An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Guess who finally wrote that fuckin modern slice of life roommates/lovers/qpr/they-love-each-other-okay AkaSane AU.
I’ll post it under the cut too dw here’s the summary thing:
“Or: Sanemi’s hair looks like it glows in the sunlight. Hakuji can’t help but notice.”
Text
“...”
“...”
“...Mhm?”
“Huh?” Hakuji blinks.
“You’re staring,” Sanemi says, just loud enough to not be a whisper, but otherwise quiet in the comfortable stillness in their apartment. Hakuji’s dojo, downstairs, is closed on Saturdays, and they’ve just been enjoying each other’s presence in the unbusy late morning. The quiet buzz of a video both of them have watched and rewatched several times plays in the background, across from them. Sanemi tilts their head, putting its weight on his hand, his other hand lowering his phone, resting it on their lap. “Something wrong?”
“Oh, uh,” Hakuji shakes his head, sitting back and leaning onto the couch back. “Nah.”
Sanemi watches him take a moment to organize his thoughts, coming out of whatever focus-mode he was just in. That, and words are hard; both of them have some difficulty with words on a good day, so it's not uncommon for either of them to wait for the other for a few moments.
Hakuji shifts, turning towards Sanemi. “Your hair’s, ah-” He makes a sweeping, circular gesture towards the general direction of Sanemi’s head. Words are hard. “The sun is…” Hakuji trails into nondescript sounds. Or, try to, at least.
Sanemi looks confused for a second before realizing, their mouth curling into a small “o.”
“Oh, yeah, that.” Sanemi laughs. Their violet eyes look away from Hakuji, looking at their own hair. “Yeah, it does that.”
Sanemi’s hair is white. Obviously. It’s pretty striking already, even if that means his eyebrows are less visible, also being white on pale skin.
Sanemi’s hair is also really fluffy; windswept and voluminous, and only its habit of defying gravity in a bunch of flyaways and tufts keeps it from falling just past their shoulders like Hakuji knows it could. (He likes running his hands through it).
The sun pouring through the windows and weaving through said hair, however, makes it look as if it’s glowing. It’s beautiful, incandescent as if bottled sunshine.
So of course Hakuji can’t help but stare at it, and subsequently, Sanemi. He can’t help but think it’d make a beautiful painting, so he can’t help but start memorizing the scene in his head.
Sanemi, just learning why Hakuji started staring at him in the first place, seems to realize this just a moment later.
“Mhm,” They look away, considering something, and then glance back at Hakuji with a ghost of amusement in their eyes. There’s just almost enough mirth in the subsequent smile to stop it looking soft. Almost. “...Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
There’s certainly enough mirth in his voice, though.
“Eh?” Hakuji blinks. “You sure?”
“I mean,” Sanemi shrugs. “If you want.” There’s a slight blush on their face and nearly hidden nervousness in their eyes that Hakuji would’ve missed if he wasn’t staring so intensely at the other.
Sanemi leans back, like how they were before, acting as if they aren’t a bit bashful about it; he tilts his head back towards the windows, looking down to their phone again.
It illuminates more of his hair, bathing it even further in radiance and warmth; it’s like a sunny rainstorm: fluffy storm cloud edges lit up by rays of the sun, undefined ends by white glow with layered midtones of Ameterasu-gold as the drops in the sky get denser. All contained right here, right in front of him.
All Hakuji can think is that Sanemi looks ethereal.
Their side profile only accentuates their long eyelashes, white framing similarly unnatural (pretty) violet eyes, and their calm expression Hakuji knows only Sanemi’s family and close, close friends (and him) have ever gotten to see makes it all the more ethereal. Hakuji would say it’s nearly delicate, if he didn’t know what Sanemi was like, and would absolutely despise being described that way. (It reminds him of Koyuki).
Light scattering between the layers of skin, making that fuzzy, warm tone between the shadows and light ties the harsh lighting altogether; one of their off-white dress shirts with an eternally unbuttoned collar shows off their pale skin, subtle scars and wrinkles from stress lining their neck to their collarbones.
Hakuji realizes he’s staring again when Sanemi shifts, crossing one leg over the other. Hakuji blinks and shakes his head again, quickly moving to get his own phone and opening the camera.
He fiddles with the camera several times, getting frustrated with the first few shots before moving to sit on the arm rest to get a better angle. He looks at the last picture he took.
The effect of the sunlight on Sanemi’s hair and pale skin is kept, at the very least - still like sunshine in a bottle - but the fine details aren’t clear though, and it’s just off from how it looks from his eyes, but Hakuji just knows that’s the difference between human eyes and an artificial camera.
How annoying. Hakuji sighs, falling back onto the couch. Well…
He looks between the photo and Sanemi - who was now looking at Hakuji.
Good enough, I guess.
“Let me see?”
Hakuji hums, handing his phone over; even if the picture doesn’t match his own eyes’ vision, it does look good - beautiful and all the other synonyms he doesn’t know. He watches Sanemi blink, surprised at the photo, and that light blush coming back.
“Huh,” Sanemi sighs.
Vaguely, Hakuji suddenly remembers that Sanemi doesn’t really like looking at themself all that much. “You look good.”
Tellingly, Sanemi only hums in a not-quite-agreeing tone, half-heartedly shrugging in something both a bit embarrassed and apprehensive as they hand Hakuji his phone back.
“You do,” Hakuji insists, looking harder at Sanemi, whose deliberately not looking back at him.
“...”
“Sanemi,” his voice gets harder.
“Sure, sure,” They wave their hand dismissively, “Whatever.”
“Sanemi.”
They click their tongue, turning their head away towards the windows, where Hakuji can’t see his face.
Their little not-not-a-stare-off continues for a minute before Hakuji sighs.
This isn’t something they can deal with in the span of a five minutes, and both of them don’t have the energy to unpack any of their fucked-up mental states this weekend, nor the subsequent non-interaction they’d probably have; regardless of if the conversation went well.
Neither of them have spent any time together recently, that wasn’t just literally sleeping in the same bed and passingly living in the same apartment. They’re both private people, and their own alone time is important, but they do like to spend time with each other - even if they’d never admit to anyone else but themselves.
“Alright,” He acquiesces, watching Sanemi’s stubborn-tense posture relax. Hakuji stares at the photo again, and after silently considering making it his new wallpaper, looks back at Sanemi. “...are you fine with me painting you, then?”
Sanemi still isn’t looking at him, but his head is turned closer back that Hakuji can see their face again; they wave their hand at Hakuji with a hum meaning something between “Sure,” and “If it’s you, of course I am,” that makes his heart want to burst.
Easily, they move back into that comfortable, quiet morning in a few minutes, with just a little something more than their typical unspoken domestic feeling between them.
Half an hour or only a few minutes pass, but eventually Sanemi speaks up. “So, y’ going to paint that soon, or?”
“Mhm?” Hakuji doesn’t look up from his phone, still messing with the exact dimensions of the picture for his wallpaper. “Oh, yeah. Maybe later though,” He murmurs.
Sanemi hums a short note, watching him. “Okay,” he breathes, soft. A moment passes before they shift, planting themselves closer to Hakuji; he starts the motion to lean onto him and follows through when Hakuji doesn’t make any move away.
Hakuji lets the moment sit, taking it in before leaning back into Sanemi, hiding his face in the crook of their neck, breathing them in; the skin-to-skin contact feels like a bonfire in a snowstorm, except after the hypothermia made his body forget it was ever cold in the first place.
The smell faintly of what he can best describe of petrichor, specifically the dew drops in the leaves and the mint sprigs they have a small pot of, sitting by the windowsill; He breathes in Sanemi’s skin, the warmth of their pulse and muscle right under it as he wraps an arm around them.
Hakuji angles his head to keep his eyes open, still fiddling - as best he can with only one hand - with his phone’s new wallpaper.
Later, later, he’ll move to his old bedroom-turned-studio and set up a new canvas on his easel, sketch out Sanemi’s figure and start painting ethereal golds, whites, and lavenders; later, he’ll try to capture the concept of sunshine on a canvas.
But for now - and for the next few hours - it’s just them. Quiet, still, comfortable mornings, bathed in sunlight and one another.
I'm so excited for how everything turns out and this fic is literally the only thing that keeps me going recently!! thank u for writing 💚 u r the best 🍀✨
