Archive of Our Own ^beta

Torao woke up to someone shaking his shoulder.

A quick glance towards the window told him that it was still the middle of the night. However, he felt oddly awake.

Minami knelt in his bed; his hair was dishevelled from resting his head on his pillow in too many different positions. He was only wearing a plain white long-sleeved shirt to bed.
His expression was unreadable, but Torao had a hunch that it would be full of sorrow.

He wondered if the other had slept at all yet. Unlikely.

It had only been a few hours since his bandmate had lost his mentor, the person he had painfully parted with once before, and lost again, ripped away violently after just meeting him again.

“Midou-san”, Minami whispered. There was no need to whisper. ZOOL had been placed in two separate rooms with two beds each, and Touma and Haruka were sleeping soundly in the other. It had been an exhausting day for them too, even though it wasn’t comparable to Minami’s exhaustion. Yet the whisper felt appropriate in their setting, alone in a room at night, still digesting the heavy events of the day.

“You can’t sleep?”, Torao asked.

A nod.

Torao made room in his bed. He remembered that his mother used to let him sleep in her bed when he couldn’t sleep. Maybe it would help Minami too, to know someone was there with him, even if someone else had left. He wasn’t alone. He would personally make sure to act in a way that let Minami know that he always had someone he could come to.

Himself, he never really lost anything precious in his life. He didn’t know how Minami felt. But he’d be damned if he didn’t want to help him.

If he lost ZOOL… he didn’t know how that would impact him.

The mattress dipped as Minami shifted his weight and stretched his legs out. The bare skin of his thighs brushed against Torao’s sweatpants. He didn’t know how Minami could sleep like that in this cold country, but maybe he was just used to it. He had stayed here before after all, together with Sakura Haruki.

“Midou-san”, Minami whispered again. On the narrow bed the two of them were pressed together closely. “About what you said earlier…”

Earlier? What had he said earlier? Was it something embarrassing? Was Minami going to tease him about his big mouth? In this situation? Maybe it was to make himself feel better… if it was, there was nothing Torao had to say against it.

His confusion must have shown on his face. They were awfully close now, the dim light still enough to illuminate Minami’s features, his cheekbones, the bridge of his nose and his chin. His collarbones peeked out from the collar of his shirt. He was glancing sideways at Torao instead of looking at the ceiling, and his lashes sent long shadows over his skin. Despite the situation Torao couldn’t help but admire the beauty of that strong man next to him and felt lucky to have met him.

“You said you’d fulfil all of our wishes”, Minami reminded him.

Wishes. Fulfilling ZOOL’s wishes was his wish. That was right.

“Of course”, he mumbled. “I’ll make all your dreams come true. I’ll sing and dance to all of your songs and I’ll light up the stage with you and Touma and Haruka forever.”

Minami chuckled emptily. Torao hadn’t heard a sound as sad since he heard IDOLiSH7’s Rokuya Nagi and Minami weep in a duet earlier.

“But what if there was a different wish of mine that you could fulfil right now, Midou-san?”, a shaky intake of breath. How long had Minami cried for while he had been asleep? Had he only just stopped? “A wish so selfish that I feel ashamed even considering it?”

Torao didn’t know what Minami was talking about. What kind of wish could that be?

“Midou-san… I’ve always thought that you looked quite attractive. Apart from the obvious features like your height and build, that is”, Minami rolled over to his side, the blanket shifting in the process. Even in the dark room Torao could see a glint in Minami’s eyes that was entirely unfamiliar to him. Despite that he could read it. It was hunger, hunger fuelled by sadness, and it was an abyss so deep that he knew that it would consume Minami if he didn’t do anything. “The way your hair parts, right here”, cool hands stroking through his hair emphasizing the point. “And the shade of your hair and eyes… Midou-san sure looks like Sakura-san, huh?”

Another chuckle. This time it was wet and strangled. He would start crying again soon.

“That’s what I thought when I first met you. It was what made me attached to you, the way you looked like him, and it made it so much easier for me to talk to you, Midou-san…”

Slowly Torao began to get what Minami was getting at.

“So please, Midou-san, just for one night. Just let me pretend you’re not Midou-san and hold me. It’s what I’ve longed for, for so long, to see my pointless love fulfilled…”, he whispered. His voice was full of pain, both because of the words and the knowledge why it was so urgent, so important to him right now. Why he was bringing it up now and hadn’t done so earlier. “You’re the most desired embrace, are you not? And right now the one who desires you the most is me. Fulfil this wish of mine…”

Minami sat up in a clumsy motion. It was obvious that he had never been this close with another human. He tried straddling Torao’s hips, and Torao actually felt a spark of heat go through his abdomen.

A hand took his and brought it up towards Minami’s face, to cup his cheek.

“Touch me”, Minami whispered commandingly. “Love me.”

The kiss was clumsy, unpractised. The angle was off, there was no tension, no heat, no spark. It felt rushed, as if they were running out of time to do something very important. And yet, it felt wrong. Minami wasn’t kissing him. He didn’t want to kiss him. There was not a single inch of Minami that wanted to kiss him, Midou Torao.

Torao carefully took Minami’s face into his hands with his own strength and pushed him away gently but determinedly.

“I’m sorry”, he said quietly. “I don’t think I can fulfil this wish of yours tonight. Even though I promised just earlier… I have to disappoint you in this hard time.”

“Ah…”, Minami said, his voice as thin as a rope about to snap. “I thought that would be your answer. After all Midou-san is still Midou-san, no matter how much I wish for Sakura-san to be alive and well.”

A hitch of breath. Torao felt his hands on Minami’s face getting wet. He didn’t pull away.

“After all”, Minami sniffed. “After all I got to know you, and I know that you’re nothing like him, even if you look similar. You’re loud where he was quiet, and stupid where he was smart. If you were to hold a motivational speech, you’d never talk about yourself, because for Midou-san, other people’s happiness is his own, isn’t it? Sakura-san wasn’t like that at all.”

Torao pulled Minami closer, wrapping his arms around his shaking shoulders.

“It’s okay to cry”, he said. “Let it all out. Tell me. Everything can be let out here and stay in this room. You can trust me.”

He felt the bridge of Minami’s nose, that form he had admired not too long ago, press into his neck harshly. The impact must have hurt, but Minami’s pain was elsewhere.  

“I loved him so much that I felt like such a traitor when I got to know you. When I got to like you. When I thought that I wouldn’t mind if I fell in love with Midou-san, and never thought about Sakura-san again. But now it’s too late to ever tell him how I felt”, a shaky laugh. Torao felt it through his arms and chest, pressed against Minami’s. “Even though I’m sure that he already knew.”

Torao began gently rocking Minami’s body back and forth. In the rhythm of deep, steady breaths he tried calming the other down, even though he felt that these words were only the beginning of Minami’s grief.

“There were so many things that I wanted to tell him. I wanted to show him ZOOL, not only the ZOOL we are right now, but the ZOOL that we can become. I wanted him to teach me more about music. I wanted him to tell me everything he experienced in our time apart, every single detail of every single day. I wanted him to be with me forever, even if my love was never requited…”

Minami took another shaky breath.

“Aren’t I such an idiot?”, he asked. “I truly thought that Sakura-san would be with me forever. Deep in my heart I still kept this childish hope, that I could just be with him until the day the world ended. But not even the people you love are immortal, are they?”

Torao moved a hand to carefully support Minami’s neck. With his thumb he stroked the skin below his right ear softly. He hoped that it was comforting.

“Once upon a time there was a city in the sea south of here”, Minami said after a short break. “It was flourishing, hundreds of thousands of people came there to trade and to share stories, and music as well.”

Torao didn’t know why Minami was telling him that story, but for his sake he’d keep listening.

“The city’s name was Vineta, and the people of Vineta had become very rich and were living lavishly, so lavishly and excessively, decadently and blasphemously, that if there was a hole in a wall, they would fix it up with the dough they used to bake bread… But one day they received a warning that the city would be destroyed, because of that lifestyle. That warning appeared next to the original as a flickering mirror image of the real city. And as everyone knows, if there’s a second image of cities, ships, or people, it means certain doom”, he giggled. It was hollow. “Should I have thought of this when I first met Midou-san, who is Sakura-san’s doppelganger? Maybe it was my fault for getting close to you that was Sakura-san’s downfall.”

“Don’t joke about that, please”, Torao said, and he began combing through the hair at Minami’s nape, to stroke it and provide additional support. He noticed that he really didn’t know how to take care of people well.

“You’re right Midou-san… how foolish of me to think that I could ever influence the future like this…”

His sigh tickled the skin of Torao’s neck.

“How does the story end?”, Torao asked to keep Minami talking, to keep letting out his feelings.

“Oh, of course Vineta sunk to the bottom of the ocean, with all its riches and inhabitants. To this day there are records of the city from various sources. However nobody has ever found any trace of it, except for the sound of the bells ringing from the ocean.”

“I’m scared, Midou-san”, he mumbled against Torao’s neck. He could feel him shake in his arms. Minami cried silently, Torao noticed. He wondered if that was part of his mellow personality as well, or if he just had been forced to learn how to cry prettily for his work as a child actor. Both thoughts were depressing in different ways. Minami should be allowed to cry loudly too. He should be allowed to scream, to bawl, to let his face scrunch up with tears and snot. He would look good like that too, Torao thought. Real, human. Not like an angel descended from the heavens, weeping for the mortals’ sins. “I’m so scared about forgetting him. What if in a few years I don’t know what his face looked like anymore? What if I forget his smile? The sound of his voice?”

“That is my fear”, Minami said. “My fear is that I’m like the humans, forgetting the city of Vineta that was once so important to them. I can keep him in my heart, but will my memories keep him too? I know that they turn hazy after a while. But I never want to forget! I don’t want my time with Sakura-san to turn into the faint ringing of bells down on the bottom of the ocean. That’s why I asked you to do… that for me, today. I wanted to have this while it was still fresh, while I still knew what he was like.”

“I’m… sorry”, he mumbled. “I’m sorry I did that to you. I should not have, I know that. I knew that before I asked, and yet there is still a part of me… there’s still that part of me that wishes you had agreed and gone through with it.”

“Minami”, Torao whispered, unsure if it was already okay to speak. When the other didn’t react, he saw it as a sign that it was alright. “You will never forget Sakura Haruki, that I’m sure about. He’s a character too memorable to forget. And you have people to share memories about him with. There is nobody here that will laugh at you for wanting to talk about him. You can come to me, or you can talk to Rokuya, and I’m sure Haruka and Touma would say the same thing.”

The sobbing slowly ceased, as Torao held Minami close, the shaking subduing into light shivers, and finally stilled. Maybe Minami’s grieving body was a mirror of the ocean above that sunken city as well, Torao thought.

“Midou-san… truly is someone I can rely on… thank you, Midou-san.”

“I’m here, alright?”, he said. “I’ll be here. I’ll be here in the morning, and I’ll be here the next day, and the next night, and the days and nights after. You can come to me whenever.”

“You’re on my side, right, Midou-san? You won’t ever leave.”

“I’ll do my best to stay with you. I still have to fulfil your wishes, right?”

“Then my wish is for Midou-san to never leave me”, Minami yawned. The crying and talking had tired him out, finally. It must have been about 3am, Torao thought. There was no way it was healthy for Minami to be awake still. He moved them into a more comfortable position, never letting go of Minami. His hold was secure, and he was sure that he wouldn’t let go even if they both fell asleep now.

“I won’t leave”, he promised.

“And about your other wish”, Torao whispered, when Minami was almost asleep in his arms, his breathing even and deep. “If you ever come to truly love me, then I’ll be waiting for you.”

On the face sullied by tear streaks, there was a hint of a genuine smile. The first of many, hopefully, Torao thought when he too, fell asleep, holding Minami in his arms.