinced that he hadn't actually made friends with the enemy. He couldn't quite call them "harmless", but at least deep down they were good people. Maybe the police force would be secure after all.
It's comfortable where he is, Okada decides when he's returned to the safety of his bed, his stomach aching from laughing too much. He wraps his arms around his pillow and pulls it in close to his body, his eyes indeed sharper and more focused than they were before the academy, scanning the room, analyzing the doofy grins his friends have on their faces.
"Okada, come back down here!" Miyake calls, slapping the floor next to him. Okada shakes his head dramatically and responds that he's safest this way. Who knows what the scary duo have in store for him next?
*
After lunch in the cafeteria every day, they walk past the gym on their way back to the classroom. That's where they usually spot the health instructor and the marksmanship instructor, chattering like old friends as the afternoon settles like a sunbeam around them.
"I'm still amazed that they get along so well," Okada says, shifting his backpack on his shoulders. "Nagano-sensei is so kind, but Sakamoto-sensei is still so scary. The way he watches your every move..."
Morita nods solemnly. "That's why he's the one teaching us about guns," he says as if he really knows. "But maybe he isn't so bad once you get to know him. Like this guy."
Miyake bumps against Morita's shoulder. "Don't say it like that," he whines, clearly embarrassed, "giving me a bad name and everything." They turn down the hall toward their classroom, and Miyake continues his thought. "You're the worst, man, really."
Okada laughs as they make it into their classroom and Morita shoots back a "no, you" that would make any third grader proud. Putting his bag on his desk, Okada realizes that he doesn't necessarily disagree with the assessment -- from either person's perspective -- but he finds himself wishing, just a little bit, that he wasn't the only one without a worst best friend.
*
It's about two months into their year when Okada decides it's time to specialize. The main character in the SP drama looks so buff and fit and attractive -- and many other things Okada is not at his age -- and if Okada wants to be a part of the SP, he has firearms and espionage and a whole slew of training to get through.
He stays late after class one day to consult with Inohara, hoping to find something to be good at, something he can call his own.
"You'd be good at martial arts," Inohara says with a small nod. "Well, you look like you'd be good at anything you try, but you have a low center of gravity, so you should use that balance to your advantage."
Leave it to the kind, non-yakuza homeroom teacher to find something nice to say about something Okada's hated his entire teenage life. Okada nods, considering. The main character in the drama isn't very tall either.
"You'll need to beef up that body of yours, though. SP officers have to endure a lot." A wry grin sneaks onto Inohara's face. "You can imagine why I chose to stay in the classroom."
When Miyake announces that night, like most nights, that he's headed to the gym once they're done with their homework, Okada announces that he's coming with. Morita makes some obnoxious hooting noises about their "gym date" and then about "working up a sweat" and then about "feeling the burn", and Miyake kicks at him where he's still sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed, and Okada's cheeks are sizzling because he didn't ask for any of the teasing, since all he wants is to be able to do more than seven pull-ups.
Okada identifies the other thing that makes him uncomfortable once he's sitting on the bench in front of the mirrored wall in the gym, watching as his hand brings a dumbbell toward his shoulder and back down again. The thing is, if he doesn't even fit into their friendship, how is supposed to take one of them and be more than what the other is? The thought swirls like a rain cloud in his head, but the feeling of the weight in his hand keeps him on the ground, far from the storm. If he can't have a friendship like they do, at least he can improve himself and do what he came here for.
*
Winter comes. The building is cold, and even colder where Okada is, at the gym by himself with the weights. The less time he spends with Morita and Miyake, the less time he has to spend feeling bad about it, and the more time he can spend proving to himself that he'll have everything he wants someday. He tries to be good about it, maintaining a healthy balance between eating and sleeping and studying and exercising just enough to bring up his mood, but he knows it's easier to be in the gym working with his thoughts than it is to be in the room working with a perfectly tuned bicycle that doesn't need a third wheel.
It takes some time before Okada really notices it, if for no other reason than the fact that it's hard to see it in himself when he sees himself every day. But he feels more energetic, loftier, more solid, like he actually has some muscle underneath the skin that had been cobbled together into an awkward body all those years ago. Miyake mentions it one night when they actually overlap, Okada leaving the room as Miyake comes in to study.
"You're getting there, aren't you?" Miyake says, reaching out to squeeze Okada's arm as if he's appraising fabric.
"Ah, thanks," Okada responds, feeling the color spread across his cheeks. "I'm going to ask Yamaguchi-sensei next week if he thinks I'm ready for combat training."
"That's really impressive," Miyake says appreciatively. "You were so small when you came in here."
"You're one to talk," Morita chimes from his desk, shuffling through his study materials to figure out which situation is most dire.
"No, you," Miyake retorts earnestly.
Okada smiles and starts walking out the door. "You two have fun studying without me," he says, and he lets the door close behind him before he has to deal with the thought that they always do.
*
It's still dark when Okada wakes up, the only light around his bed from his digital alarm clock, glowing a bleary white against the world's black, almost as tired as he is. He'll realize later, when he's been up for a minute and his vision is focused and he's less disoriented, that he'd still had four hours before he had to wake up, but his concern at the moment is the suffocating weight of his roommate straddling his chest, slapping him awake.
"What... Morita-kun, what the hell?"
"Thank god. I thought you were dead with the way you were sleeping like that. Come on, we have to talk."
Okada lets himself be dragged up and out of bed, his free arm limp at his side, because Morita doesn't do a lot of the initiating, so the fact that he's started something at gross o'clock in the morning means that he must really be serious. But he draws back as soon as he realizes they're leaving their room. Morita takes a moment to say, impressed, "You really have gotten strong," before he continues his crusade. "Don't be difficult. It's just down the hall."
It's the first time Okada's been to Miyake's room. Morita had visited a handful of times at the beginning of the year, but after a few encounters with Miyake's "weird roommate" of lore, their meeting space was permanently settled.
Morita cracks the door open and peeks in, clearly a schemer at heart if not in practice as much as other people they know. Okada is led in with a hurried nod and a summoning hand, and they tiptoe in the dark to what presumably is Miyake's bed.
Morita clamps his hand over Miyake's mouth suddenly, and Miyake's eyes snap open, a muffled yelp dying down into weak attempts to punch Morita in the face. Miyake recognizes them.
"Go, what the hell?" Miyake gasps when Morita lets him breathe, the sleep in his voice tempering the venom just enough to keep out the bite. Okada understands.
"Good, you're awake."
Even barely conscious, Okada can tell that the look Miyake gives Morita is one of active scorn and not just passive exhaustion.
"Okada, do you know why you're here?" Morita continues.
"Am I joining the yakuza?"
"Why are you here?"
"I thought we could use some fresh perspective," Morita explains.
Across the room, Miyake's roommate growls like he's unrolling the most threatening carpet. "Nagase-kun, sorry," Miyake says, and then his voice pools low in the air between them. "We should leave before we get eaten. Let's go back to our room."
And strangely, suddenly, there in the middle of the night when absolutely nothing makes sense, Okada finds it. That's all the perspective he needs.
Back in their room, Okada sits on his bed, Morita on his, Miyake in his spot on the floor between them, and he realizes what "our room" means to Miyake, and to Morita, too. There are three people and three spaces. It means that whenever Okada's gone, there's an empty space where an awkward young cadet is supposed to be. It means that the other two will be waiting for his return.
Morita looks across the room at Okada, and their eyes meet before Morita smiles. "Feeling better?"
Okada nods. "Yeah, thank you. I'm going to sleep now." He turns toward the wall and wiggles into his sleep cocoon.
"What the hell was that about?"
"Our business is done here. You may go."
Okada hears a gruff sigh and the indignant shuffling of feet. "Seriously, if Nagase-kun kills me in my sleep, Okada's getting my CD player."
The lights go out and the door clicks shut. Okada closes his eyes and snuggles under the covers, letting out a slow, long breath. If an inherited CD player is what it means to be friends, he'll gladly accept it.
From: ltgmars
Title: Bootcamp
Rating: PG
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Kamisen friendship, mentions of Tonisen and some others
Warnings: Awkward teenager (just one).
Summary: Okada's a new cadet at the Kitagawa Police Academy. He makes friends but has trouble really feeling like he fits in.
Notes: This is, in my mind, a high school/SP friendship fic, but it's neither high school nor SP. I hope you enjoy it! ♥ Thank you to the mod for being so incredible during this process. It was lots of fun to be here for the inaugural run. :D
Okada had always had romantic notions about what dorm life would be like. He'd walk into his room for the first time and be greeted by a friendly face, a warm handshake, a calming voice that would help suppress his urge to vomit his nerves all over the floor. There'd be a quick introduction and an easy friendship that would settle into place right away. Okada would coast through the rest of the year knowing he had someone there looking out for him, and they'd hang out and play games and maybe study now and then when they felt like it. It'd be comfortable and perfectly at ease, and he wouldn't have to tell his parents that he'd made the wrong decision in coming, because his roommate would be there to make him feel like everything was just right.
The face that actually greets him when he gets to his room isn't particularly friendly. It does a poor job of greeting him in the first place, turned toward the far wall and peering into a cell phone screen.
"Weren't we supposed to keep our personal effects in our lockers?" Okada mumbles from the doorway, just loud enough for his new roommate to start pressing the keys harder. "Oh, sorry. I'm just not sure."
The other boy doesn't respond.
Okada walks toward the unoccupied side of the room and surveys his living space: a simple desk and chair setup, a lamp, a dresser, and a firm-looking bed with perfectly folded hospital corners, which he drops his duffel bag onto. "My name is Okada Junichi," Okada says as he turns to his roommate, making the decision to be friendly even if it's a one-sided affair.
"Ah." Click-click-click.
Okada nods at the floor, feeling awkward and out of place and the tiniest bit nauseated. Just as he's bending his knees to sit on his bed, probably the only place he'll ever feel at home in that room, the door bursts open and suddenly everything's as loud and fast as Okada's heart rate.
"Oi, want to check out the grounds in a bit?" the newcomer says, crushing Okada's fragile uncertain atmosphere with a sledgehammer of bright noise. He catches Okada's eye and grins. "You weren't being unfriendly with your roommate, were you?" he says without breaking eye contact, still addressing his friend.
"No," Okada's roommate says, a pout in his voice. Okada's eyes flick toward him and then back at the newcomer.
"You'll have to excuse him. He looks like a punk, but he's actually really shy."
Okada nods slowly.
"At ease, cadet. Decide whether you want to sit or stand. Don't squat in limbo like you're going to shit on your own bed."
Okada's roommate snickers, and Okada drops to his butt, his duffel bag hopping with the weight of his body. The newcomer laughs a stuttering laugh that makes Okada's stomach flip, and it makes him want to throw up all over again.
"What's your name anyway?"
"Okada Junichi," Okada's roommate responds with a nod at his phone, closing it and finally turning his attention to the others in the room. "I'm Morita Go. And this is --"
"Miyake Ken," Morita's friend says, smiling and extending a hand.
"-- the biggest pain in the ass you'll ever know."
Miyake swats at Morita's head and Okada chuckles, finally comfortable enough for it, extending his own hand in greeting. "Nice to meet you, Miyake-kun."
*
The Kitagawa Police Academy is the best in Tokyo. With a perfect combination of state-of-the-art classroom equipment and old-fashioned sweat and tears, cadets go in soft and come out hard, chiseled bodies and minds ready to protect the streets of Japan.
Okada doesn't have anything chiseled in his life, with the exception of a wood-carved bear he'd received from a mysterious man and dreams of becoming a Security Police officer.
"I want to do that," he'd said to himself while watching a television drama, the main character twisting through an intricately choreographed fight scene. "I want to protect people."
The first person he'd start with, in theory, would be himself, but it's hard when the people he has to protect himself from are the ones he's gotten stuck being friends with.
Okada knows he's in trouble as soon as they walk into their homeroom together and the homeroom teacher lets out the longest, most anguished sigh he's heard since his own that morning, when Miyake had jumped onto his bed to wake him up for class. "Why are you always in here?" Okada had wailed, pushing Miyake away with flimsy arms.
"Because Go's here, and my roommate's weird."
The weird one, Okada imagines, is the one getting wary glances from the teacher as they walk toward their row of desks at the center of the classroom.
"Did you do something to him?" Okada whispers curiously, taking his seat. "Already?"
"Ken's done lots of things to him," Go answers with a grin. "We all grew up in the same neighborhood and used to hang out together."
Ken flops his wrist dismissively. "I didn't do anything bad. He was actually the mastermind most of the time."
Okada nods, pretending not to be completely overwhelmed and frightened by what assuredly was his new friend group of loan shark yakuza junior henchmen hoping to infiltrate the country's security from the inside. So young to be doing it, too.
"Good morning!" the teacher chimes, a cheerful smile on his face. He doesn't look like a bad guy, which makes things that much worse. The nation will be in need of a strong SP force now more than ever. "I'm Inohara, and I'll be your homeroom teacher for the year." Inohara narrows his eyes at Miyake and then at Morita, and the two curl into their seats, giggling. Completely unsubtle for a yakuza operation.
Inohara starts to explain the training regimen for their year at the academy, and Miyake and Morita get more and more excited at the mention of marksmanship and martial arts, all the skills they'll use to ignite a government implosion. Okada needs to get away from his new friend group real quick.
*
"Okada," Miyake drawls, lying across the spot on the floor that very quickly became "Ken's spot" in Okada's and Go's room. "Teach me a way to remember these historical dates."
Okada shrugs, turning the page in his textbook. He's not very good at teaching people things that come naturally to him. "Teach me how to be better at languages, and maybe I'll consider it."
Miyake narrows his eyes and makes a pensive noise. "It seems we're at an impasse. Go, beat it out of him."
"Wait, what?" Okada stammers, just to be knocked sideways to the floor by a snickering Morita, hands out, ready for a tickle attack.
It had taken a brave proclamation to Miyake and Morita that Okada would block all corruption and a month of subsequent teasing from the not-actually-loan-shark-yakuza-junior-henchmen in question, but Okada was finally convinced that he hadn't actually made friends with the enemy. He couldn't quite call them "harmless", but at least deep down they were good people. Maybe the police force would be secure after all.
It's comfortable where he is, Okada decides when he's returned to the safety of his bed, his stomach aching from laughing too much. He wraps his arms around his pillow and pulls it in close to his body, his eyes indeed sharper and more focused than they were before the academy, scanning the room, analyzing the doofy grins his friends have on their faces.
"Okada, come back down here!" Miyake calls, slapping the floor next to him. Okada shakes his head dramatically and responds that he's safest this way. Who knows what the scary duo have in store for him next?
*
After lunch in the cafeteria every day, they walk past the gym on their way back to the classroom. That's where they usually spot the health instructor and the marksmanship instructor, chattering like old friends as the afternoon settles like a sunbeam around them.
"I'm still amazed that they get along so well," Okada says, shifting his backpack on his shoulders. "Nagano-sensei is so kind, but Sakamoto-sensei is still so scary. The way he watches your every move..."
Morita nods solemnly. "That's why he's the one teaching us about guns," he says as if he really knows. "But maybe he isn't so bad once you get to know him. Like this guy."
Miyake bumps against Morita's shoulder. "Don't say it like that," he whines, clearly embarrassed, "giving me a bad name and everything." They turn down the hall toward their classroom, and Miyake continues his thought. "You're the worst, man, really."
Okada laughs as they make it into their classroom and Morita shoots back a "no, you" that would make any third grader proud. Putting his bag on his desk, Okada realizes that he doesn't necessarily disagree with the assessment -- from either person's perspective -- but he finds himself wishing, just a little bit, that he wasn't the only one without a worst best friend.
*
It's about two months into their year when Okada decides it's time to specialize. The main character in the SP drama looks so buff and fit and attractive -- and many other things Okada is not at his age -- and if Okada wants to be a part of the SP, he has firearms and espionage and a whole slew of training to get through.
He stays late after class one day to consult with Inohara, hoping to find something to be good at, something he can call his own.
"You'd be good at martial arts," Inohara says with a small nod. "Well, you look like you'd be good at anything you try, but you have a low center of gravity, so you should use that balance to your advantage."
Leave it to the kind, non-yakuza homeroom teacher to find something nice to say about something Okada's hated his entire teenage life. Okada nods, considering. The main character in the drama isn't very tall either.
"You'll need to beef up that body of yours, though. SP officers have to endure a lot." A wry grin sneaks onto Inohara's face. "You can imagine why I chose to stay in the classroom."
When Miyake announces that night, like most nights, that he's headed to the gym once they're done with their homework, Okada announces that he's coming with. Morita makes some obnoxious hooting noises about their "gym date" and then about "working up a sweat" and then about "feeling the burn", and Miyake kicks at him where he's still sitting cross-legged at the foot of his bed, and Okada's cheeks are sizzling because he didn't ask for any of the teasing, since all he wants is to be able to do more than seven pull-ups.
Okada identifies the other thing that makes him uncomfortable once he's sitting on the bench in front of the mirrored wall in the gym, watching as his hand brings a dumbbell toward his shoulder and back down again. The thing is, if he doesn't even fit into their friendship, how is supposed to take one of them and be more than what the other is? The thought swirls like a rain cloud in his head, but the feeling of the weight in his hand keeps him on the ground, far from the storm. If he can't have a friendship like they do, at least he can improve himself and do what he came here for.
*
Winter comes. The building is cold, and even colder where Okada is, at the gym by himself with the weights. The less time he spends with Morita and Miyake, the less time he has to spend feeling bad about it, and the more time he can spend proving to himself that he'll have everything he wants someday. He tries to be good about it, maintaining a healthy balance between eating and sleeping and studying and exercising just enough to bring up his mood, but he knows it's easier to be in the gym working with his thoughts than it is to be in the room working with a perfectly tuned bicycle that doesn't need a third wheel.
It takes some time before Okada really notices it, if for no other reason than the fact that it's hard to see it in himself when he sees himself every day. But he feels more energetic, loftier, more solid, like he actually has some muscle underneath the skin that had been cobbled together into an awkward body all those years ago. Miyake mentions it one night when they actually overlap, Okada leaving the room as Miyake comes in to study.
"You're getting there, aren't you?" Miyake says, reaching out to squeeze Okada's arm as if he's appraising fabric.
"Ah, thanks," Okada responds, feeling the color spread across his cheeks. "I'm going to ask Yamaguchi-sensei next week if he thinks I'm ready for combat training."
"That's really impressive," Miyake says appreciatively. "You were so small when you came in here."
"You're one to talk," Morita chimes from his desk, shuffling through his study materials to figure out which situation is most dire.
"No, you," Miyake retorts earnestly.
Okada smiles and starts walking out the door. "You two have fun studying without me," he says, and he lets the door close behind him before he has to deal with the thought that they always do.
*
It's still dark when Okada wakes up, the only light around his bed from his digital alarm clock, glowing a bleary white against the world's black, almost as tired as he is. He'll realize later, when he's been up for a minute and his vision is focused and he's less disoriented, that he'd still had four hours before he had to wake up, but his concern at the moment is the suffocating weight of his roommate straddling his chest, slapping him awake.
"What... Morita-kun, what the hell?"
"Thank god. I thought you were dead with the way you were sleeping like that. Come on, we have to talk."
Okada lets himself be dragged up and out of bed, his free arm limp at his side, because Morita doesn't do a lot of the initiating, so the fact that he's started something at gross o'clock in the morning means that he must really be serious. But he draws back as soon as he realizes they're leaving their room. Morita takes a moment to say, impressed, "You really have gotten strong," before he continues his crusade. "Don't be difficult. It's just down the hall."
It's the first time Okada's been to Miyake's room. Morita had visited a handful of times at the beginning of the year, but after a few encounters with Miyake's "weird roommate" of lore, their meeting space was permanently settled.
Morita cracks the door open and peeks in, clearly a schemer at heart if not in practice as much as other people they know. Okada is led in with a hurried nod and a summoning hand, and they tiptoe in the dark to what presumably is Miyake's bed.
Morita clamps his hand over Miyake's mouth suddenly, and Miyake's eyes snap open, a muffled yelp dying down into weak attempts to punch Morita in the face. Miyake recognizes them.
"Go, what the hell?" Miyake gasps when Morita lets him breathe, the sleep in his voice tempering the venom just enough to keep out the bite. Okada understands.
"Good, you're awake."
Even barely conscious, Okada can tell that the look Miyake gives Morita is one of active scorn and not just passive exhaustion.
"Okada, do you know why you're here?" Morita continues.
"Am I joining the yakuza?"
"Why are you here?"
"I thought we could use some fresh perspective," Morita explains.
Across the room, Miyake's roommate growls like he's unrolling the most threatening carpet. "Nagase-kun, sorry," Miyake says, and then his voice pools low in the air between them. "We should leave before we get eaten. Let's go back to our room."
And strangely, suddenly, there in the middle of the night when absolutely nothing makes sense, Okada finds it. That's all the perspective he needs.
Back in their room, Okada sits on his bed, Morita on his, Miyake in his spot on the floor between them, and he realizes what "our room" means to Miyake, and to Morita, too. There are three people and three spaces. It means that whenever Okada's gone, there's an empty space where an awkward young cadet is supposed to be. It means that the other two will be waiting for his return.
Morita looks across the room at Okada, and their eyes meet before Morita smiles. "Feeling better?"
Okada nods. "Yeah, thank you. I'm going to sleep now." He turns toward the wall and wiggles into his sleep cocoon.
"What the hell was that about?"
"Our business is done here. You may go."
Okada hears a gruff sigh and the indignant shuffling of feet. "Seriously, if Nagase-kun kills me in my sleep, Okada's getting my CD player."
The lights go out and the door clicks shut. Okada closes his eyes and snuggles under the covers, letting out a slow, long breath. If an inherited CD player is what it means to be friends, he'll gladly accept it.