Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Tomo is five years old when his father brings him out of the house for the first time, takes him to an unfamiliar room in what Tomo later learns is called a school, and immediately turns to leave.

He almost doesn’t notice his Papa’s departure, at first, because he’s so busy peeking inside of the room. It’s a confusing mass of motion and sound, with other children running about and playing with toys that look much shinier and better than the ones Tomo has at home. From the corner of his vision, he spots a particularly colorful set of building blocks by one of the walls, and he unthinkingly inches forwards before the sound of his Papa’s footsteps pull him back.

In a few, frantic seconds, Tomo registers exactly what’s happening here, realizes that his father isn’t going to be coming with him, and he scrambles after the man, nearly tripping over both himself and the stuffed giraffe in his arms to catch up.

“Are we going?” he asks his Papa, and the man goes still, lets out something of an impatient sigh as he glances at his watch.

“I am. You’re staying here, boy. Until I return.”

Tomo blinks, unsure if he’s heard his father correctly, his hands starting to tremble from where they’re wrapped around his giraffe. 

“But,” he starts, then trails off when his father starts walking again--faster, this time.

It takes another hurried chase down the hallway, but Tomo’s reaching fingers finally manage to grasp at his Papa’s pant leg, his grip halting the man’s stride.

“Don’t go.”

It isn’t something he asks of his father often, because he’s gotten somewhat used to the man’s absences, and Tomo’s already grown up enough to protect their apartment on his own. But this is the first time Tomo’s ever been properly outside of his home--he’s not ready to be alone yet.

In response, his Papa reaches down for his hand, merely breaking Tomo’s feeble grip away from his pant leg. Then, placing an ungentle hand against Tomo’s upper back, he gives Tomo another push, until he stumbles in the direction of the room once more.

“Go,” he says, moving away from Tomo, the distance between them widening with every step. “Maybe you’ll make a friend. Gods know you need something else to do.”

There’s a harder edge to his father’s tone, one that leaves no room for argument, but it isn’t this that stops Tomo’s next protest in his tracks. Rather, he’s considering what the man has said, about making a friend --because Tomo has never done that before.

Muffins is his only friend, as far as he knows, and Tomo hadn’t really had to make friends with him--they’d simply been that way from the start, ever since the kind older lady who lived across from them had given the stuffed giraffe to him as a gift.

Surely, making people-friends couldn’t be the same as making giraffe-friends. After all, no one was going to give a person to him. Unless that really was how it worked?

He’s about to speak up again, to ask his father how--

But when he looks up, he’s alone.

Despite his father’s hopeful predictions, Tomo is terrible at making friends.

The reason for this, as he comes to discover, is that he cries. A lot.

Tomo’s father, in one of the few direct conversations they’d actually had, has always told him that he isn’t supposed to cry, that it’s something men aren’t allowed to do. But even though he tries,Tomo isn’t any better at not crying than he is at making friends.

He cries when he spills his apple juice at snacktime, even when the teacher gets him a new cup.

He cries when he uses the wrong color on his tree by accident, then again when he smudges the paper with his tears.

And he cries when he trips and falls while running across the carpet, coming away physically unscathed but tearing open a seam in the back of Muffins’ head. 

By now, the rest of the class is so used to Tomo’s crying that no one comes to check on him as he curls in on himself, his shaking hands holding his giraffe close, his palm pressed protectively against the torn fabric of the toy. Even still, Tomo can see that everyone is watching him as he sobs into Muffins’ fur, and somehow, this only makes him feel worse, his cheeks burning even as shudders wrack his small frame.

He tries to catch his breath, to calm himself down, because his hiccups are becoming so sharp that each one hurts his aching stomach, but every time he runs his fingers against the loose threads and exposed stuffing, a fresh wave of tears pricks at his eyes. 

Muffins might never be okay again, and it’s his fault--he wasn’t careful enough.

Not wanting to be looked at any longer, Tomo swipes at his eyes and twists away from the rest of the class, buries his face in the stuffed animal as he hears everyone slowly return to what they’d been doing.

The sound of their chatter washes over his senses, conversation fading into a low murmur beneath the sound of his own sobs, and so he barely hears the hesitant, nearly soundless steps that come towards him. Then, there’s the softest of tugs at his sleeve, a motion so shy that Tomo almost misses it, until it happens again.

Slowly, he lifts his head, and comes face to face with a pair of curious red eyes, set in an unreadably blank expression. It’s a boy he only vaguely recognizes, if only because he’s so distinct in appearance, the paleness of his hair and skin interrupted only by the red streak in his bangs.

He’s a little taller than Tomo, enough that Tomo still has to look up at him when he sinks silently down to the floor at Tomo’s side, his small hands holding a box to his chest.

Tomo sniffles, tries to straighten up and make himself look presentable in the wake of this new visitor.

“H...hello?” he tries, but the boy doesn’t respond, preoccupied with digging through the box.

After some effort, the boy manages to produce a sparkly bandage from the box’s contents, peeling off the wrapper and leaning forwards to plaster it against Muffins’ head, right over the torn seam. 

Tomo blinks at the repaired injury as the boy leans away, dipping his head at Tomo to signify that he’s completed his task.

A moment goes by, then two, Tomo’s breath frozen in his chest.

Then, for some reason, he bursts into tears again.

At this, the boy startles in alarm, biting at his lip nervously as he attempts to discern what went wrong.

But even Tomo doesn’t even know why he’s crying this time, his tears seeping into the sleeves of his jacket, only that he can’t seem to stop. It’s embarrassing, and he wants to swallow down his tears, at least for long enough to thank the boy, to maybe--

Something warm and gentle wraps itself around Tomo, and Tomo faintly registers the scent of strawberries as he looks up. The boy has pressed himself against Tomo’s trembling form, is holding Tomo securely against him in what Tomo distantly realizes is a hug.

He’s never been hugged before, but he immediately decides that he likes it, his sobs quieting as he settles into the new sensation. His hiccups subside, his breaths evening out as the boy’s fingers rub at his back, and they stay like that until the last of Tomo’s tears finally dry against his cheeks.

When the boy pulls away, Tomo almost misses his presence, almost wants to catch his wrist and tug him back.

“T...thank you,” he mumbles instead, remembering that he’d meant to say that in the first place, before he’d begun crying. “I’m Tomo, and, um, this is Muffins. Do you want to hold him?”

The offer earns him an uncertain glance, but after a moment, the boy reaches out to take Muffins into his arms, holding it away from him at arm's length. The interaction doesn’t last for very long--just a simple squeeze and a confused pat to Muffins’ head before he hands the giraffe back, like he isn’t sure what to do with the toy.

Then, he smooths out the wrinkles in his clothing and gets to his feet, giving Tomo something of a little bow before he leaves.

It’s only several minutes later, while he’s still staring at the sparkly bandage, that Tomo realizes he never learned the other’s name.

Afterwards, he makes it his personal mission to befriend Muffins’ savior.

He’s confused, at first, because the boy doesn’t seem to have any other friends, despite how nice he is. From what Tomo can see, the boy is always snacking alone at snacktime, napping alone at naptime, sitting in the corner and quietly reading picture books at playtime. 

None of the other kids hang out with him, although some of them do peer at him closely, not with the same dislike they show to Tomo. Sometimes, a few of them approach him, to invite him over to their circle, but their hesitant attempts immediately fall through in the wake of the boy’s absolute silence.

The boy doesn’t seem to notice any of it, much less respond to it, his features always carefully expressionless, even when Tomo approaches him. 

Tomo isn’t sure that the boy is paying attention, but he still decides to try--

“I’m Tomo,” he introduces himself again, just in case the other’s forgotten him since yesterday’s encounter. “And we’re going to be friends, forever! What’s your name?”

This proclamation--and the following question--earns him no answer at all. The boy merely lifts his eyes from his book, studies Tomo for an extended moment, then turns the page and continues reading.

It’s not a no, though, so Tomo takes an eager seat at his side and begins happily building a block tower for Muffins.

“He needs a place to live,” he explains eagerly to his new friend, eager to have found someone to listen to him. “‘Cause giraffes don’t live in people houses, they live in giraffe houses. Those are different, you know. They have to be big, and they have to be tall, and--”

He chatters on about giraffe architecture while he constructs the door, sets up the windows, adds the finishing touches on the decorations, coming to a pause only when the boy closes his book with a gentle snap. 

He gets to his feet, and Tomo goes finally silent, something empty twisting in his stomach, because this is familiar--this is the part where the other kids got tired of his talking, too. 

But to his surprise, the boy doesn’t leave. Instead, he merely twists around to carefully slot the finished book back into its shelf, then slides out the one beside it before sitting back down.

He settles neatly back on the carpet, opens the book up to the first page, then looks at Tomo expectantly.

Oh.

At the silent cue, Tomo picks up right where he left off, directly from the middle of the sentence he’d stopped at. The boy never contributes to the conversation, not even once, nor does he help Tomo with his block tower, but when Tomo is finished, the other offers him the smallest nod of approval.

Tomo beams, savors in his finished work for another moment, then instinctively reaches for the boy’s hand without thinking. He freezes as soon as their hands touch, when he realizes how pushy he’s being, but the boy doesn’t seem bothered by the contact, glancing down at their linked hands and then back up at Tomo.

“You...don’t mind?” Tomo asks, just in case, which earns him another confused tilt of the head. “Me making you follow me, I mean.”

The only response he receives is a series of expectant blinks, and when Tomo experimentally sets off in the direction of the crayons and paper, his new friend obediently follows him, easily trailing behind.

Something feels like it settles in Tomo’s chest then, a little like the world falling into place. But he doesn’t really think much of it--they have a tree to color, after all.

It takes two weeks for Tomo to hear him speak.

Although it’s a bit strange, not knowing what to call the other, Tomo decides to make their friendship more official. He spends most of the morning hard at work, unbending paper clips until they resemble little metal lines, so focused on his task that he even ignores his crackers and juice while he works.

The boy sits at his side, taking tiny nibbles of his cookies as he goes through his book. When he turns the page, Tomo takes the opportunity to examine his hands, measuring out the width of the other’s finger in his mind as he bends the paperclips into shape until they form something of a patterned ring. 

He’s seen adults do this all the time on television--even their teacher has one, a shiny, jeweled thing on her left hand.

“It’s for you,” Tomo declares, presenting the ring to the boy as soon as he’s done. “Because we’re friends now, and this proves it.”

This, of course, is returned with silence, but the boy blinks at him, clearly considering the matter seriously. For a moment, Tomo thinks the other might refuse, but then he extends a small hand, lets Tomo slip the ring onto his finger.

He turns back to his cookies in quiet contemplation, looking between Tomo’s untouched crackers and his own snack. Carefully, he breaks one of his cookies into uneven halves, and then hands Tomo the bigger piece.

And so they’re friends--maybe even best friends. Muffins will just have to understand.

Once they’re finished with their snack, Tomo drags the other over to the blocks again, and he’s pleased to feel the metal of the ring brush up against their linked hands, reluctant to separate even as he sits down to play.

This time, his companion looks noticeably more interested in the activity than he’d been before. Although he’s still reading, Tomo notices that he keeps peeking shyly over the cover of the book to inspect the tower’s progress, his red gaze turning somewhat curious when it passes over a few of the stray blocks on the ground.

“You should play with me,” Tomo finally says, after the fifth or sixth time that this happens, and the boy freezes in place, looking as if he’s been caught.

Then, he turns his eyes to the ground, bites his lip with uncertainty, and gives the tiniest shake of his head. But even the flatness of his expression can’t disguise his obvious longing, and Tomo feels a strange sensation swell in his chest, something that makes him push forwards and grab the other’s pale hand in his own.

“I’ll show you how.”

Without waiting for a response, he bends down, puts one of the blocks in the other’s hand, and then helps guide it over to Tomo’s tower. Together, they place it carefully on top of one of the walls--a little decoration, to make things nice.

“There! It’s fun, right?”

Tomo grins at his playmate proudly, fully expecting the boy to simply nod in response, but now the other lowers his eyes, inches himself closer until he’s practically leaning against Tomo.

“...Yes,” he whispers, so softly that Tomo wouldn’t have caught it, if they weren’t right by each other. “And...my name is Kazuha.”

Kazuha.

It’s the prettiest name Tomo’s ever heard.

He tells his Papa about his new friend as soon as he gets home. His words trip over themselves in his excitement, his feet scrambling unsteadily beneath him as he tries to keep up with the man’s longer strides as he makes for the exit of their apartment. 

His father always leaves the house around this time, right around when Tomo comes home from school. Tomo’s always found it strange, how the hours of their schedules seem to line up like this, but he’s never questioned his father’s activities.

Still, he tries a new conversation topic on the man every day, squishing in his words in these few minutes that he has, because if he picks the right thing to say, something good enough, something that makes his father want to hear more, then the man will stay.

He has to--that’s just how it works.

“His name is Kazuha, doesn’t he sound pretty?” Tomo tries this time, his words wobbling off into the silence in the air.

To his surprise, the man actually pauses at that, stopping with his hand on the edge of the doorframe.

“The Kaedehara boy?” he asks, and Tomo, after recovering from the initial shock of being responded to, hurries to make sense of this new name that he assumes to belong to Kazuha’s family.

A familiar hope rises in chest, encourages him forwards into this unknown territory as he latches onto his father’s interest.

“Um, yes! He’s very nice, Papa--he’s soft, too, and he’s nice to hug, and--”

“I hear he’s quiet, Katsuro’s son. Perhaps you’ll learn from him.”

He takes one step out the door, and then another, and then the thin walls of their apartment rattle as his father slams the door closed.

Tomo stares at the surface of it, lets his breath escape in an unsteady sigh. The sting of this is familiar, too, but Tomo’s determined not to let it bother him.

He’ll get it right next time.

Kazuha is quiet, although Tomo quickly learns that it isn’t because Kazuha is weird--like the other kids say--or that he’s being stubborn--like the grown-ups think he is.

It’s only Tomo who gets it, and he only gets it because of the way that they hold hands everywhere they go. With his fingers wrapped so tightly around the other boy’s hand, Tomo can feel the way that Kazuha tenses up whenever he’s expected to speak, whenever a question comes his way or a person looks to him in askance. He has a habit of shrinking behind Tomo, of biting at his lip and staring at the floor, until the silence stretches on for so long that the other person gives up entirely.

This tactic works in some cases, but not in others, like when their teacher taps her foot impatiently in front of him while she waits for Kazuha to produce an answer to her question--if he wants apple juice or grape. 

Tomo twists around to peek at his friend, to where Kazuha has his free hand pressed against his mouth, every part of him tense with discomfort, and Tomo knows he has to rescue him.

“He wants grape,” Tomo says aloud, which draws the teacher’s glance towards him instead. 

Still, she doesn’t seem to be inclined to believe Tomo at first, which is, in his opinion, very unfair--doesn’t she know that he and Kazuha are best friends? They know everything about each other.

“Is that true, Kazuha?”

Kazuha nods his head, and his expression doesn’t change, but when their teacher turns back around to find the grape juice, Tomo feels Kazuha’s hand tightening around his own, giving him something of a grateful squeeze.

After that, Tomo takes it upon himself to answer for Kazuha whenever he can, letting Kazuha shrink into the safety of his shadow while Tomo happily chatters on enough for the both of them. He learns to read Kazuha’s silences too, to figure out when the careful tug at his sleeve is meant to draw his attention or to pull him away, when Kazuha’s staring at the floor means that he’s unhappy or simply just shy.

It’s easy, once Tomo gets the hang of it, and it makes him wonder why it’s so hard for everyone else, to just listen to what Kazuha isn’t saying.

Maybe they just don’t want to try.

Later, they start going to real school, the kind where they have to sit at desks and memorize hard words. 

It’s a terrible time for Tomo, who misses bringing Muffins to school and has to work extra hard to avoid falling asleep in the middle of class. He’s always late to school, too, because now that he’s seven, his father expects him to start walking to school by himself, and Tomo has a bad habit of wanting to stay in bed until the last possible second. 

Tomo is forever making Kazuha wait for him, the boy standing by the entrance with a woman that Tomo later learns is Kazuha’s maid and not his mother. Privately, Tomo thinks that his way of making them both late is a good thing--he’s saving them from a lifetime of boring lessons.

But Kazuha seems to genuinely enjoy them, always sits up straight and pays attention and takes neat notes for Tomo to sneak answers off of whenever the teacher calls on him.

It’s this last part, really, that poses the most problem for Kazuha. He and Tomo are seated next to each other, like always, so Tomo can feel the sheer alarm radiating off of his friend the first time the teacher calls on him.

Tomo tries to step in, of course, the first time it happens, but the diversion doesn’t work—he gets little more than a gentle, slightly reproachful smile before the focus is back on Kazuha.

It’s not just the teacher, either--the other kids are starting to take notice of how quiet Kazuha is, too, and a few of them corner Kazuha at recess one day, prodding at him with curious fingers and searching words.

“Are you mad at us?”

“Are you sick?”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Kazuha, incredibly, shows no reaction to any of this, merely shakes his head, then slips past them and goes to tug Tomo away from where Tomo had been about to interrupt. Tomo frowns, wants to twist around and tell the other kids the truth, because there’s nothing wrong with Kazuha. His best friend is perfect.

But the touch of Kazuha’s hand against his, the cool metal of the handmade ring still wrapped around the boy’s finger--it quells some of the unbearable pressure in Tomo’s chest, makes him reluctantly back off and clamber up to the top of the playground slide with Kazuha.

Still, Tomo isn’t very good at ignoring it, especially as getting Kazuha to speak becomes something of a game amongst the rest of their class over the weeks. Their classmates try everything they can think of, calling Kazuha names, offering him lunchtime bribes, and then, when all of it is met with unresponsive silence, one boy finally comes up with a solution.

That day, at recess, while Kazuha is still turned towards Tomo and listening to him ramble on, the boy sneaks up behind him, pokes him hard in the hand with a freshly sharpened pencil, hard enough to hurt.

Kazuha yelps at it, drops Tomo’s hand to cradle his own close to his chest, and the boy barely has the time to savor in his victory before the growing helplessness in Tomo’s heart feels like it snaps. He jumps forwards, knocks the other boy to the ground and into the mud, and both of them go down, struggling for the upper hand as they claw at each other in the grass.

By the time Kazuha manages to pull Tomo away, the teacher is already upon them, another student hurriedly spilling out the entire, sordid tale. Tomo and the boy with the pencil get sent home that day with permission slips that Tomo’s father doesn’t bother to sign, and they’re forced to spend the next day’s recess writing out apologies to each other.

Tomo is still wiping frustrated tears from his eyes when Kazuha sneaks into the empty classroom, his soundless steps getting him past the fact that Tomo is supposed to be in here alone. He climbs up into the seat beside Tomo, peering at the paper as he investigates Tomo’s progress--which is practically nonexistent, because apologizing to Kazuha’s tormentor is unthinkable. 

His empty apology letter is smudged with tears, eraser tracks, and a large bite mark from where Tomo had unsuccessfully tried to eat the paper in protest.

Kazuha flattens it against the desk, smoothing out the crumpled edges, and Tomo catches sight of the red mark still on the back of Kazuha’s hand, left behind from the pencil’s attack.

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Tomo blurts out, unable to contain himself for another instant. He shakes his head insistently, swipes at his eyes again, and Kazuha blinks at him steadily. “Even if you don’t talk. Even if you never talk. You’ll always be my best friend.”

Kazuha looks down, and then something like a smile curls at his lips, one of the rarest expressions that Tomo’s ever seen on the boy. Beneath the table, he twines his hand with Tomo’s own, uses the other to put the pencil back in Tomo’s grasp.

Grudgingly, Tomo begins to write out his apology, pausing only when Kazuha points out that he’s spelled something wrong in the faintest of whispers. Then, after a pause--

“I want to try,” Kazuha murmurs, speaking up the way he sometimes does when he and Tomo are alone. “...talking, I mean. I...want to be like you.”

Tomo doesn’t think he wants that--he wants Kazuha to be like Kazuha, because Kazuha is perfect. But even still, he grins, squeezes Kazuha’s hand under the table as he signs his name on his apology with flourish, big and blocky letters that take up nearly half the page.

“Then I’ll help,” he decides.

It’s as simple as that.

Tomo is ten years old when his father loses his job.

He doesn’t know the details, mostly because his father doesn’t bother to inform him of this development outright. Rather, Tomo overhears it from where he’s crouched behind the wall, watching as his father spits out the furious tale over the phone, his words slightly slurred and his clothes smelling strongly of a foreign scent, sharp and bitter to Tomo’s senses.

His father turns, and Tomo shrinks away so that the man won’t see him, but he’s too late.

“What are you looking at, boy? Go to bed,” his father snaps, and then Tomo just barely manages to pull himself away as the bottle in his father’s hand ends up against the wall in a shower of glass.

He creeps back soundlessly to his room, shuts the door behind him and sits with his back to the door. 

Strangely, he no longer feels the same sting that he used to at his father’s dismissals, at the rough tone of his voice and the distant set of his expression. It’s more of an empty feeling now, an ache that’s rapidly turning to something like numbness, with every day that this goes on.

Tomo tilts his head, stares across the room to the small pile of his possessions--his backpack, his untouched homework, a few dirty clothes, and his old giraffe, Muffins. The sparkly bandage has managed to cling to the giraffe’s fur, even after all these years, and the sight of it makes him smile, drowns out the noise of his father’s angry cursing, the loud sounds of the man forcibly rearranging their furniture with his rage.

Tomo’s too old to sleep with his stuffed animals, but he doesn’t need them to fall asleep anymore. Instead, his thoughts turn towards tomorrow as he climbs into bed, settles easily into a dreamless sleep with his and Kazuha’s next adventure still curled at the tip of his tongue.

In the morning, his father is nowhere to be found, although the destruction he’s left behind is clear, and there’s an extra hole in the wall that hadn’t been there the night before. Tomo shrugs as he steps around the broken glass and splintered wood, kicks a stray bottle out of the way of the fridge as he reaches for the milk. 

He makes himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast--only the finest of Kwazy Krunchies--and leaves for school without a second thought.

Kazuha, though, is considerably more concerned when he hears the news, tilting his head worriedly as he bites at his lip.

“Are you certain it’s okay?” he asks softly, setting down his chopsticks beside his half-finished lunch. Whoever makes Kazuha’s lunches must not understand him very well, Tomo thinks, because Kazuha always takes forever to finish his food and never manages to eat all of it, anyways.

More often than not, Tomo is on cleanup duty, with a much bigger appetite than his friend, despite the fact that Kazuha is still --unfairly--taller than him.

“Yeah,” Tomo says, around a mouthful of food, and Kazuha, as always, skillfully manages to interpret this incomprehensible sandwich speech. Still, Tomo swallows his food before he continues speaking, if only to avoid spraying his friend with crumbs--a lesson that Tomo will never forget after one particularly unfortunate moment. “I mean, why wouldn’t it be?”

Kazuha doesn’t answer, looks down at his lap with a frown. Although his practice at speaking up has paid off over the years, he sometimes still lapses into the occasional silence--but Tomo can tell that this one is a thoughtful pause instead of a nervous one, so he polishes off the rest of the sandwich until Kazuha is done.

“It’s a big change, that’s all. If you need help…”

Tomo waves away the offer before Kazuha can complete it, suddenly uncertain that he wants to be on this topic for much longer. He’s done a pretty good job at taking care of himself, in his opinion, and he’s grown-up enough to keep at it--ten years old is double digits, after all. 

“Nah, it’s all the same. Are you going to eat that?”

He nods at Kazuha’s unfinished lunch, and Kazuha neatly sets his chopsticks aside, slides the plastic container of rice and vegetables over to Tomo’s side.

“How come they always give you so much?” Tomo mumbles out, stuffing his face with as much as it can contain so he can get back to talking as quickly as possible. “I mean, it’s tasty. But...isn’t it a lot for you?”

Kazuha blinks at him, gives Tomo a funny sort of look, the hint of what could be a laugh passing through the red of his gaze.

“I pack my own lunch.”

Aside from the increasingly empty state of their fridge--a problem easily solved by Kazuha’s also-increasing leftovers--another effect of his father’s unemployment is that Tomo finds himself with a lot of freedom.

The man is very rarely home anymore, is often gone for days at a time, only stumbling back usually after nightfall, when Tomo is already in bed and asleep. Without his father present, Tomo is able to go wherever and whenever he pleases, so he doesn’t have to ask for anyone’s permission when he decides that Kazuha is going to learn to swim.

Kazuha tentatively follows Tomo to the town pool, the summer sun warm against their skin, his fingers tangled in the back of Tomo’s shirt to avoid getting lost. Tomo, who has no reservations whatsoever about getting into the water, strips down to his swimsuit as fast as possible and jumps in as soon as they cross the threshold.

He resurfaces, shaking stray water out of his eyes, then swims over to the edge to where Kazuha is still fully clothed, looking down at the water with mistrust. 

“Come on,” Tomo tries to encourage, splashes a bit of water onto the ground so that it laps at Kazuha’s bare feet. “It’s nice in here, promise. And aren’t you hot?”

“I...suppose. But I don’t know how…”

Tomo grins, pats his own chest confidently. “That’s what I’m here for! I’d never let anything happen to you. Swimming is fun!”

At this certified Tomo-guarantee, Kazuha carefully lowers himself so that he’s sitting on the edge, experimentally dipping his feet inside. The cautious expression on his features turns somewhat lighter as he tilts his head, swishes his feet through the water so that ripples form around his legs, lightly tickling at his skin.

“It’s nice,” Kazuha agrees, and Tomo beams at his friend--then, quicker than Kazuha can react, he lunges forwards, seizes Kazuha’s unguarded wrist, and hauls his friend into the pool with him.

Kazuha flails about in an unusually undignified fashion before toppling into the pool with an enthusiastic splash. Tomo cackles at the victory, but he makes sure that Kazuha’s weight is on top of his own, that his arms are securely around the other’s waist while Kazuha clings to him, his fingers digging into Tomo’s back.

“You’re okay, see? Wasn’t that bad.”

Against him, he feels a slight tremble pass through Kazuha’s form, and Tomo feels a brief flash of terror--with the way that Kazuha’s face is buried in his shoulder, Tomo thinks that he’s maybe just made Kazuha cry.

“Uh. Hey, Kazuha--?” Tomo starts, loosens his grip in concern, which is when Kazuha breaks free of him entirely, uses the wall to support himself as his other hand shoves Tomo’s head beneath the water.

Tomo goes in with a squawk, bubbles escaping his mouth as he recovers from the blow, and when he resurfaces, spluttering and soggy and slightly outraged, he looks up to see that Kazuha is laughing.

“You’re right, Tomo,” Kazuha says, struggling to catch his breath, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “This is fun.”

Tomo blinks, still startled because he’s never seen Kazuha laugh before--only ever his shy, reserved smiles, and sometimes the softest of giggles, if they’re alone. But this is different--Kazuha’s laugh lights up his whole face, makes a strange warmth swell in Tomo’s chest, and he wants to memorize the sound of it forever.

They stay in the pool until the water wrinkles their skin, the chlorine stinging at their eyes, and then Tomo walks Kazuha home. Although Kazuha’s house is only fifteen minutes away from Tomo’s, it couldn’t be more different--it’s large enough that even one of the rooms is bigger than Tomo’s entire apartment.

That, and Kazuha’s father is actually home to answer the door. 

This part isn’t a good thing, because Kazuha’s father is so terrifying that Tomo briefly wonders how he’s even related to his son. Between the man’s broad shoulders, his stern jaw, and the overall disdain radiating off of his red gaze, nothing about elder Kaedehara resembles Tomo’s best friend, aside from the color of their eyes.

“It’s late,” is all he says as he grabs at Kazuha’s arm and hauls him inside, and Kazuha’s expression shutters, his gaze dropping obediently to the floor as he quietly apologizes. Then the man turns his gaze towards Tomo, looking over every inch of him in clear disapproval, grimacing at the pool water that Tomo is dripping onto their stainless marble floors.

Tomo is just starting to feel that this entire thing was a bad idea when Kazuha peeks out at him around his father, offers Tomo the tiniest wave goodbye, his  grateful smile edged with a hint of mischief.

Because Tomo’s still being stared down by the Kaedehara father-vulture, he wills himself not to react. But he sees Kazuha’s smile in his mind the entire way home, replays Kazuha’s laugh until he grins at it himself, smiling like an idiot at nothing.

Totally worth it.

On the flip side, the first time Kazuha visits Tomo’s house is something of a disaster.

The visit is only allowed to happen because Kazuha’s father takes an extended business trip the following summer, one that leaves him out of the country for three uninterrupted months. This is probably a good thing, because Tomo suspects that if the man saw the state of the apartment that his son was setting foot in, he might have popped one of the veins in his uptight head.

“Here you go,” Tomo says, hastily shoving an empty pizza box off of their ratty looking couch and patting one of the torn cushions for Kazuha to sit on.

While Kazuha gets settled, Tomo scurries away to make popcorn, and then they curl up together with their snacks and cans of soda and watch Kazuha’s first-ever movie. Tomo’s father hadn’t been around to pick one out for them, of course, so they’re really just watching the first thing that’s on television--which is some sort of horror movie.

It’s something about puppets, as far as Tomo can tell, but he’s paying much more attention to how hard Kazuha is trembling at his side. The other boy barely eats any of the popcorn, because his hands are too busy plastering themselves against his eyes, the barest hint of red peeking out from the gaps of his fingers on occasion. 

Tomo is just starting to think that he should maybe change the channel when the storm outside reaches its peak--a heavy gust of wind slams into the apartment, makes the thin walls shudder, and then the power goes out. 

Kazuha jumps so hard that he upends the bowl of popcorn with something not unlike a screech of terror, and Tomo turns to stare at his friend through the dark. He’s never seen Kazuha lose his composure this way, and something about it makes Tomo feel lighter, somehow, a helpless sort of grin tugging at his lips.

He doesn’t want Kazuha to be scared, though, so he tries reaching for his friend’s hand, feeling blindly around until his eyes start to adjust to the lack of light.

“It’s just me--don’t worry,” Tomo reassures, when he feels Kazuha jerk away from the contact with another muffled squeak.

“But...but... the puppets,” Kazuha whispers, and Tomo tries to swallow down a laugh, makes a mental note to watch something friendlier next time, as he adjusts his grip to hold Kazuha more securely.

They don’t really hold hands or hug anymore, because they’re eleven and that stuff is no longer cool. But no one can see them like this, so Tomo decides to shelve his concerns about his reputation for a bit in favor of squishing himself closer to the other boy.

With his free hand, the one that isn’t linked with Kazuha’s, he grabs at the blanket at the other side of the bed, pulls it up over the couch until it makes something like a cave. Then, he tucks Kazuha closer towards the inside of the couch, beneath the little blanket fort, and wraps his arms around the other until Kazuha’s trembles subside.

“Um...is it better now?” he asks, presses his hand soothingly against the small of Kazuha’s back.

Kazuha twists around to face him, his soft hair tickling at Tomo’s neck, the scent of strawberries enveloping Tomo’s senses. They’re pressed so close together that Tomo can feel the pendant of the necklace that Kazuha wears beneath his clothes--a chain with Tomo’s old paperclip ring on it.

He’s surprised that Kazuha still has it, after all this time--he’d simply assumed the other had stopped wearing it when he’d outgrown it. For some reason, the thought makes his face grow warm, a heat spreading to the back of his neck and down to his chest, but he decides not to mention it.

“Mm. I’m okay,” Kazuha says softly, his fingers curled loosely over the beat of Tomo’s heart.

But even still, he doesn’t try to wiggle away, and Tomo doesn’t let go of him, either--no matter how uncool this looks.

They fall asleep like that, even with the wind howling and the rain crashing down on the apartment roof from above, spilled popcorn and orange soda splattered across the carpet.

Tomo celebrates his first month as a teenager with a broken nose and a trip to the principal’s office.

He is, for once in his life, absolutely silent as they haul him into the room and force him to sit in one of the uncomfortable chairs with a cloth pressed to his still bleeding nose. The secretary gives him something of a tired glance as she types up the record of the incident, asks him questions that he refuses to answer.

Instead, he looks away, stares at the posters on the wall, counts the tiles on the floor, plants the tip of his boot against her desk and settles into something of a comfortable lounge.

As comfortable as he can get with all the bruises on his back, anyways. 

Who started the fight? The other kid, obviously, but Tomo definitely finished it.

What was it about? Nothing that even really matters, when it comes down to it.

Do you understand what you’ve done, young man? 

At this last remark, Tomo merely shrugs, but unease twists at his stomach, because he doesn’t--he doesn’t understand why he’d gone so far, doesn’t understand why he couldn’t have just pulled himself off of the other boy and walked away. 

It’s what Kazuha would have told him to do, if he’d been around to keep Tomo out of trouble. But now that they’re getting older, Kazuha’s father has taken it upon himself to start dragging his son along with him on his business meetings, in the hopes that Kazuha might learn something about the trade.

So Tomo’s been on his own for quite a bit, these days, which isn’t a good thing for anyone, it seems. 

“I’m going to call your father,” the secretary informs him, and Tomo shrugs again, but this time something like a little thrill shoots through him, a low anticipation that he doesn’t understand any more than he does the rest of this. 

He listens idly in on the one-sided phone conversation, hears the secretary’s curt goodbye as she hangs up, and it isn’t until his father actually appears before them, impatience written across his every move, that it all starts to make a sick sort of sense. 

Without a word, the man takes Tomo to the hospital, stays absolutely silent as they set the break and splint it, giving him some pills to take for the pain later. Tomo sits in the backseat of the car on the way home, his fingers still curled around the pill bottle, a dangerous excitement curling in his stomach as he watches the clouds gathering across the dark of his father’s face.

This silence between them--uncharacteristic for the both of them--stretches out until the apartment door locks behind them, and then his father’s rough hand shoves him backwards, forces Tomo hard against the wall.

“Do you enjoy wasting my time?” the man hisses out, and Tomo doesn’t even flinch, instead lifts his head and meets his father’s glare head-on. 

He’s gotten taller over the summer, enough that he nearly comes up to his father’s shoulder now--and Tomo feels like something else has changed in him, too.

They share the same eyes, the same face, the same hair--he’s often been told how much he looks like his father, and it almost scares him how true he finds it now. But at the same time, the anticipation in his gut hardens into a vicious satisfaction, because his father is finally, finally looking at him, is finally acting like he sees Tomo, after all these years.

“What am I wasting? Sort of makes it sound like you’re doing something worthwhile, doesn’t it?”

A hand fists in his collar, his father’s eyes so dark that the light of them is nearly gone, and for a moment, Tomo thinks the man might strike him. He grits his teeth, braces himself against the oncoming blow, and strangely finds no fear in his heart--only a white-hot adrenaline burning through his blood.

But his father doesn’t hit him.

What he does is worse, because of how well Tomo knows it--he does nothing.

He releases his grip, turns his back with a muttered curse, then kicks open the fridge to fish out another bottle of beer. 

“Go to your room, boy.”

And then he sits himself on the couch, leaves Tomo with his heart pounding and his hands shaking, his anger seeping away into a growing emptiness in his chest. He makes to step towards his room, and watches his father take a long drink out of the corner of his eye--the man so easily forgetting their conversation, as if nothing had happened at all.

The bruises on his back fade in two weeks, and his nose heals over nicely, leaving nothing but a slight scar across the bridge. Tomo examines it in the mirror one day, and decides that he likes it. His image could use some toughening up, anyways.

But Kazuha runs worried fingers over the length of it, washes off Tomo’s scraped knuckles with a clean cloth as they sit on the apartment floor.

“Don’t get into fights anymore,” he whispers to him, his fingers squeezing Tomo’s gently before they leave his hand entirely. 

Tomo shrugs, laughs awkwardly as he rubs at his neck, and promises to be good. But the next time Kazuha is gone, at his father’s side instead of Tomo’s, Tomo cuts up his hands again, comes away with a bruise on his jaw and a hollow victory in his veins.

Unsurprisingly, Tomo spends a lot of that school year in detention, which is good for catching up on sleep and disastrous for his grades.

While in the past, he’d lacked motivation to study, now he lacks both time and motivation, and this festive combination makes him sink to lows that even he hadn’t thought himself capable of.

To the administration’s chagrin, though, Tomo can’t really find it in himself to care, until he’s genuinely at risk of failing out and having to repeat the year.

Which means he’ll no longer share classes with Kazuha. Ever.

This prospect alone is so frightening that Tomo is actually awake when Kazuha sneaks past the detention monitor to see him that afternoon. The teachers on duty always let Kazuha in, because he’s quiet and gets good grades and is generally the opposite of Tomo in every way. 

As soon as the other sits down, Tomo fairly lunges across the table to grab at his hand, desperation dripping from his every syllable.

“I have no idea what’s going on. Help.”

Kazuha blinks at him for a moment, looks between the open textbook on Tomo’s desk and the panic on his face. Then, he smiles serenely, and proceeds to put Tomo through the torture exercise known as eighth-grade geometry.

“It’s not so bad,” Kazuha reassures him, speaking slightly louder than usual, to make his words audible over the sound of Tomo’s face meeting his book as he drops his head in defeat. “Just...more practice is in order, perhaps.”

Tomo, who doesn’t think that any amount of practice will lessen his urge to strangle himself, turns his face to the side so that he’s resting on his cheek, looking pitifully up at Kazuha.

“Nah, it’s fine. You don’t have to sugarcoat it. It--this--it’s just terrible. Who even uses this stuff in real life?”

“It has practical applications. Imagine if you wished to know the area of a cookie--”

“It has no area, because I ate it.”

Kazuha covers his mouth, can’t quite stifle his amusement at that, but he taps his pencil gently against the next question in the textbook anyways, attempting to be stern with Tomo’s curriculum. 

With a dying shriek, Tomo forces himself upright, reluctantly squints down at the question as he tries to make sense of the words, numbers and lines blurring together in his head.

“Okay. It’s a triangle,” Tomo observes, wisely, and Kazuha nods encouragingly. “So...we…”

He trails off, because he genuinely doesn’t remember what he’s supposed to do, despite the fact that Kazuha almost definitely just told him. With a groan, he runs a hand through his hair, leans back in his chair as he stares up at the ceiling, then closes his eyes.

“You know, maybe it’s a lost cause. Gotta know when to fold them, right? No use wasting any more of your time on me.”

Tomo tries for a quick laugh, means it mostly as a joke--but he can’t hide the hitch in his breath, the frustration that creeps into his voice, because why is this so hard for him, when everyone else can do it?

The sound of Kazuha’s writing stops, and when Tomo looks up, Kazuha is staring at him, the smallest of frowns etched into his expression.

“Don’t ever say that again,” Kazuha says, quietly. “Not if you mean it.”

Tomo blinks, suddenly at a loss for words, and Kazuha neatly rips out a fresh sheet of paper from his notebook, starts to draw up an explanation for the question. Then, he slides over the finished work to Tomo, meets his gaze with an even stare.

“I know you can do it.”

With a weak sort of chuckle, Tomo takes the paper, swallows past the strange tightness in his throat. 

“Well, if the boss insists.”

The tension leaves Kazuha’s frame, a good-natured exasperation crossing his face, and he turns back to his own work until Tomo has need of him again. Tomo, for his part, stares down at the paper, tries to focus on numbers and logic and math--

--and not the warm, inexplicable flutter in his chest.

With Kazuha fairly dragging him over the finish line, Tomo does manage to pass.

He scrapes by with the bare minimum on his report card, sneaks his way into the next grade against the express wishes of some of his teachers, and even manages to silence his father, who’d been making grim predictions about Tomo’s future aloud on the few occasions they’d been home together.

And then, miraculously, things start to change.

He turns fourteen that summer, and the moment he steps back into school, the coach of the basketball team takes one look at the six feet of height that Tomo’s grown into and practically begs him to try out. As Tomo later learns, the team is in desperate need of salvation, having failed to score even a single winning season in the past fifteen years. 

He also learns that he’s good at basketball. Really good.

This is something of a novelty for Tomo, this being good at something. He hadn’t thought himself particularly talented in this area—or in any area, for that matter—having only really played with Kazuha and some of the other neighborhood kids. But he not only shows up to the tryouts, he also completely demolishes his competition, entirely by accident. 

Afterwards, Kazuha, who’d of course shown up for moral support, suggests that he take a shot at some of the other sports their school has to offer. So Tomo, still riding the high of his earlier success, goes on to discover that his inability to sit still, his constant energy, his awkwardly long limbs--all of these have become surprisingly, incredibly useful traits.

He makes it onto the track team, too, and the baseball team, and the three coaches work out some sort of rotating schedule for him that will let him attend all three practices equally, while still allowing him to go to class.

It’s incredibly bizarre, to have teachers paying positive attention to him, to be looking at him with hopeful pride instead of apathy or disappointment. 

Another effect of his newfound talent is that he’s suddenly shot up on everyone’s friendship meter. People pass by him in the halls and nod to him, pat him on the back, ask to hang out with him after school.

He gets along especially well with Yoimiya, who does track with him, and Ayaka and Thoma, who drop by on occasion to discuss the Sports’ club budget. 

But every day, after practice is over, Tomo always ducks under reaching hands and open invitations, and goes to where Kazuha is waiting for him instead. The boy smiles softly at him, fishes through his bag to hand Tomo an extra water bottle that Tomo is forever forgetting to bring, then tucks the book he’d been reading away. 

Tomo loops a cheerful arm around his friend’s shoulders, pulls him close, and sets off on the walk back home. 

It’s a cold day, with the season shifting deeper into fall, and Tomo shrugs off his jacket when he feels Kazuha shiver against him, drapes it easily over Kazuha’s smaller frame. 

The shoulders of Tomo’s jacket fairly dwarf Kazuha now, and when Kazuha puts his hands through the sleeves, they go well over his fingertips. Unlike Tomo, who’s outgrown even his own father, Kazuha hasn’t had the same luck, his head coming up only around Tomo’s chest.

“You got so tall,” Kazuha complains, as he rolls up the sleeves to his wrist as best as he can, only for loose cuffs to drop back down once more. “What even happened?”

There’s an undeniable pout on Kazuha’s delicate features, and Tomo can’t hide his laugh, a warm affection for his friend bubbling up in his chest. He resists the urge to ruffle Kazuha’s hair, only because he knows that Kazuha can be pretty deadly when he tries, and instead gives the other a playful nudge.

“Not to worry, Princess,” he answers easily, having recently fallen into the habit of peppering Kazuha with nicknames. “You’ve still got room to grow. Daddy Kaedehara’s pretty tall, right? Although I guess that’s the demon blood in him.”

“Would I not carry that same blood, if that were the case?” Kazuha asks dryly, although he does smile, shifting his bag to his other hand so he can nestle closer to Tomo’s side, gravitating towards his warmth. “Where is my demonic blessing?”

It’s...nice, somehow, the look of Tomo’s clothes on Kazuha’s frame, some strange, unexamined part of him oddly pleased to see it. With how small Kazuha is beside him, Tomo only has to look down to see the slightly exposed curve of Kazuha’s neck, the shadow of his long, snowy lashes brushing at his pale cheeks. 

Suddenly, Tomo’s mouth feels very dry. He swallows hard, his hand reaching out before he can think better of it, and then he hooks his fingers into the fabric of the jacket, pulling it up so that it covers the bare strip of skin Tomo had been looking at.

Kazuha tilts his head at him at the motion, blinks in confusion, and Tomo tries for an awkward grin, removing his hand to rub at the back of his neck.

“Uh--just thought you might be cold.”

“Oh. I was. But I’m okay now.”

“Good. I mean, great. I mean, uh.” 

Luckily, they’ve already stopped at the gates of Kazuha’s house, so Tomo’s sudden attack of incoherence earns him little more than a strange look before Kazuha pats him on the arm in farewell, still dressed in Tomo’s jacket.

Tomo watches him go, his cheeks flushing red--something he very quickly blames on the cold.

tomoto!! [4:45 pm]

kazuha
hey
kazuuuuuu    
hi
hi
hi
u hate me
:(

Kazuha [5:00 pm]

?
I don’t

tomoto!! [5:00 pm]

ik ur at boring club BUT LOOK
[Image Attachment]

Kazuha [5:01 pm]

It’s literature club, you should come
wait
Tomo is that a cat?

tomoto!! [5:01 pm]

yes!!!
found her at school
outside of school
still school
im keeping her
what should i name her
wht do u think of kumo
   

Kazuha [5:07 pm]

Why not Muffins
Also, what about your father

tomoto!! [5:07 pm]

kazuchan i was 5
and muffins is still ok name
for GIRAFFES
this is a cat
dads busy slutting it up w new gf
alsoalso i dnt care about him
u should ditch and come over
come overrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
u can see cat
mweo
mewo
meow*

Kazuha [5:10 pm]

I dont think i can leave early today

tomoto!! [5:11 pm]

but
why
we r best furends
how can i purrsuade u
life is pawful w/o u

Kazuha [5:15 pm]

...
I’ll be there in 30 minutes

tomoto!! [5:15 pm]

OK!!
ILY
ur purrfect
i luv u the meowst
do u like these
a m i hissterical
hello
(Read 5:20 pm)

They decide on Tama, for the cat’s name, and between the three of them, life goes on swimmingly for all of six months before taking a straight dive off of a cliff.

Sometime after Tomo’s fifteenth birthday--where Kazuha bakes him a cake in three flavors and Thoma falls into the lake--Tomo’s father exits his life entirely, more or less. It isn’t a matter of death, although Tomo can’t entirely say that he’d even care if it was.

Rather, his father gets remarried.

Tomo, who comes home to find his father packing his possessions into sealed cardboard boxes, isn’t sure what he’s more surprised by: the announcement or the fact that the man is actually sober. He doesn’t even know who it is his father is getting married to, only that it’s a woman who lives across town with her own teenage son, and Tomo’s father is joining them, effective immediately.

It doesn’t sound as if there’s room for Tomo in this picture--because there isn’t.

“So, what?” Tomo bites out, the edge in his tone hiding his rapidly spiraling unease, and he digs his fingers into his palms to steady them. “You’re just going to leave, and I--”

“I’ll keep paying the rent here until you’re eighteen,” his father cuts in, looks impatiently down at his watch, like he’s already counting down the seconds until this is over. “But I don’t really care where you go.”

Tomo blinks at that, feels what he’d thought was a long-dead ache flare up in his chest, because while he’s always understood the nature of his relationship with his father, this is the first time the other has really, truly admitted it out loud. He looks down at his lap, tries to think of something cruel to say in response, but every reply sticks in the sudden tightness of his throat before it can rise out of him.

In the wake of Tomo’s unusual silence, his father tapes up the last of his boxes, drops his apartment key on the crumbling kitchen counter, and slams the door when he closes it behind him.

Just like old times.

“Then...he’s gone?” Kazuha asks, and Tomo can hear the frown in the other’s voice, even over the phone.

“Seems that way. I mean, it’s not really worth mourning him. What’s that saying again? Good riddance to big bastards?”

“Not...exactly. But--what are you going to do, Tomo?”

Tomo shrugs, switches his phone to his other hand so that he can feed Tama another piece of dried fish.

“What I always do,” he answers, which really isn’t an answer at all.

He’s still figuring that out.

Once the initial shock has passed, Tomo thinks that living alone might not be so bad.

He’s already spent his entire life practicing for this, after all. All Tomo has to do is take his father’s two, three days of usual absence and multiply it by forever--while he still isn’t very good at math, Tomo figures that he’ll be able to handle himself. He cooks his own food (sort of), does his own laundry (sort of), and keeps the apartment clean (not really). 

He even gets a job, gets paid in under-the-table cash at the local auto repair shop. The old man who runs the place is ancient and grumpy and has a tendency to smack Tomo on the back of the head with the day’s newspaper whenever Tomo runs his mouth. But he’s also definitely paying Tomo at least three times more than what he deserves, and forces him to stay late two times a week to eat dinner with him and his wife.

Tama seems happy about the state of things, too, which is really the most important thing--if the cat’s happy, Tomo’s happy, and overall, no one outside of Kazuha even realizes that anything’s changed.

In fact, Tomo is so highly effective at pretending that nothing is wrong that the reality of it doesn’t really sink in, not until some two months later.    

He’s walking home with Kazuha as is tradition, taking the long way around because construction’s been blocking their old path for about three weeks now. They don’t usually prefer this route, especially in the fall, because it takes them by the park and kicks Kazuha’s seasonal allergies into overdrive.

Luckily, Tomo’s come prepared--he fishes through his pockets and unearths a small stack of crumpled restaurant napkins right before Kazuha gets around to his first sneeze.

“...thank you,” Kazuha sniffles out, then sneezes again, and Tomo bites back a laugh, because the other’s sneezes are always so cute.

A weird way to describe it, Tomo’s sure, but with all the tiny squeaking and sniffling, he can’t help but get the impression that he’s walking next to a little white mouse instead of his best friend. 

Wisely, he chooses to keep these thoughts to himself, merely offering Kazuha a soothing pat on the back in response as they turn the corner, going past some of the trees. Some of the leaves are already starting to turn, are gathered on the ground in piles of orange and red, and a little kid races across their path, dives into the leaves with an audible glee. A second later, his sister joins him, the two children peppering each other with grass and bits of tree.

“Looks like fun,” Tomo grins, shoots Kazuha a mischievous glance, and Kazuha shakes his head vehemently from behind his bundle of Wanmin Restaurant panda-print napkins.

“Don’t you dare--I’d die.”

As if to emphasize his point, he sneezes again, then wipes at his watery eyes with the sleeves of his jacket--Tomo’s jacket, actually, but he’d never gotten around to asking for it back.

It looks better on Kazuha, anyway.

“Then I’ll follow you to the grave,” Tomo vows solemnly, chuckles at the flat look that Kazuha sends in his direction and means to say more when his voice suddenly trails off.

He’s not sure why, but he can’t stop watching those kids, out of the corner of his eye, his attention helplessly drawn towards where their father is helping them up, picking the leaves out of his daughter’s hair and brushing at his son’s clothes.

“Don’t tell your mother I let this happen,” he warns insistently, fixes both of his children with a stern look, which quickly dissolves into an easy grin. “But I’m glad you two had fun, yeah? We’ll just say we got caught in the wind. She’ll have to believe us.”

His declaration is met with emphatic agreement, and then the man scoops the younger child into his arms, takes the other by the hand, and leads them away from the grass. Tomo stares at their turned backs, feels a hollow sort of twist in his chest, and it isn’t until there’s a soft tug at his sleeve that he remembers he’s supposed to be walking.

“Tomo?” Kazuha asks softly, his fingers curled in the fabric of Tomo’s clothes, and Tomo shrugs away the moment like a shadow, shakes his head to clear it and slides into a smile.

“Just taking in the scenery. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

He starts forwards again, keeps his pace at a reasonable stride--mindful of Kazuha’s much shorter legs--as he breaks into aimless chatter about an incident at basketball practice. Kazuha nods along as he listens, carefully adjusting his bag over his shoulder, and Tomo sinks with relief into the normalcy.

It isn’t until he sees Kazuha off at the other’s house and waves a cheerful goodbye that the emptiness he feels starts to expand, becomes such an unbearable pressure in his chest that he isn’t even sure how to give it a name. It’s a restless sensation, his jaw clenched so hard that his head aches, because he can’t stop seeing it, the gentle look in the man’s eyes and the kind touch of his hand against his daughter’s head, because it’s finally, really occurred to Tomo that he’s walking back to an empty apartment.

He slams the door behind him when he gets home--which doesn’t make him feel better--and kicks at a chair before tossing his bag onto it--which doesn’t make him feel better--and then whips around and puts a fresh hole in the wall with his fist--which makes him feel worse, because the movement startles Tama. She’d come up to greet him, as usual, only to leap away with a frightened hiss.

Tomo looks at her, at that, his emotion still written across his face, and she returns the dark of his stare with something of a reproachful look. A moment goes by, then two, and then the fight feels like it drains out of him all at once, the pressure from earlier collapsing and leaving only a tired quiet behind. 

“...sorry,” he mutters, sinks to the floor and lets Tama jump into his lap, uses his stinging hand to pet gently at her soft ears. The back of his hand is red, the knuckles scraped from the impact with the plaster, and Tomo knows they’ll be bruised by morning.

Tama forgives him easily, curls against his stomach with a quiet purr, but Tomo can’t help studying the mark he’s left in the wall, looking at the way it matches his father’s own. Regret settles heavily in his chest, makes his next swallow difficult, and he goes very still.

He’s still sitting like that when Kazuha finds him some hours later, steps easily through the unlocked door with a bag of something in his hand. The boy’s red gaze passes briefly over the pitiful scene--the overturned chair, the freshly decorated wall, and Tomo, on the floor and in the dark with his cat.

“It looks terrible in here,” Kazuha says honestly, and then joins Tomo on the floor.

Tomo breathes out, expects to be surprised that Kazuha’s here at all, but there’s nothing--only a distant relief.

“We can’t all live in fairytale castles, Princess.”

Kazuha shakes his head fondly, takes out a container of what Tomo immediately identifies as his favorite takeout food. Tama perks up at the scent, pokes at it with a curious paw, but Tomo rescues his dinner before she can steal it.

They don’t say much, because Kazuha is busy cleaning the scraped knuckles of Tomo’s hand and Tomo is busy inhaling chicken and rice. That, and they’re fifteen year old boys--emotions are strange, foreign things that Tomo doesn’t want to have, much less have conversations about.

But he hadn’t needed to say anything, for Kazuha to know to come here. He hadn’t needed to ask, for Kazuha to know that he’d needed help.

Kazuha just knows him, understands Tomo in this unnameable, unmatched way, and it's this, more than anything, the not needing to speak that makes him want to do it.

“I’m...not ready to be alone,” he admits, stares at the faded orange soda stains on the carpet so that he doesn’t have to meet the other’s eyes.

Kazuha smiles, Tomo’s injured hand still held between his two smaller ones. He gives the cut skin of Tomo’s knuckles a final, gentle wipe of the cloth, then squeezes at Tomo’s fingers before he retreats.

Then, he inches closer to Tomo’s side, leans against him until Tomo looks over at him at last to see the steady promise in Kazuha’s eyes blinking back at him. 

Suddenly, things feel very simple.

“Then I’ll help.”

Chapter Text

In truth, Kazuha doesn’t so much as “help” him as he does descend from the heavens and rescue him from a life of lonely destitution.

The first thing Kazuha does is help Tomo clean the apartment, a feat which Tomo honestly hadn’t thought was possible--he doesn’t think the apartment has been cleaned in all the years of his existence. After they’re done, some eight hours of box packing and floor sweeping and feather dusting later, Tama doesn’t even seem to recognize the place anymore. 

She weaves around their feet, meowing in obvious confusion as she paws at the floors, clearly unsettled by the absence of the empty water bottle army which had previously inhabited the area. Tomo’s a bit unsettled too, if only because he’ll miss the chaos, just a little.

Despite this, underneath Kazuha’s piercing stare, Tomo makes an unbreakable vow to never allow the place to descend into such disarray ever again. He’s not so sure about this one, because his ability to keep things neat is about as high as his ability to read books without falling asleep.

It doesn’t seem to matter in the end, though, because Kazuha starts coming by his apartment more often, much to the displeasure of Kaedehara Senior.

“And...the father vulture is cool with this?” Tomo asks once, as much as he appreciates Kazuha’s presence here. “Hanging around me so much, I mean. Not gonna lie, I sort of assumed he hated my guts.”

Kazuha doesn’t look up from where he’s cutting vegetables, fueled by his determination to reduce the amount of instant noodles and frozen pizza that Tomo’s been living off of.

“He...does not see your better qualities, I admit,” Kazuha says carefully, and Tomo grins at his friend’s unnecessary effort to spare his feelings. “But he has no grounds to object, since my being here hasn’t affected my grades.”

“So, in other words, you like me too much for him to stop you.”

For some reason, a hint of pink creeps into Kazuha’s cheeks at that, and he lowers his eyes back to the cutting board, doesn’t quite answer. Tomo laughs, and creeps up behind Kazuha to steal a piece of carrot from around Kazuha’s shoulders.

Privately, though he’s a little relieved that Kazuha is so obviously here by his own will, and not out of some obligation to help Tomo out. It’s the main reason why he keeps his living situation such a secret, no matter how close he is with their other friends--Kazuha is really the only one who needs to know.

Eventually, he gets used to having Kazuha stay late, to walking the other boy home long after dark and watching the dim outline of his shadow disappear through the Kaedehara’s gates. His every-few-days visits become every-other-day visits, until they get caught out in the rain one Friday, after both of them have had to stay late for their respective club meetings.

“Doesn’t look like it’ll let up any time soon,” Tomo predicts cautiously, while Kazuha changes into something drier and comfier and not quite well-fitting, considering he’s wearing Tomo’s borrowed shirt. “Maybe you just should stay.”

He’s not sure if he means it as a real suggestion or not, but Kazuha seems to take it as one--and then, their slightly chaotic weekday routine suddenly evens out into Kazuha simply sleeping over at his house every weekend.

Tomo gives up his bed at first, sleeps on his own couch with Tama curled upon his chest. But that soon changes too, because the winters are cold in their town and Kazuha practically demands Tomo’s presence in order to leech off of his body heat. 

Sharing a bed isn’t exactly new to them, after all the times they’ve fallen asleep together as kids. But they’d stopped for a while, sometime after Tomo had turned twelve, and when Tomo first feels the slide of Kazuha’s body nestled against his own, he can’t quite put into words how different it’s suddenly become. 

It shouldn’t be different--Kazuha still smells like strawberries, still has soft skin and even softer hair, still keeps his hand curled over the bare space of Tomo’s chest. Everything is the same, except that it’s not.

“Am I taking up too much space?” Kazuha asks, worriedly, when he feels Tomo tense beneath him, even though Kazuha is still so small that easily fits against Tomo’s side.

Tomo blinks, tries to pull together his thoughts into a semblance of a sentence.

“Huh? Oh--yeah. I mean, no! I mean--uh. Never mind, you get it.”

Kazuha smiles against his neck, because he somehow does get it, and falls asleep easily, as he always tends to do around Tomo. But Tomo stays awake for at least an hour afterward, one of his arms wrapped carefully around Kazuha’s slender waist, his gaze firmly fixed on the ceiling as he tries to ignore the low heat curling in his stomach.

For Tomo’s sixteenth birthday, Gramps--his now affectionately nicknamed boss at the repair shop--teaches him how to drive.

Tomo also gets a car. Sort of.

It’s a bit of a startling development, because he’s spent the past three months hating this same car to the point of having genuine nightmares about it. The thing had been dropped off at their shop sometime in the spring, traded out by its old owner for a newer model, and with the car being potentially older than Gramps himself, Tomo had assumed it’d be getting turned straight into scrap metal.

Instead, Tomo had been immediately set to work on fixing its various problems, underneath Gramps’ demonic tutelage. And now, after three months, ten ruined shirts, and no small amount of cursing out the future recipient of the car, Tomo comes to discover that the recipient of the car is himself.

“Well, I wasn’t going to let you have it for free,” the old man grumbles, dropping the keys into Tomo’s hand, but there’s an undisguised fondness on his face, behind his usual scowl. “Brats your age don’t understand the value of anything unless they work for it.”

“Yeah, yeah--so when are you coming to collect my soul?” Tomo asks, then nimbly ducks under the swipe of a rolled-up newspaper at his head. “But, I mean--thanks, Gramps. I mean it.”

“Are you senile already, boy? I’ve told you not to call me that! And you should be thanking your little wife instead--he came to me half a year ago with this noodle-brained idea. Although I’m sure he meant for things to be much easier for you.”

At the mention of Kazuha’s involvement in what’s pretty much the best birthday gift Tomo’s ever gotten, Tomo is so stunned that he forgets to protest the “wife” part. Soon after, the old man stuffs Tomo into the driver’s seat of the car, buckles himself in, and Tomo becomes so preoccupied with trying to not kill them both in his first-ever lesson that he never ends up correcting the man at all.

He does thank Kazuha, though. 

He drapes himself over his best friend the next time he sees him, recites his undying love for the other in the form of a self-authored poem as the rest of Kazuha’s literature club watches in horrified fascination. After a particularly clever rhyme between “dinosaur” and “chunky whore”, Kazuha puts a premature end to things, drags him outside and drops his blushing face into Tomo’s chest.

Tomo lets out a genuine chuckle, cards one hand through Kazuha’s soft hair and squeezes Kazuha’s hand with the other, a real gesture meant for only the both of them.

“You really are the best,” he says softly, tries not to be alarmed at how much feeling has suddenly crept into his voice.

Kazuha tilts his head, his cheeks still pink as his lips curve into the faintest of smiles, his eyes lighting up with something Tomo doesn’t understand.

“Anything for you.”

As it turns out, “anything” doesn’t quite include slightly illegal midnight expeditions to abandoned parking lots, an idea which Kazuha is in solid disapproval of.

Even still, he accompanies Tomo when Tomo goes to fetch the car from where it’s being housed in the shop, and makes himself comfortable in the passenger seat. Considering he’s never experienced Tomo’s driving before, Kazuha is surprisingly trusting in allowing Tomo to drag him over to their destination, doesn’t even wince when Tomo very nearly forgets to look both ways before making the last turn.

“Okay, pull up the video again. You know I got this,” Tomo reassures Kazuha, who meets his gaze with dubious concern.

Kazuha glances warily around them in the dark, but they’re the only ones here--the building this parking lot used to belong to has been gone for over twenty years, which means that this place is free game for Tomo to practice parallel parking.

Technically, he’s not supposed to drive without having an adult in the car. And technically, they’re not supposed to be here.

But technically, no one can see them, so it’s okay. Technically. 

With a soft sigh, Kazuha obligingly takes out his phone, swipes through until he finds an instructional video online. Tomo squints through the dark to see it, nodding along with the video until he feels reasonably confident enough to try.

“I don’t think I can watch,” Kazuha utters quietly, covers his eyes with his hands, but Tomo sees his friend peeking out through the gaps of his fingers anyways.

“It’s fine, it’s fine! I just have to get between these two lines, right? So I put the car in reverse…”

He twists himself around, uses the dim glow of the streetlights to guide his path, then backs the car up the appropriate distance--or what he thinks is the appropriate distance, until he hears the unfortunate crunch.

Oh. Shit.

Kazuha bolts upright with obvious alarm, Tomo immediately hits the brakes, and the two of them stare at each other in a spectacular silence for all of ten seconds. Then, there’s a flurry of movement as both of them scramble out of the car to inspect the damage.

Through the light of Kazuha’s phone flashlight, Tomo can see that what he’d hit was not, in fact, a perfect score on his parallel parking test, but rather an antiquated “Pedestrian Crossing” sign, which is now laying in several pieces at his feet. The car is blessedly unscathed, but the look on Kazuha’s prim and proper face is so absolutely scandalized that Tomo feels like he’s committed murder or eaten babies or committed murder while eating babies.

“Um,” Tomo says, eloquently, and Kazuha looks at him slowly, chewing on the inside of his cheek like he’s trying to bite back a million I-told-you-so’s.

Then, in one motion, Tomo scoops up the pieces of the sign, pops open the trunk of the car, and dumps the evidence inside. No one will miss it. Probably.

“Well, time to go!” Tomo fairly jumps back into the driver’s seat, and when Kazuha joins him, the other boy sinks so low into the seat that he looks to be in danger of falling off. 

Kazuha covers his face again, a low tremble passing through him as Tomo starts the car, and it takes Tomo a second to recognize the sound of it, of Kazuha’s muffled giggles rapidly evolving into full-blown laughter. 

Tomo blinks, nearly causes another accident with how little attention he’s suddenly paying to the car, and he grins so hard his cheeks ache from the force of it.

He’d gladly massacre another hundred traffic signs, all for this.

Approximately five hours later, Tomo wakes up to the angry buzz of his phone on his nightstand. He tries not to groan out loud, if only to avoid waking Kazuha, who is still curled on his bare chest--as is usual on their Saturday mornings--but it’s a futile attempt.

“Good morning?” he mutters, in a whisper, while Kazuha sleepily tilts his head to peek up at him.

“Boy, why in God’s name is there a broken street sign in this car?”

Tomo hangs up.

Even with the shadow of The Incident--as they’ve termed it--hanging over him like a vengeful ghost, Tomo does manage to get his driver’s license.

With no parents in the picture, Tomo’s life is about as free as it gets. But the car, along with his newly acquired ability to drive it, adds another layer of depth to his life that he hadn’t previously considered--namely, it gets him a girlfriend.

This is, of course, entirely by accident. 

Tomo just happens to be alone on a Wednesday afternoon, just happens to see one of the cheerleaders he’s friendly with caught out in the rain, and, being the owner of a conveniently dry car, he offers her a ride home.

As he parks outside of her house, she pauses before she makes to leave, sort of tilts her head and considers him appreciatively. He’s just about to ask her if she’s forgotten something before she fixes him with a determined stare and asks him out.

“Uh,” Tomo says, makes several failed attempts at speaking as his brain catches up to the present. “Sure?”

“Great! I know a good place for dinner--I’ll send you the details later, okay?” 

He nods numbly, because his mind is still amazingly free of all thoughts, and it isn’t until she’s gone and he’s been sitting frozen in his car for ten minutes that he realizes he should probably have a confused crisis in a more optimal location.

Because Kazuha is still busy with his internship at his father’s company, Tomo proceeds to make the fifteen-minute drive to Thoma’s house, where he sits on Thoma’s couch with a cold soda and tries to figure out what just happened.

“I have a girlfriend now. I think.”

Thoma, whose position on the student council has made him experienced in handling surprises of all natures, could not look more genuinely shocked if he tried. “Why?” is all he asks, when he finally recovers, and Tomo frowns at that, because he’s still figuring that part out.

“I mean, she asked. And you guys are always telling me I need to get with someone.”

This is true--Ayaka and Yoimiya have been especially interested in Tomo’s nonexistent romantic endeavors, recently.

“Yeah, but that’s not who we--never mind. Who is it?”

“Uh, Yumi. One of the cheerleaders.”

At this, Thoma shakes his head, like he’s trying to physically repel Tomo’s words with the movement. He takes a long drink from his soda, looks somewhere above Tomo’s head for the longest of moments before continuing. 

“And…you like her?”

“I don’t dislike her--she’s...cool?”

Not a very flattering response, he knows. But in truth, Tomo doesn’t really know her that well, at least not enough to appropriately defend her. She’s pretty, she’s nice, and Tomo simply can’t think of a reason to say no.

And despite Thoma’s apparent opposition, he can’t seem to think of a reason either, which is how Tomo finds himself going to dinner with Yumi that night.

It’s fun, the food she recommends is good, and at the end of the night, right as he’s walking her back to her house, she hooks her fingers in his collar, pulls him down, and kisses him.

Tomo tries to follow through, but he can’t help but get the feeling that she’s far more into this than he is. For some reason, he feels like he can’t figure out what he’s supposed to do, where he should put his hands or how hard he should be pressing up against her or if he should even be thinking about any of this at all. 

Maybe he should ask Kazuha for advice? Kazuha’s never kissed anyone either, as far as Tomo knows, but he’s read enough romance novels that he could maybe offer Tomo some pointers. 

By the time it occurs to him that thinking about his best friend while kissing someone else is definitely not what’s supposed to happen, Yumi has already pulled away--but she keeps her fingers in a gentle touch against his face, smiles at him in a way that makes him more relieved than anything. 

If she’s happy, he can’t have been that bad.

“I had fun,” she says as she steps away, her hand pausing on the edge of the door before she closes it entirely. “See you tomorrow?”

Tomorrow is Thursday, which means that Kazuha has his internship again. Which means that Tomo is free.

“Sounds good,” he answers, very romantically, his head nodding along in helpful punctuation. 

She beams at him, gives him a last peck on the cheek, and then disappears inside of her house. Tomo stares at the closed door for a moment, digs his hand into his pocket for his phone as he turns away, and starts to call Kazuha.

Nearly everyone, it seems, is eager to weigh in on this new development in Tomo’s life.

“So how was the date?” Yoimiya asks cheerfully, nudging him as they run laps down the track field. When Tomo answers, truthfully, that it was perfectly fine, Yoimiya claps him on the back, offers him a grin, and says, “You’re making a terrible mistake.”

Then she speeds away, being the faster runner of the two of them, leaving Tomo blinking behind in her dust.

Ayaka isn’t so quick to make her concerns known outright, but she lets out a disappointed sort of sigh when Tomo faithfully recounts the details, and doesn’t even look up from where she’s painting Thoma’s nails.

“I told you it was bad,” Thoma puts in, inspecting the fresh coat on his right hand while Ayaka holds his left. Apparently, the two of them had already discussed this at length before Tomo’s arrival. 

Tomo takes a confused bite out of his pizza, focuses on stuffing his mouth with food so he doesn’t feel obligated to defend himself. Then he swallows and tries to pry into what the big deal seems to be between all his friends.

“What? Did you two have someone else in mind? Is there some big rule I’m missing out on about who I’m supposed to date?”

Thoma and Ayaka exchange looks, having some silent, forceful conversation with their eyes that Tomo isn’t privy to. From what Tomo can gather, Thoma seems to want to speak up, but Ayaka gives him a furious eye narrow, uses a slippered foot to step on Thoma’s own, who barely suppresses his squawk of defeat. 

Then Ayaka tilts her head, gives Tomo the delicate sort of look he recognizes from Kazuha sometimes, the kind of noble-bred expression they get when they’re about to choose their words carefully.

“Not quite. It’s just...perhaps we assumed your heart lay elsewhere.”

Tomo doesn’t know where his heart lies, other than inside of his own chest, but he tells them that he’ll keep that in mind.

“And what about Kazuha?” Kokomi asks bluntly, as Gorou nearly drops his book on her foot, and Tomo pauses at the literature club entrance, having only stopped by to bring some of the clothes Kazuha left at his house.

“Uh. We’re best friends. What about him?”

Gorou shakes his head, makes some sort of frantic cease-and-desist gesture in Kokomi’s direction, who returns calmly to her romance novel. “Nothing! Just curious, you know?” 

No, Tomo doesn’t really think he does.

That Friday, Kazuha cooks dinner for three, and Tomo takes up a seat on the old couch while Yumi and Kazuha eat at his incredibly tiny table. Kazuha is quiet, because he’s always quiet around new people, mostly keeps his red gaze on his plate and contributes short, shy words whenever the conversation turns to him--like when Yumi asks how long they’ve been friends or what Kazuha’s doing at Tomo’s apartment to begin with.

“We’re working on a project,” Tomo jumps in cheerfully, mostly to save face, and Kazuha, who knows exactly what they’ve spent their most recent weekends doing, raises a brow at him.

“Is that what we’re calling it?” 

“Sure is, Princess. I’m a master wordsmith--you could learn from me, maybe.”

Kazuha doesn’t dignify that with a response, and Yumi looks between the two of them, tilts her head like she’s figuring something out--but ultimately directs the conversation away to another topic.

After dinner, she leaves them behind to work on their “project”, which is really their great undertaking of watching all twenty-two seasons of Teyvat Unleashed --the greatest nature documentary of all time.

“So what’d you think? Don’t tell me you think it’s a bad idea, too.”

Tomo tilts his head in Kazuha’s lap as he speaks, stares hard at the penguin on screen waddling its way into the snow, his heart picking up in his chest. For some reason, while he hadn’t really minded what the others had to say, he wants to hear what Kazuha thinks. 

Kazuha hums lightly above him, one of his hands dropping gently in Tomo’s hair, and shifts slightly against the couch.

“If she makes you happy, then I am happy,” he answers quietly.

Tomo doesn’t have to look to hear the genuine smile in his best friend’s voice, and relief unfolds itself in his heart.

Yumi doesn’t make him unhappy, Tomo can say that much.

They have fun together, especially now that Tomo’s more or less mastered the kissing and they’ve moved on into something that isn’t always kissing but definitely still involves mouths. As a seventeen-year old boy, he’s definitely pleased about this development, and it’s absolutely something of an ego stroke to discover that he’s as gifted in this area as he is in all physical pursuits. 

She’s also fairly understanding about Tomo’s need to split his time between his girlfriend and his best friend, never really questions why he refuses to break his weekend tradition. Kazuha just starts sleeping on the couch on his weekends over, Tomo starts washing his bedsheets without Kazuha’s help--and aside from that, nothing really changes.

It’s just that, somehow, Tomo had sort of expected a relationship to be more --more than just fun. Words have always been more Kazuha’s forte than his, and Tomo doesn’t think he could explain himself if he tried--there’s just something missing, inexplicably unwhole, and no amount of making out or more than making out does much to replace it.

Not that he doesn’t still enjoy those things, of course.

He’s in the middle of one of these enjoyable, slightly inexperienced sessions in the dark when his phone fairly blows up with impatient notifications, nearly ringing itself off of Tomo’s bed in an attempt to capture his attention. It’s a little impossible to ignore, so as reluctant as Tomo is to pull himself away from the moment, he pushes himself slightly off of Yumi to reach blindly around in the dark.

“Sorry, just one sec--”

“It’s fine,” she answers easily, sits up slightly to watch him through expectant eyes.

 He offers her a brief, apologetic smile, then squints against the harsh light of his screen as he briefly skims the wall of texts to see if the matter is worth interrupting his private party for. The messages are almost all from Yoimiya, which means either she’s come up with yet another plan to confess to Ayaka or she’s given herself food poisoning again.

But it’s neither.

Tomo is out of bed at the first mention of Kazuha’s name, and is already half-dressed by the time the word “accident” gets through the layer of shock that’s numbed his mind. It isn’t until Yumi speaks up again that he even remembers that she’s there, his hand frozen on the edge of his bedroom doorframe as he looks up. 

“You have to leave?” she asks, and Tomo struggles to pull the words together--because there’s no way around how bad he knows this looks.

“It’s--something came up, I mean--” he tries, but all he can think of is how wrong it is for him to be standing here, to be standing anywhere except at Kazuha’s side in this moment.

“It’s a Kazuha thing?” she guesses, with astonishing accuracy, and Tomo goes very still, his heart beating so fast that he’s afraid it might escape if he tries to talk, a distant pang of worry passing through his chest at even the sound of his friend’s name.

Instead, he only manages to nod, which earns him a surprisingly patient glance, something like understanding settling across Yumi’s expression.

“You should go,” is all she says, and there’s no anger or reproach in her tone, only a kind of gentle acceptance that makes him hesitate, makes his next swallow uncomfortably tight with gratitude and guilt.

“Thank you. Really.”

Then, he steps away and does what any self-respecting man does when his best friend has been hit by a drunken motorcyclist--he leaps half-naked into his car and drives twenty-five miles over the speed limit to the local hospital, screeching into the parking lot in record time.

In his haste to get to Kazuha, Tomo very nearly forgets to pull on the shirt he’d thrown into the passenger seat, but he makes it out of the car and through the hospital without further incident. Swallowing down his growing panic, he manages to charm the receptionist into giving up Kazuha’s room number, then runs up four flights of stairs when he can’t find the elevator.

He’s running mostly off of adrenaline and emotion by the time he shoves his way into Kazuha’s room, only to come face to face with the incredibly displeased look on Kaedehara Katsuro’s face.

“What are you doing here?”

Tomo doesn’t answer right away, mostly because the man is sitting in a chair beside his son, who looks so pale and small beneath the white blankets that Tomo’s chest burns with a violent ache. He starts forwards on instinct, wants to slide in under the covers and wrap himself around Kazuha and protect him like when they were kids, but he has to deal with the guard dog, first.

While he’s always tried to be outwardly friendly with Kazuha’s father, the man has never liked him, for reasons too numerous to be counted. Kazuha’s never once brought it up with Tomo, but it’s obvious enough that it really boils down to one thing--Tomo isn’t good enough for Kazuha.

Which is stupid, because they’re best friends, and Tomo doesn’t really give a damn about what a withered zucchini thinks of him.

Except--

He shakes his head to clear it, pushes away the unsettling heaviness that tugs at his chest.

“I’m, uh--I’m here to see Kazuha,” he tries, dips his head as respectfully as he can beneath Katsuro’s disdainful gaze, and watches as the man lets out such an extended sigh that it goes beyond insulting.

“Haven’t you seen enough of him? He indulges you far too much.”

Before Tomo can respond, Katsuro rises to his feet and studies his unconscious son with something not far from disappointment, red eyes hardening into steel. It’s the same look that used to steal the smile from Kazuha’s face, that shuttered his expression and closed him off from the world, and Tomo feels an old, familiar anger flaring up in his gut.

He shoves it back down, settles for curling his fingers into his palms until the skin breaks open, and nearly misses Katsuro’s next words.

“I will not stop you,” he murmurs, brushing past Tomo’s still form. “But it is my hope, that one day he will open his eyes and see you for what you are.”

The elder Kaedehara leaves quietly, his steps almost soundless, and Tomo sinks into the chair left behind, takes Kazuha’s pale, uninjured hand in his own and tries not to think. He’s not sure how long he sits like that, listening to the uneven rhythm of Kazuha’s shallow breaths, only that the world feels like it shifts, sun peeking through the clouds, when Kazuha stirs awake and blinks at him through confused, tired eyes.

There’s silence, at first, and then—

“...aren’t you supposed to be on a date?” 

Tomo laughs, leans forwards and drops his head down until his forehead rests against Kazuha’s wrist, the flutter of Kazuha’s pulse light to the touch. It soothes everything within him--the panic and the guilt and the stinging except, and leaves behind a familiar quiet.

He grins, props his head back up on his folded arms.

“Well, I had to come see my damsel in distress, didn’t I?”

Kazuha doesn’t quite smile, a little too drugged up on painkillers to properly react. But Tomo feels gentle fingers against his hair, hears the fondness in every part of Kazuha’s small little sigh, and he feels complete.

Kazuha stays in the hospital for seven days, healing from a broken hand and two fractured ribs, and practically begs Tomo to break him out by day five.

As Tomo can attest to from his own delinquent days, seven days of complete bed rest for three fractures is a bit overkill--but he’s fairly certain that Kazuha’s father maybe owns this hospital and the land it’s built on, and if the man insists on a week, then Kazuha’s here for a week.

Luckily, Kazuha’s father seems content to simply pay other people to monitor his son's health, and never makes a reappearance at the hospital after that first night. With the vulture removed from his nest, Tomo is well within his rights to stay at Kazuha’s side, his free time having become much freer now that the sports seasons are over for winter. 

Gramps even lets him off work for a time, mutters something about slow business, but Tomo very easily catches the undisguised relief on the old man’s face when he learns that Kazuha will make a full recovery.

And Kazuha certainly is feeling better, judging from how eager he is to leave.

“Yeah, I’m not so sure we’d make it,” Tomo says, when Kazuha first proposes his escape plan--which is for Tomo to scoop him up, hospital gown and all, and outrun hospital security staff the entire way home.

“You’re the star of the track team, Tomo. I know how fast you can run.”

Kazuha looks at him, all his usual properness stripped away by his absolute boredom, and Tomo tries not to laugh at the misery written over his friend’s expression. 

“True, but I’m too good-looking to go to jail. Plus, don’t you like spending time with me here? You get to share your chocolate pudding cups with me and lose our card games.”

From the displeased silence he receives in response, Tomo suspects that Kazuha is still sulking over their last round of Go Fish, where Tomo had squarely crushed all opposition. Still, he slides his unopened pudding cup across the folding tray and into Tomo’s waiting hands.

“You’re the best,” Tomo reminds him, earnestly, and sits himself on the edge of Kazuha’s bed, sliding himself beneath the covers to let Kazuha lean up against his warmth. The hospital beds aren’t really built for two, but Kazuha is so small that they manage to fit, although it’s admittedly a bit tight.

He peels back the lid of the pudding cup--something Kazuha can’t easily do with his single good hand--then sticks two plastic spoons into it, holding out their shared snack to the other. 

They’re still sitting like that, nestled together and eating chocolate pudding when Yumi drops by to visit. Kazuha looks up at him when he feels Tomo tense, and Tomo runs his free hand through his hair, more than a bit uneasy, because he hasn’t really talked to his girlfriend with how busy he’s been with Kazuha.

“We’ll come back to this,” he tells Kazuha when Yumi asks to talk to him outside, setting the pudding gently back onto the folding table and easing his way off of the bed.

They walk down to the hospital cafe in an awkward sort of silence, and Tomo pays for their drinks before they sit down.

“So, uh…” he starts, then stops, because while he’s pretty sure he knows what this is about, he also doesn’t.

Yumi, however, seems to have come prepared, because she reaches across the table to give his hand a reassuring sort of pat before she says what she wants to say.

Which is that they’re breaking up.

“Oh,” says Tomo, and then a moment goes by, where he realizes he should perhaps at least try to sound devastated. “I mean--was it something I did?”

“It’s...no. You’re a really sweet guy, Tomo. And you’re funny. And you’re hot--really hot. You’ll make a good boyfriend, trust me. I just think…”

For some reason, she looks up, stares for a long moment in the direction they’d come from before finishing.

“We’re not meant for each other.”

As far as breakups go, theirs is fairly clean, turns into something of a pleasant conversation before they part ways. He buys her a sandwich to go, hands her the little take-out box as he walks her to the hospital exit, and then they share a quick hug.

Before she leaves entirely, though, she pauses, tilting her head in something like amusement.

“You’ll figure it out, Tomo. I’m sure of it,” she says, with a voice bordering on a laugh, disappearing through the glass doors and into the winter chill.

Tomo stands there for a long moment, still trying to figure out what he’s supposed to be figuring out when he remembers that he still has a pudding to finish. 

Maybe Kazuha can help him understand what she’d meant, too.

Tomo’s not particularly shaken by his renewed bachelor status, which is good, because he doesn’t really have the time to be.

In the wake of Kazuha’s injury, trivial things like Tomo’s education had completely slipped his mind, and he now finds that his midterms are upon him with a vengeance, unannounced and woefully unstudied for. He clings to Kazuha like a drowning man, sticks himself by his best friend’s side and tries to leech off of as much of the other’s knowledge as possible, while also helping Kazuha compensate for the temporary loss of his left hand.

Kazuha’s healed enough by now to move around with relative ease, but Tomo insists on carrying his friend’s schoolbag for him, and almost insists on carrying Kazuha before the other puts an immediate stop to that.

“It’s fine, Tomo. Really,” Kazuha tries to say, but he doesn’t exactly fight to take his things back from Tomo, either.

Nor does he protest when Tomo follows him around everywhere, hovering behind Kazuha like a lost puppy.

He accompanies Kazuha to literature club--somewhat reluctantly--and half-listens to the plot of their most recent novel while he lays his head on top of his open history textbook, hoping to passively absorb the knowledge for his exam like a sponge.

This tactic doesn’t work, but Gorou does take pity on him and forces him to sit through a quick crash course on important military battles through the ages.

He also accompanies Kazuha to his internship, and discovers that Katsuro’s company is something of a legitimate clan, the floor that Kazuha’s working on stuffed to the brim with Kaedehara relatives. One of Kazuha’s aunts in particular takes a special liking to him, insists on forcing baskets of snacks into his arms out of concern for a “growing boy” like him not getting enough to eat.

“I think he’s grown enough,” Kazuha says flatly, having never really made it past Tomo’s chest in height, and Tomo nudges playfully at Kazuha’s shoulder.

“Jealousy doesn’t suit you, young master. And I like you small. It’s cute.”

At this, Kazuha ducks his head into his scarf, a light pink dusting at his cheeks. Kazuha’s aunt looks between them, and seems to be drawing some sort of conclusion that only becomes evident to Tomo some weeks later, when he’s helping Kazuha file away some paperwork. 

Kazuha’s father is there too, watching over them in blatant disapproval, but even he recognizes how useful Tomo is in helping Kazuha stay off of his broken hand. The man’s attention is only drawn away once one of his associates comes up to discuss something with him, and Tomo drowns out the boring office chatter in favor of helping Kazuha find a folder tucked away in the topmost cabinet.

It’s then that Kazuha’s aunt pops up, beams admiringly up at him, and proclaims--

“Kazuha, your boyfriend is so tall! Surely you’re bringing him to the family reunion, right?”

There’s the sound of shattering glass as the mug of coffee in Kaedehara Katsuro’s hand explodes from the force of his shocked grip, the color in his face draining away so quickly that he very nearly resembles the vampiric soul he truly is.

Tomo doesn’t know what possesses him in that moment, whether it’s the dark red blush on Kazuha’s cheeks, the outrage on the father-vulture’s face, or something else entirely, but he makes up his mind in an instant.

With an easy grin, he leans over to where Kazuha has gone very still, wraps an arm around his best friend’s shoulders and pulls him close, mindful of the other’s still healing ribs.

“Oh, definitely. I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Tomo says, and, just for the finishing touch, nuzzles his cheek against the top of Kazuha’s head.

For his moment of fun, they’re promptly expelled from the premises for the day, and Kazuha is even quieter than usual as he eases himself into the passenger seat of Tomo’s car.

Tomo tosses Kazuha’s stuff into the backseat and slides in opposite of him, twisting his key in the ignition. Now that the gleeful high of pissing Kaedehara Senior off is starting to die down, it occurs to Tomo that there was maybe a better way of handling the situation.

Like, one hundred better ways.

He pauses, then runs an awkward hand through his hair, hoping to dissolve some of the strange tension between them.

“Was that...weird?” he starts, and Kazuha blinks up at him, looks surprised to hear the words in Tomo’s mouth. “You know. The boyfriend thing.”

“I don’t believe so--my aunt has an active imagination. Although I’m not certain what gave her the impression that we were…” Kazuha trails off with a small shake of his head, his fingers fiddling with the ends of his sleeves. “But it’s true that I had been thinking of asking you to accompany me.”

“To the family reunion or whatever?”

Kazuha averts his gaze to somewhere outside of the window before he continues. “Yes--as a favor, I mean. My father has been insisting that it’s hardly proper for the Kaedehara heir to show up alone. He offered me several potential candidates to take to the event.”

Somehow, Tomo doesn’t like the sound of that. At all.

An unwilling image of Kazuha and some faceless stranger sneaks its way into his mind, and the emotion that twists in his stomach then feels like it can’t decide on what it wants to be. It snakes up his veins with uncomfortable heat, makes an ugly sort of pressure close around his heart. 

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re taken, right?”  he says, and doesn’t quite manage to sound as light as he’s trying to feel. “Of course I’ll come.”

There’s a grateful tilt to Kazuha’s shy smile, even as he tilts his head in concern.

“Are you certain? I know you don’t exactly enjoy my family’s type of gathering.”

In truth, spending a weekend in a parade of the noble elite--minus Kazuha, of course--sounds a little like the afterlife that he hopes his own father is getting. But he’s not about to throw Kazuha to the wolves and let him face this alone, or worse, with whatever swamp hag that Daddy Kaedehara’s fished out of the infernal sea.

If anyone’s going to pretend to be Kazuha’s boyfriend, it’s Tomo--and no one else.

“Of course, Sunshine,” he answers simply, and starts to back the car out of the parking space. “That’s what best friends are for.”

Two months later, Tomo considers taking it all back when he finds himself confronted by mankind’s apex predator--a suit.

“What if I just showed up naked?” Tomo suggests, quite reasonably, only for Kazuha to call upon some of his family’s vaunted demonic heritage and force him into a chair with a strength Tomo hadn’t thought possible. 

“That is not happening. Put it on, Tomo.” 

Kazuha shows him no sympathy whatsoever, using the advantage of his newly healed hand to thrust the folded bundle of stiff fabric into Tomo’s unclothed chest. Reluctantly, Tomo takes it in his grasp, only for Tama to perk up at the motion, leaping into his lap to snatch away the tie.

She bats at the length of it with a curious paw as Kazuha frees Tomo’s untamable hair from its ties, seizes a comb, and sets to work on brushing Tomo bald.

“Look, Tama’s having so much fun!” Tomo points out, trying not to wince when the teeth of the comb bite against an especially savage tangle. “You wouldn’t want to make her sad, would you? Seems like I have no choice but to leave the tie off.”

In the reflection of the mirror, Tomo can see that his words have done little to sway Kazuha’s hardened heart, and he deflates with defeat, grudgingly forcing himself to shrug on the first layer of clothing. He does up the buttons of the white undershirt, then reluctantly drags the suit jacket over his frame, surprised at how accurately Kazuha had gotten his measurements.

“This covers up too much of my chest.”

Kazuha pauses at the complaint, takes the hair tie out of his mouth and yanks Tomo’s head slightly back. “What a tragic loss for society indeed. But a necessary one.”

Eventually, when Kazuha stops abusing his head in favor of digging around in Tomo’s bathroom drawers, Tomo leans over, lightly tugs the tie from Tama’s grasp, and eyes it with disgust.

Then, he drapes the tie sort of uncertainly around his neck, and looks into the mirror, as if it might hold the answers on what to do next.

Kazuha glances down at him, somewhat incredulously. “Tomo, ties are part of our school uniform.”

“And have you ever seen me wear that?”

Even with the way that Kazuha covers his face with both of his hands, Tomo can see the shadow of a smile on his expression before he wipes his features flat and forces Tomo to stand up. He presses Tomo’s back up against the counter, then takes hold of the tie in his thin fingers, helping Tomo do it up.

“You’re amazing,” he says, which earns him a fond pat to the chest.

With the preparations done, Tomo twists around to examine himself fully in the mirror, and doesn’t quite recognize his own reflection. Between Kazuha’s successful attempts to smooth out his hair and the suit covering up about eighty percent of his skin, he looks so... proper.  

It’s weird.

“What do you think?” Tomo asks Kazuha anyways, and Kazuha stares at him for a long moment, the red of his eyes passing slowly over every inch of his frame.

Then, Kazuha reaches up, straightens the crooked edge of Tomo’s collar, a hint of pink creeping into his pale cheeks.

“You look nice,” he says, so softly that Tomo would have missed it, if hadn’t already been listening for the quiet of Kazuha’s voice his entire life. “I like it.”

Well. That’s all that’s important here, really.

Luckily, despite their late start, they make it to the gathering in time.

Un luckily, this means that Tomo soon finds himself being roped into the very thing he’s been dreading from the start--socialization. 

Kazuha grabs him by the hand as soon as they step inside, tries to drag him down the hallways at top speed, but even Tomo’s track team skills and impressively long legs can’t protect him from the shower of curious, prying questions pelted his way.

“What’s your family name?” 

He doesn’t have one, having effectively been orphaned at fifteen--not that he’d want to share a name with the remaining member of his family, anyways.

“What does your father do?” 

No idea, but Tomo suspects it involves a whole lot of alcohol and a whole lack of decency.

“How many boats do you own?” 

Huh?

“I don’t even know what the right answer to that is supposed to be,” Tomo mutters under his breath, when he and Kazuha finally get a moment alone, hidden away in one of the corner rooms.

“Three,” Kazuha answers easily, and when Tomo glances at him in confusion, there’s an edge of humor to the tilt of Kazuha’s lips. 

Tomo leans his head back until it thumps lightly against the wall, tries to restrain himself from running a hand through his hair and ruining Kazuha’s hard work, but it’s a near thing. He feels restless here, if only because of how obvious it is that he doesn’t belong, and he’s honestly tempted to make a grand exit through the nearest window, broken glass and all.

“This is terrible.”

Kazuha nudges gently at his arm, and Tomo lowers his hands enough to peek over at the amused light in Kazuha’s gaze. “At least the food is good,” he assures Tomo, knowing very well how to appeal to Tomo’s heart.

It is good, mostly because he doesn’t have to pay for it--all free food is good--but also because Tomo’s certain that each dish costs more than his entire apartment building. They’re seated at what appears to be the “main branch” table, with Kazuha’s crusty father at the head and his even crustier grandfather on the other end.

Between the two of them, Tomo feels like he’s sitting in one of those death rooms, the kind where the walls close slowly in until they crush whatever’s inside.

Across from Tomo is one of the Kaedehara cousins, a middle-aged man who seems to be laboring under the delusion that Tomo wants to listen to what he has to say. For the most part, Tomo just tries to nod along, stuffs his face with food so that he won’t respond with anything unfortunate, but there’s a sort of lull between the chicken course and the vegetables that leaves Tomo defenseless.

“...and then, they came up to me and said I was the best fisherman they’d ever seen, that they’d never seen anyone so incredible. I mean, I caught a whale, have you ever even seen a whale?”

“Yeah, I’m looking at one right now,” Tomo mutters a touch too loudly, staring directly at him, and at his side, Kazuha chokes on such a poorly-disguised laugh that Kazuha’s father interrupts his own conversation to glare at them.

Kazuha covers his mouth with his hand demurely, turning his eyes down to his plate, but the appreciative glance he sends in Tomo’s direction makes it impossible for Tomo to be even remotely apologetic about his actions.

Unfortunately, with the whale silenced, the topic of conversation shifts inevitably towards the young master’s relationship status--or, more accurately, what had possessed the heir to choose Tomo, of all things.

Although Tomo has shared exactly nothing about himself, they’ve already discerned that he is a person of no status, with the only assets to his name being an old car and an apartment on the brink of collapse. 

And a cat.

“Are you thinking about getting a new place?” one of the aunts--not the nice one from work--asks, blinking in one of those innocent, coquettish ways befitting a gargoyle like herself. “Surely you’re not expecting young Kazuha to live in your... home?”

Between his father and his dismal student career in his pre-sports days, Tomo is used to being the star of negative attention. Even still, the comment tugs uncomfortably at some familiar part in him, the same part of him that wondered all those years ago why he could never find the right thing to say, why it was so hard for him to learn, why he isn’t enough--

He slides an easy grin over his face, leans forwards and swallows past the tightness in his throat. 

“Sure, I’d be willing to invest in somewhere nice--are you interested in making donations?” he asks lightly, and there’s a ripple of laughter across the table, some in his favor, and some definitely not.

The smile on her face sharpens into something distinctly condescending, one of her painted nails tapping impatiently against the table. 

“You certainly are in desperate need of charity. Perhaps that’s why the young master takes such an interest in you?”

Well then.

Tomo blinks at that, tries to search within himself for a response, because it’s stupid. Kazuha is his best friend by choice and Tomo doesn’t, shouldn’t let himself hear what she’s saying.

Except--

There’s a soft clink as Kazuha puts down his chopsticks, and when Tomo glances at him, he’s almost startled by what he sees there--how Kazuha, for the first time, genuinely resembles his father, the red of his eyes hardening into steel.

“Enough,” Kazuha says, quietly, his voice no louder than its normal lilt, but there’s an sharpness to it that immediately draws a silent hush over the table, an edge that makes Kazuha’s aunt turn her eyes downwards beneath his gaze.

“It was just a bit of humor,” she murmurs, but says nothing else.

The tension at the table relaxes only when Kazuha, with no change in the calm of his expression whatsoever, picks up his chopsticks once more and continues eating. Gradually, the conversation picks back up again, but Tomo’s name stays well out of it.

Something feels like it settles in Tomo’s chest then, and his heart feels so light that it almost wants to rise out of him entirely, weightless and unbound.

A little like the world falling into place.

His hand sneaks beneath the table, drops down to find the touch of Kazuha’s fingers already waiting for him, and Tomo twines their hands together with a grateful squeeze.

Afterwards, Kazuha helps him sneak out as fast as humanly possible, the two of them slipping beneath extra questions and requests to stay, ducking out into the dimly lit night. It’s late enough that most of the streetlights have gone out, and it feels oddly quiet between them in the dark.

Kazuha walks home, takes the winding route back to Tomo’s apartment and hesitates when they reach the door, turning his regretful gaze to the floor.

“I’m...sorry,” he murmurs at last, with something of a careful wince. “I shouldn’t have dragged you into that. I didn’t expect my family to be so…”

“Bitchy?”

“...Yes.”

Tomo shrugs, but despite his suggested response, he feels no true heat behind the word. As much as he knows that he’ll never get those eight hours of his life back, he also knows that he’d do it again in an instant, if Kazuha needed him.

“No worries,” he says, wraps an arm around Kazuha’s shoulders in a quick hug, brings him close until he sees the lines of worry ease from Kazuha’s face. “Anything for you.”

Life goes back to normal, after that, very easily slipping back into their usual routine.

Things have been a bit chaotic lately, between Tomo getting a girlfriend and Kazuha getting injured and everything else between, but they pick up right where they left off. Kazuha comes over on Fridays, sleeps over at his house until Sunday night, and Tomo endures Papa Kaedehara’s glare in the five-or-so minutes of contact they get.

There are a few changes--they put their nature documentary on hold for a bit, but only because a different show of interest comes out, and they start ordering takeout from a different place, because their old favorite closes for renovations.

It’s in this slow, steady way that Tomo finally inches over the border of his eighteenth birthday, the last of his friends to cross the milestone into adulthood.

He gets the most unsurprising-surprise party in history, because Kazuha’s attempts to distract him last for all of five minutes before Tomo successfully pleads his way into discovering the truth. Even still, he does his best to be shocked when he walks in to find balloons scattered across his apartment floor, and his friends hiding behind his couch.

It doesn’t work.

“I knew we should have given distraction duty to someone else,” Thoma says, his voice muffled from where he’s digging through Tomo’s fridge for something. “Kazuha can’t resist his charms.”

Kazuha turns slightly pink, but in no way denies the accusation, instead nibbling with great concentration at a tiny forkful of cake.

“Nah, it’s not his fault. I’m just good at what I do.”

There’s a loud pop, then a shriek of alarm from behind them as Yoimiya trips and falls on top of a balloon, squashing it beneath her weight, just as Thoma triumphantly turns around with an armful of what Tomo recognizes as alcohol.

“And where did you get that?” Ayaka asks, raising a delicate brow as she plucks bits of broken balloon from her bangs.

“I have my ways.”

Thoma proudly spreads the bottles across the table, more than enough for everyone assembled. Gorou practically leaps over the couch to join them in his interest, and even Kazuha tilts his head in consideration. Before he takes one of the bottles, though, his red eyes flick briefly to Tomo’s face, studying him with a quiet understanding even before Tomo fully registers the hint of hesitation that dampens the excited curiosity in his chest.

He studies the label, faintly recognizes this brand as the one that used to decorate the floors of his home in his childhood, the one that turned his father into an angry-eyed stranger in the dark.

Logically, he knows that the man’s behavior is an exception--but as much as he regularly attempts to forget it, Tomo is his father’s son, is more like him than he can sometimes stand.

“You don’t have to,” Kazuha murmurs at his side, faintly enough that the others won’t hear. “But it won’t be the same.”

He speaks with such resolve that Tomo finds his reservations melting away--wordlessly, he pops open the cap, and settles down with the others. Tomo isn’t sure if it’s the buzz of alcohol in his stomach, or the excitement of this first taste at adulthood, or something else entirely, but he keeps one casual arm looped around Kazuha’s waist as friendly conversation falls over them like a blanket.

Just to steady himself.

After four hours, two rounds of strip poker, and one more popped balloon, Tomo finds that he’s the one having to steady Kazuha, who’s apparently overestimated just how much he can take. 

They’re all a bit drunk, enough that they’ve regressed to playing low-quality party games of their own invention--the current one involves a convoluted set of rules, a bastardized version of Go Fish, and an exciting makeout session between the last two players standing.

“Lucky me,” Thoma declares, looking between his hand of cards and Tomo’s, then reaching out to grab Tomo’s collar and shoving their lips together in something that does indeed resemble a kiss, if only because they’re too drunk to question it.

It’s not bad, actually, although Tomo really only has his experiences with Yumi to compare this to. But he does get into it, and it’s nice that Thoma is close enough to him in size that he doesn’t have to worry about popping him like one of the balloons. 

“Hey. That was good,” Tomo answers, when they pull apart, and the two of them high-five each other in entirely appropriate post-makeout etiquette, before Tomo leans back to reshuffle the deck.

“What’s wrong with men?” Yoimiya ponders aloud, having observed this interaction in bemusement, and Ayaka and Kokomi nod along in solemn agreement.

Kazuha giggles at that, as if he isn’t included in this category, and the sound of it nearly makes Tomo drop the cards with how fast he twists his head up to glance at his best friend. A moment later, Kazuha flops bonelessly against him, apparently no longer able to sit up under his own power.

“Tomo’s so warm,” Kazuha observes, then perks up once more, inspiration lighting up his face. “Tomo is so warm. Sunlit rocks cannot compare. To his big b--”

He interrupts his own haiku with an unsteady hiccup, then apparently forgets whatever it was he’d been about to say. Which is just as well, anyways, because Tomo’s already setting up for the next round of cards.

Tomo, blessed with a bit of birthday luck and notably higher alcohol tolerance than the others, manages to win every round, kisses every single person in the room until finally, it comes down to him and Kazuha.

“Oh. It’s me. I have won,” Kazuha blinks down at his cards, like he doesn’t quite believe it, peering closely at the front and back of his hand. Then, he sets them down gently, as carefully as if he were lowering a baby bird into its nest, and scoots across the floor, practically climbing into Tomo’s lap.

The gentle scent of strawberries cloaks Tomo’s senses in a haze, and his hands automatically rest on Kazuha’s hips to steady the other, his head tilting down to meet Kazuha’s gaze. Somehow, Tomo feels like the room has gone very quiet, like the rest of the group is watching them with rapt attention, but he almost doesn’t care, every part of him drawn towards the delicate part of Kazuha’s lips, the fragile flutter of the other’s snowy lashes.

Something tugs in his gut then, a flash of heat so heavy that it quickens his pulse, makes his blood run hot in his veins, and Tomo is almost startled by how much he wants.

Kazuha’s hand comes up, his fingers cupping Tomo’s jaw, and Tomo lets himself lean into it, feels not entirely in control of himself as one of his hands flattens itself against Kazuha’s lower back.

The distance between them closes, Kazuha’s expression turns slightly shy--

“Mm...my first…”

His first kiss.

Tomo doesn’t want it--not like this. Not if it isn’t real.

He blinks, Kazuha’s mumbled words dousing some distant, rational part of his brain in a blast of arctic water. He jerks back, covers Kazuha’s mouth with his own hand before the other can kiss him, his heart fluttering anxiously in his chest.

“Um--” he starts, looks up to find everyone staring at him. Only Kazuha isn’t looking at him, because he’s so drunk that he’s started simply nuzzling at Tomo’s hand over his mouth, his eyes falling contently closed. “Actually, I think it’s time for bed.”

He feels far more sober as he gathers Kazuha easily in his arms, twists them so his arms loop beneath Kazuha’s back and beneath his knees. Kazuha wraps his arms around Tomo’s neck happily, buries his flushed face against Tomo’s shoulder.

“Tomoooooo…” he says happily, as Tomo takes Kazuha away from the kitchen and into the dark of his room, gently setting Kazuha onto his bed.

Tomo smiles fondly, relief settling in his heart. “Sit tight, sweetheart. I’ll be back--gotta send the others off.” 

Kazuha doesn’t seem very pleased about this development, tangles his hand in Tomo’s clothes until Tomo has no choice but to shed his jacket and leave it with Kazuha as he slips back out.

The others are looking at him curiously, especially Ayaka and Kokomi, who are beaming at him like he’s just rescued an entire box full of innocent puppies.

“...What?” Tomo asks, feeling himself flush underneath their appreciative gazes, rubbing one hand against the back of his neck. “What?”

“That was really sweet of you, Tomo,” Ayaka says, her smile turning even softer, and Tomo feels unusually flustered, groping blindly about within himself for the right words.

“I mean, I just--what kind of guy takes advantage of his best friend, right?”

“Best friend,” Yoimiya repeats aloud, then falls onto her back, covers her face, and lets out a muffled sort of scream.

Kokomi gives her a silent, sympathetic pat, and Tomo gets the sensation that he’s missing something here.

They play a few more quick, kissing-free rounds, make a few aborted attempts to clean up the apartment, and then Tomo stuffs his friends into individual cabs to see them safely home. By the time he returns, he’s fully expecting Kazuha to be asleep, but the other twists around as soon as Tomo closes the bedroom door behind him.

“I’m not speaking to you,” Kazuha proclaims, despite the fact that he is, indeed, speaking to Tomo now. He tries to push himself upright, wobbles unsteadily for half-a-second, then falls back down onto the pillows, peering at Tomo upside-down.

While Tomo was away, Kazuha seems to have wiggled his way out of most of his clothing, is wearing only his white undershirt with Tomo’s jacket wrapped around his shoulders.

“Something wrong?” Tomo asks as he starts to pull his own shirt over his head, tossing it freely into the corner. 

“You left me. Now I’m angry with you.” 

Kazuha attempts to follow through on this, tries to punctuate his declaration with a serious frown, but Tomo can see how hard his friend is trying to suppress a giggle. 

“Sorry, Princess,” he says indulgently, then looks around the room to find some sort of peace offering that will allow him to slide into bed beside Kazuha. He seizes the first thing he sees--Muffins the Giraffe--and holds it out to Kazuha with flourish. “Here--won’t you forgive me?”

Kazuha narrows his eyes, considers the proposition carefully, then wiggles himself around on the bed so that there’s an open space for Tomo, and reaches out to take Muffins.

Tomo chuckles, sits himself on the edge of the bed, and then stops, because--

Because there’s an almost painful familiarity about the way Kazuha holds the stuffed giraffe before him, how he gives it a simple squeeze and a confused pat to Muffins’ head, like he isn’t sure what to do with the toy.

Suddenly, Tomo’s heart feels very tight. 

Then, Kazuha pulls the giraffe close, nuzzles his cheek against the top of its head in a motion that steals Tomo’s breath away from the recognition of it, because this one is from him --this is a part of him in Kazuha now.

And somehow, it feels like so much --it’s every moment they’ve spent together all at once, is all the secrets they’ve shared, all the things they’ve taught each other, everything they’ve ever had all in this one second.

It’s the sound of Kazuha’s laugh, of the smiles reserved just for him, it’s the sitting side-by-side on the apartment floor, the not needing to speak, the sparkly bandage on the back of Muffins’ head, the first time Tomo’s ever been reached for by a gentle hand.

It’s just...them. 

It’s always been them.

Oh.

Tomo swallows hard, looks down at Kazuha, and something like a low thrill rises within him, because he finally sees Kazuha, after all these years. He slides in beneath the covers, and Kazuha immediately nestles against him, curls against Tomo like he was made to fit at his side.

With how close they’re pressed together, Tomo can see the silver chain at Kazuha’s neck, Tomo’s old paperclip ring slipping out from beneath the part of Kazuha’s clothes and resting between them.

Carefully, Tomo closes his hand around the ring, presses into his palm until he can feel it against the flutter of his pulse.

I’ll get you a better one next time, he thinks, means it with every part of his heart--and then drifts into a dreamless sleep.

Somehow, in the wake of this revelation, Tomo feels very calm.

He wakes calmly, dresses himself calmly, calmly gives Kazuha some pills for his hangover headache in a supremely calm fashion.

It’s only after he walks Kazuha home on Sunday night and watches him disappear up the steps and into his house that it really, finally hits him again--

He’s in love with Kazuha.

Right.

Tomo blinks once, twice, stares into the dark in a quiet daze. 

Then, he does what any self-respecting man does when he remembers that he’s in love with his best friend of thirteen years--he runs twenty-five minutes through the rain at a fast-paced jog and pounds desperately on Thoma’s door.

“Uh,” Thoma says, looks Tomo over and takes in his very soggy, very breathless state before letting him in without another word.

Ayaka’s there too, which is good, because Tomo wants a bigger audience. In fact, he wants to tell the whole world about his new discovery, wants to climb onto the tallest building in the town and shout from the rooftops that he’s in love, he’s in love with his best friend, Kaedehara Kazuha--

“So, did you need something?” Ayaka asks, and Tomo pulls himself out of this particular fantasy, realizing that he’s been standing still and dripping rainwater onto Thoma’s carpet for five minutes.

He draws himself up, looks between the two of them, and--

“I’m in love with Kazuha,” he says, the words unfolding into the silence.

Astonishingly, this ground-shaking, earth-shattering, heavens-moving proclamation is met with little more than blank stares as Ayaka and Thoma exchange glances over Tomo’s head.

“Yes,” Ayaka finally says, lips twitching like she’s trying to hide a smile at his expense while Thoma casually answers a stray text, the both of them behaving as if Tomo isn’t having the most important discovery of his life--of anyone’s life. “We know. Everyone knows.”

Tomo blinks, once, twice.

“What? How? I didn’t even know! Not until like, Friday! What do you mean you knew? Who’s everyone?”

Thoma looks up from his phone, puts it to sleep and tucks it into his pocket.

“Do you want your answer in the form of a novel or a movie? Because it’s going to take all night.”

Finding his loyal friend distinctly unhelpful for once, Tomo looks to Ayaka instead, who covers her mouth to hide her smile.

“Tomo,” she says, very patiently. “He lives in your apartment more than his own home. You sleep with him three days a week. I don’t recall the last time we had a conversation where Kazuha didn’t come up somehow. You cry when you open his handmade bento boxes.”

“But...But--that was as friends. We’re best friends!”

Thoma groans, drops his face into his hands. “I don’t think I can take this. The point is, we’ve all known for like, four years. Now that you finally know, what are you going to do?” Under his breath, he adds--”Please, Gods, do something.”

Tomo pauses, his thoughts catching up to him all at once, the realization that things don’t just end here--that there’s another step after this.

Oops.

Sensing his paralyzed confusion, Ayaka reaches over, pats his arm sympathetically.

“Perhaps,” she suggests, very reasonably. “You could tell him.”

Despite Ayaka’s hopeful predictions, Tomo is terrible at confessing.

He certainly tries, but every single one of his attempts is curtailed by some sort of disaster.

The first time, he does everything right--he invites Kazuha over, on a weekday night, and orders takeout for them so that Kazuha won’t have to cook. He even lights a couple candles, to add to the festive atmosphere.

They’re eating dinner together, and Tomo is watching Kazuha take careful little nibbles out of his broccoli, admiring just how cute his best friend really is. The moment feels right, a peaceful little lull between just the two of them, and everything Tomo wants to say curls at the tip of his tongue.

Unfortunately, so does the mouthful of noodles he’d just inhaled, and instead of declaring his love for Kazuha, he declares that he’s choking, which causes Kazuha to bolt upright in alarm, come up behind him, and nearly break three of Tomo’s ribs in order to rescue him.

Afterwards, with the bruises still purpling against the skin of Tomo’s stomach, Tomo tries to spit out his confession once more, only to be stopped by the fact that the words coming from his still-raw throat sound like guttural peacock mating noises.

He knows this noise very well, from their nature documentaries, and he certainly knows enough to recognize that it’s not very romantic-sounding. At all.

The second time, he tries for a more drastic approach.

He invites Kazuha out on a date--that isn’t actually a date, not until he’ll make it one, by confessing. There’s an autumn festival that happens in their town on a yearly basis, a traveling fair with decent attractions, and he knows Kazuha’s always liked the decorations they put up.

Tomo wins Kazuha an enormous teddy bear at one of the games, putting the accuracy and strength of his throwing arm to good use and knocking out all the carefully stacked bottles in one shot. 

It’s big enough that Kazuha can’t even see over the top of it when Tomo proudly presents it to him, and Tomo comes up with the ingenious solution of holding Kazuha’s hand to guide him around.

Afterwards, he rubs his suddenly sweaty palms on the fabric of his pants, tries to lead Kazuha away to quiet space beneath the maple trees, and they take a seat on one of the park benches.

“Kazuha, um...we’ve known each other for a long time, and I--” Tomo starts, only to be cut off as Kazuha’s entire frame trembles with a violent sneeze, and then another, because it turns out that they’re situated directly above the largest patch of ragweed that Tomo’s ever seen.

Frantically, Tomo attempts to lead Kazuha’s sneezing, sniffling, eye-watering self away from the park, the teddy bear stuffed beneath one of his arms and his other hand in Kazuha’s own. They make it a respectable distance before Kazuha tenses at his side, tilts his head upwards to the sky.

“It’s going to rain,” he observes quietly, his voice slightly muted by his stuffy nose.

Ten minutes later, they’re caught out in the biggest downpour to grace Inazuma in a decade, and Tomo discovers that the teddy bear is really, really heavy when soaked in water, enough that even he has to use both hands to hold it.

Which means that he can’t hold Kazuha’s hand anymore.

The only saving grace of his failed expedition is that Kazuha’s eyes are still so red-rimmed and watery that he can’t see the way Tomo glares at the bear in his arms all the way home.

The third time, Tomo doesn’t even make it to the confessing stage.

In fact, he doesn’t even make it to Kazuha at all.

He’s running with Yoimiya at track practice when he sees Kazuha slide his way into the empty seats, taking out his book like he always does while waiting for Tomo to finish. Somehow, the sight of this, of Kazuha bending his head to peer down at his book, his soft, white locks falling gracefully against his neck, inspires Tomo so greatly that he decides that the moment of romance is now.

He changes his course, ignores Yoimiya’s startled warnings, and runs straight towards Kazuha. With his attention so focused on the target of his affections, Tomo completely misses what Yoimiya had been trying to tell him, until it hits him.

Literally.

His head-first collision with the tree is hard enough to shake the remaining few leaves from its branches, knock him on his back onto the grass, and temporarily darken his vision.

When he blinks back into awareness, Kazuha is leaning over him, his red gaze immensely concerned, and Tomo feels his affection rise upwards once again, his words tumbling over each other in an attempt to escape him.

“I--you...I want...day---day…today...date,” he says, intelligently, distracted by both the ringing pain behind his eyes and the angelic sight of the way Kazuha is currently framed by the sunlight.

Understandably, Kazuha does not understand him.

Instead, the boy puts his hand worriedly against Tomo’s head, peers into his eyes to examine his pupils, clearly having mistaken Tomo’s professions of love for a symptom of brain damage.

“I think you should see the nurse,” Kazuha says quietly, and gently helps Tomo sit up, using his smaller frame to support Tomo’s weight.

Tomo leans into it, presses his face into the crook of Kazuha’s neck, and mumbles out something that could either be I love you or an attempt to speak another language. 

Kazuha pats him gently on the back, apparently assuming it to be the latter, and then leads Tomo away.

An hour later, Kazuha pushes open the door to Tomo’s apartment, and helps him inside. 

A couple ice packs to the forehead and some rest have done wonders for Tomo’s headache, and the nurse had declared he’d come away just fine from his injury, as long as he got the appropriate amount of rest. Kazuha, as Tomo’s best friend, had been allowed to take Tomo home, mostly because Tomo hadn’t been trusted to drive himself back in his state.

Kazuha seems to take pity on him, even lets Tomo fix himself a huge bowl of popcorn without expressing his disapproval, and helps Tomo open up a can of soda that he might normally dump outside otherwise.

He covers Tomo with a blanket, too, leans over Tomo to tuck him in, his soft strands of hair tickling gently against Tomo’s neck.

“Better?” Kazuha asks, his lips twitching into the faintest of smiles, his gentle fingers reaching up to brush Tomo’s bangs away from his bruised head.

“The best,” Tomo answers, and stuffs a handful of popcorn into his mouth so that he won’t embarrass himself with anymore words, because he’s starting to realize that he’s really just not good at this.

Then, they watch nature documentaries.

This week’s episode is about the deep arctic areas, and much of the screentime is devoted to a family of seals. The baby seal, especially, catches Tomo’s interest, and he watches it wiggle its way across the snow with a manly glee.

“Looks just like you,” he observes, because it does, it’s fluffy and white and small and squeaky and perfect and Tomo wants to hug it forever and never let go.

“I fail to see the resemblance,” Kazuha says flatly, but from the pink flush creeping into his cheeks, he absolutely does.

Tomo grins, shoves another bit of popcorn into his mouth--which turns out to be a mistake, because the scene transitions into a horrifying nightmare as a predator peeks its head over the nearby snowbank, fixing its beady eyes on the baby Kazuha--the baby seal.

“Oh my gods,” Tomo mutters, his heart picking up in his chest, every part of him wanting to look away but being unable to at the same time. He settles for covering his eyes, peeking through the gaps of his fingers as he anxiously watches the seal’s fate.

“No..it can’t, it can’t--” 

Kazuha, who isn’t quite as affected by the sight of the baby seal hurriedly wiggling away for its life, looks over at Tomo at the sound of his frantic muttering, just as Tomo nearly upends the bowl of popcorn with a terrified screech, because the predator makes one last, desperate lunge for the seal--

Only for the seal to reach the water, and successfully slip away.

Tomo closes his eyes, breathes out in relief, and then--

“Tomo,” Kazuha says, quietly.

It’s no different from the hundreds of thousands of other times Kazuha’s said his name--it’s in Kazuha’s usual soft lilt, in the delicate sound of Kazuha’s syllables. Everything is the same, except that it’s not.

Tomo looks up, pushes himself upwards so that he’s properly sitting upright then, because Kazuha is looking at him in this strange, soft way, and the emotion written across his face mirrors the one that’s settled in Tomo’s heart. His words want to rise up all at once, the lines of his practiced speech blurring through his mind, his heart beating so fast that he nearly feels it in his throat.

The moment is now, he thinks.

So, of course--

“Um. Want some popcorn?”

He holds out the bowl, his mind completely, utterly blank of all thoughts whatsoever, his reason completely abandoning him in his desperate hour of need.

Kazuha turns his eyes upwards to the ceiling, covers his mouth for a long moment, and he takes in a deep breath.

Then, he leans forwards to take the bowl from Tomo’s hands, sets it on the floor, and kisses him.

Tomo doesn’t move at first, because he feels a little like the world is shifting underneath his feet, everything falling into place at once. It feels indescribably right, completes a part of him he hadn’t known was missing, Kazuha’s sweet scent flooding his senses, Kazuha’s gentle touch against his face, Kazuha’s soft lips against his--all of it is right.

And all of it is incredibly, absolutely good.

Tomo slides his arm around Kazuha’s waist, presses harder against the other until Kazuha falls back against the couch with a breathless little gasp. The sound of it is pure heat, makes the slow-burning fire in Tomo’s stomach flare up with an almost desperate want, and he suddenly can’t get enough. 

His fingers slip beneath the thin fabric of Kazuha’s clothes, and he feels the soft touch of Kazuha’s hip against his palm--Kazuha is so much smaller than him, fits so perfectly in his hand--

“Tomo--” Kazuha pulls slightly away, breathes out against him, and Tomo, of course, knows perfectly what Kazuha wants.

He gathers the other up in his arms in yet another familiar moment--because all their moments are familiar, will always be familiar--and carries him to the bedroom. Tama leaps off of his bed with an amused sounding purr, her collar chinking as she exits into the kitchen, and then Tomo closes the door behind him.

They have a lot of catching up to do.

frostflake [10:00 pm]

Have any of you seen tomo?
I’m concerned, he’s never been silent for so long

yoiminya [10:05 pm]

o he ran into a tree at track practice
so kazu took him home

frostflake [10:05 pm]

Oh my
That was 6 hours ago
Perhaps something came up?

yoiminya [10:06 pm]

maybe hes just sleeping
WITH KAZUHA
ddidnt u guys give him the talk

frostflake [10:07 pm]

We did
But did it actually work?
Even science cannot answer

thomato [10:15 pm]

hold on let me try
@tomoto!! free food at my place
free    
free
its pizza

thomato [10:20 pm]

science done
yea hes dead lmao

yoiminya [10:20 pm]

damn
rip
 so
ayaka wanna hang out

frostflake [10:21 pm]

Sure! ^_^
We can watch a movie
I’ll get my stuff

thomato [10:21 pm]

why only ayaka
what about me

yoiminya [10:21 pm]

my car only has room for 2 ppl

thomato [10:22 pm]

you dont have a car
?
??
???
hello

thomato [10:45 pm]

@ayatowo wanna hang out

Tomo is eighteen years old when he shows up early to school for the first time, helps his boyfriend limp his way to the back row of desks, and eases him into a chair.

“I’m going to bed,” Kazuha informs him, folds his arms on top of the desk and drops his head into it, evidently too tired to function. “Wake me up when class starts.”

“Not a morning person?” Tomo puts in, even though he knows perfectly well why Kazuha is so tired.

Beneath the desk, Kazuha’s foot seeks out his ankle for a kick, but Tomo twists away in a deft movement, returning only to drape himself over the other’s shoulders, wrapping his arm around Kazuha’s waist. Kazuha reluctantly allows himself to be dragged away from his burrow, leaning his weight into Tomo’s shoulder and turning his face into Tomo’s chest.

Tomo chuckles, cards a gentle hand through Kazuha’s white locks, and then looks up to find the entire class staring at them.

Yoimiya is the first to speak up, still staring hard at the obvious marks peppering Kazuha’s neck, freely exposed by the angle that his head is tilted at.

“Holy shit,” she summarizes eloquently, then leaps up with something of a triumphant yell of victory.

At this, the there’s a near explosion of motion, as people mutter under their breaths and money changes hands-- Fifty dollars, Kokomi, I told you that they’d bone down on day one! --because apparently everyone knew.

“I can’t believe this,” Kazuha mumbles, his blush so dark that it’s crept into his neck and ears, and Tomo grins, relieved to have at least one person on his side. “Everyone is staring.”

“I’d stare too, if I were looking at you, Princess.”

But even still, he shrugs off his jacket, drapes it over Kazuha’s shoulders, and adjusts the collar so that it hides the marks on Kazuha’s neck, covers him from view. With this added protection, along with the fact that class has actually begun, the attention finally shifts off of the two of them.

“I love you,” he says simply, because it’s so easy to say it, because he doesn’t have to say it--it’s the not needing to speak that makes him want to do it.

Kazuha meets his eyes, his smile so faint that Tomo wouldn’t have seen it, if he hadn’t spent his entire life looking for it. He almost answers Tomo then, matches Tomo’s words with his own, but then the teacher spots them through narrowed eyes, barks out their names until they jump apart.

But Tomo knows what Kazuha means to say, anyways. He’ll always know.

That’s just what best friends-- boyfriends --do.