junk drawer bits (5)
Asahi and Kindaichi - 2 (years)
(note this thing is 2300 words)
“That’s the thing,” Yuutarou hisses out. “There was never supposed to be an ‘us’ or a ‘we’ or anything like that. Nothing was ever supposed to be ‘ours’ or whatever.” He scrubs his hand through his hair and blows out a heavy breath.
“Well you done fucked that one up.”
“Thanks, Hanamaki-san.”
“Anytime.”
“I never asked for him to love me.”
Hanamaki pats Yuutarou’s shoulder with a smile. “That’s the thing, Kindaichi. You should never have to ask someone to love you. And if you have to ask them to love you, well, I personally wouldn’t trust them to be telling the truth about it.”
“But what if… What if I can’t love Azumane?”
“Then that’s a discussion you have to have with him. Not me. But what if you can?”
—
Asahi settles at his desk and flips through his sketches idly. He’s looking at them but he’s nowhere near focused. He just can’t today. Not even when Yachi pops into his office to go over their project. All he can think about today is Yuutarou. Yuutarou’s laugh. His smile. The way he crinkles his nose when Oikawa texts him. Yuutarou curled up on Asahi’s couch. Yuutarou grinning during a weekend volleyball game.
He does think about work a little. He thinks about the indulgent look Yuutarou gives him when he sees what Asahi has designed this time. The way he tilts his head and rubs at his cheek when he steps out of the dressing room and lets Asahi see how he looks in Asahi’s designs for the first time. How he looks on the runway in any designer’s clothes but especially how he looks in Asahi’s.
He thinks about the way his stomach swoops and butterflies flutter against his heart when Yuutarou just looks at him.
He just hopes the one day Yuutarou might feel those things when he looks at Asahi.
—
Hanamaki gives Yuutarou a look. Yuutarou glares at him in response. Asahi looks between two of his favorite models to work with and swallows nervously. Something happened. Something shifted. He’s not sure he wants to know just what it was.
Hanamaki grins at Asahi and Asahi smiles in return.
Yeah something is going on. Maybe he’ll sic Futakuchi on them if they keep acting weird. He’ll get to the bottom of things in no time.
—
Sometimes Yuutarou really hates the fact that he’s such good friends with someone who has known him since he was, like, thirteen.
Hanamaki smirks at him from across the room like he knows what Yuutarou is thinking. He might. There have been days that Yuutarou’s pretty sure Hanamaki is psychic.
Hanamaki sneezes and nearly cracks his head on the mirror the makeup artist is holding in front of his face and Yuutarou snorts. Then again there are a lot of days he wouldn’t want to be stuck in this whole modeling thing without Hanamaki at his side.
“You’re done,” his makeup artist says. “Azumane’s collection is up in twenty-five minutes.”
Thoughts of Asahi’s newest collection, of Asahi hunched over his desk and sketching while he mumbles distractedly at Yuutarou, of Asahi grinning in triumph as he hands over a sketch eagerly for Yuutarou to look at flash through Yuutarou’s mind and he can’t quite keep the smile off his face as he slides out of his chair and heads for the dressing rooms.
—
“That’s the thing.”
—
“Asahi,” Suga warns, “do not make him your muse.”
Asahi scratches at his cheek and smiles sheepishly. “Too late?”
—
“So,” Futakuchi hands out invitations and itineraries to the party, “we all know how these things go. If you don’t have a partner you’ll need a date that falls into one of the qualification categories. I know it’s shitty. But it’s the price we pay for our jobs.”
They all start to trickle out of the office while they read over the information on the latest charity event.
“So is Aki coming with you to this one?” Yuutarou snaps out of his wandering thoughts at Asahi’s voice. It takes him a moment to register what he was asked but when it does he laughs.
“Ah no. She’s actually started dating this guy she met at the grocery store, of all places.”
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that.”
“No need. You know she and I were never anything but friends.”
Asahi nods as they make their way towards the entrance of the building. He opens the door with a thoughtful hum and gestures for Yuutarou to head outside first. They stand in the cool autumn morning for a few minutes in silence, just watching each other until Asahi suddenly blurts out, “If you wanted we could go together. I’m pretty sure we fall under each other’s ‘acceptable categories’ and all that. But we’d have to double check with Futakuchi.”
His heart does not flutter at Asahi’s suggestion. It doesn’t.
But it does speed up a little at the thought of arriving at the party not only wearing Asahi’s designs but with Asahi at his side.
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Saves us both the hassle of finding someone to go with that we can actually stand for the entire thing.”
—
“There was never supposed to be an ‘us’ or a ‘we’ or anything like that.”
—
Yuutarou rolls his shoulders and does his best to simply sink into the couch. He loves being a model. But sometimes he just wishes he had gone into business or something. Sitting behind a desk for hours sounds less exhausting then dealing with makeup and hair and fittings and re-fittings and adjustments and cameras and angles and-
He groans and falls onto his side.
“Long day?” Asahi doesn’t even have to ask, but he does. He also doesn’t have to get Yuutarou a cold bottle of water and tug off Yuutarou’s shoes and grab a blanket from the basket in the corner and cover Yuutarou carefully. But he does.
He does and Yuutarou appreciates that. He doesn’t appreciate the way his stomach twirls awkwardly when Asahi smiles gently at him and runs his hand through Yuutarou’s hair quite as much.
But it’s close.
—
It’s all crap. Asahi balls up another page and tosses it across the room towards the trash can. It’s his seventeenth one this afternoon. Nothing is working.
He feels like a phony. A fraud. A cheap hack of a designer.
His eighteenth sheet winds up the same as the other seventeen and he buries his face in his arms before he can even start to ruin his nineteenth attempt.
Something bounces off his head and he turns his face to the side with a glare. Yuutarou snorts at him and tosses another paper ball at his head.
“Come on,” Yuutarou says. “Let’s take a walk. We’ll head over to that garden. You know there’s never anyone there and you look like you could use a break from everything.”
Their walk is quiet but something about it feels different than their usual quiet. There’s a charge in the air, like a storm in the distance waiting to roll in. But the trip is still pleasant and the garden is empty like it always is and Asahi relaxes against the bench in degrees until he’s slumped against the back of it and tilting ever so slightly towards Yuutarou.
He tries not to notice that Yuutarou is tilted towards him as well.
—
It’s something of a routine now. Asahi finishes a set of sketches and they go out for a cheap dinner to celebrate. Usually one of the small stands near Asahi’s apartment but sometimes they’ll hit the shop down the street from Yuutarou’s place that they’re never quite sure about how it has managed to stay open this long. After dinner they’ll head back to whoever’s place is closer. Then they’ll collapse in front of the tv and binge whatever random shows or movies they find until one of them falls asleep on the couch.
When they wake up the next morning whoever fell asleep first makes breakfast.
It’s not until Yuutarou overhears Asahi turn down an invitation from Futakuchi and Yachi to go out after finishing his latest sketches that he realizes what has happened.
“You sure you don’t want to go Asahi? We don’t want you to feel left out or anything and hate us and never speak to us again.” Yachi stares up at Asahi with wide eyes.
“Thank you again for inviting me but no thanks. Kindaichi and I are going to grab a quick bite and marathon that new series everyone’s been talking about. It’s kind of our thing after I finish a project.”
Futakuchi shrugs and gives Asahi a lazy wave as he and Yachi leave the office.
Yuutarou swallows hard, mouth suddenly dry and hands clammy, when Asahi calls out that he’ll be done in just a minute and they can go.
—
“Nothing was ever supposed to be ‘ours’ or whatever.”
—
Asahi has three bags hooked on one arm and a watermelon tucked under the other. It makes the trip up the winding path to Oikawa’s secluded house a bit of a struggle but it’s worth it when he stumbles through the gate and Yuutarou’s eyes widen in surprised glee.
“You actually brought me a watermelon,” Yuutarou breathes out as he takes it from Asahi.
“Of course. You wouldn’t flat out say it but you were disappointed that Oikawa ate all of the one he had last night.”
“You spoil me.”
Asahi waves off his words and if anyone would dare ask him he’ll tell them his flushed cheeks are from the walk up. Oikawa eyes him but before he can come stick his nose in Asahi’s business Ushijima pokes his head out and says something that has Oikawa yelling at him and chasing him inside the house.
—
Yuutarou stares up at the night sky with unseeing eyes. He doesn’t even flinch when Hanamaki drops onto the porch steps next to him and throws his arm around Yuutaoru’s shoulders.
“You done fucked that one up,” Hanamaki says softly. Almost apologetically. Yuutarou knows exactly what he’s referring to even if the conversation was over a year and a half ago.
Yuutarou snorts and shakes his head.
He already knows.
—
“I never asked for him to love me.”
—
The streetlights throw sharp stripes of light across Asahi’s bed and he groans as he rolls over in an attempt to avoid them. He just doesn’t feel like getting up to shut his curtains. He’s not even sure what time it is other than late enough to be dark enough for streetlights. Which means he slept far too much and missed all his meetings today and he might have had a deadline this evening? He doesn’t know. He doesn’t even know for sure what day he’s on.
This is what he gets for not listening to Suga. It is also what he gets for listening to Suga. It’s complicated. Suga is the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other all at once.
Sometimes he wishes he could just shut off parts of him. Right now his emotions would be a nice thing to set aside.
Feeling things is tricky.
He buries his head under his pillow and falls back asleep. He’ll deal with whatever happens later.
—
“But what if… What if I can’t love Azumane?”
—
Yuutarou has his phone in a death grip as he storms into Asahi’s apartment. The guy behind the desk looks startled but Yuutarou is here enough that he simply nods and goes back to his newspaper. It should give him at least a moment’s pause that he’s at Asahi’s place so much that he doesn’t even get stopped or anything when he comes in. It should. But it doesn’t. Because he hasn’t heard from Asahi in almost a week and his heart is racing and his stomach is turning in on itself as he impatiently watches the elevator floor numbers climb.
He’s out of the elevator the moment the doors start to open and in front of Asahi’s door before he even realizes he’s moved. He doesn’t bother knocking. He’s had a key for a few months now (yet another thing that should give him a moment’s pause but doesn’t) and he lets himself in. He kicks his shoes off into the pile already next to the door and calls out a greeting as he hurries into the apartment.
Asahi startles awake from where he’s slumped against his desk when Yuutarou steps into his workroom slash office and yelps when he steps on a pin.
Asahi jumps up and hurries to Yuutarou’s side. Yuutarou lets Asahi half carry him across the room and deposit him gently in the chair.
“Are you okay?” he asks as he kneels on the floor. “I’m so sorry I didn’t realize I even dropped any pins on the floor.” Asahi pulls the pin out and inspects Yuutarou’s foot.
—
“Then that’s a discussion you have to have with him. Not me.”
—
“I love you,” Yuutarou says. Asahi looks up at him in surprise. “I’ve been so frustrated that you disappeared this week and I was going to come over here and give you a piece of my mind but…” He laughs at himself and shakes his head. “I love you,” he repeats. “That’s all there is to it. Nothing else really feels like it matters right now.” He smiles at Asahi’s still surprised expression. “And I just hope you feel something similar.”
Asahi blinks at him a few times and then his surprise melts into a smile that makes Yuutarou’s chest feel tight and his heart speed up.
“I love you too. I have for awhile. I was just waiting for you to catch up to me.”
“I’m here now.”
“You are.” Asahi pulls Yuutarou down into his lap and buries his face against Yuutarou’s neck. “You’re here,” he whispers.
—
“But what if you can?”
