Finally free to reveal our works for the Eijun Exchange! I loved being able to do KaneSawa who definitely deserve more appreciation. I’m also grateful CSP has so many wonderful flower and grass brushes. Trying to decide Kanemaru’s look took forever. I wanted him to look like a tattoo artist but not completely over the top. He has more on his back and legs 😉
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
idk i saw that there’s a daiya week and alex sent me this prompt years ago.
feat. kanesawa, underage drinking, and hangovers
day one: bloom of youth
Shinji wakes to a pounding head, a dry throat, and Sawamura practically radiating sunshine through his smile next to him. It’s not an unusual thing—the whole sunshiny smile thing—but the extent of it is. The worst of it is that Sawamura doesn’t look at all the way Shinji feels which seems more than a little unfair given that Shinji is sure he didn’t drink nearly as much as Sawamura the night before.
It’s all more than just a little bit unfair.
Shinji closes his eyes, hoping to put it all off until later but instead, his phone rings out its alarm on the table next to him, adding to the symphony already playing in his head. All of it is just Not Good.
Sawamura’s smile speaks at an even higher volume than the music and Shinji is so not ready for any of this.
He needs at least another week of sleep to be ready for waking up and dealing with Sawamura, needs probably another few weeks based on the pounding in his head.
“Go away,” he grunts, turning back to the blissful dark of his pillow— wait— he flips it over and settles in a second time into the cool darkness of unconsciousness.
Sawamura can wait, Shinji will deal with him later.
Except he settles down too. Nice but too warm. Adding too much heat to Shinji’s bed and Shinji’s body when his arms reach around to pull Shinji closer from behind. It’s nice, it’s not nice, it’s too warm and all he wants right now is a cool peaceful slumber. It’s too much effort to push him away though. The pressure of Sawamura at his back is as welcome as his warmth is not and Shinji knows despite how much he might sweat through his sleep that he wants Sawamura here to slumber with him. It’s too rare an occasion to push onto another time, another morning.
He does at least kick the covers off of himself, off of both of them probably, and the fresh air against his skin pulls him even further away from the burden of consciousness.
He should have had something to drink.
It’s Shinji’s first thought when he wakes for the second time that day. His throat feels broken, cracked, far too dry. It was bad earlier and now it’s even worse. He’s an idiot, he knows this, now it’s more than simply a fact.
At his side, Sawamura is still sleeping. Mouth open, limbs spread across the bed and cheeks slick with drool… pooling on his pillow— Shinji’s pillow.
Ew.
At times like these, it’s almost hard to remember why Shinji puts up with him. Almost, because his cheeks still appear to have a healthy flush—from the night before or because of sprawling across Shinji to sleep he’s not sure— and a smile is etched into his face even in slumber. He doesn’t look to be suffering the effects of last night the way Shinji is. Something he still considers to not be fair at all.
Shinji slides from the bed, escaping Sawamura’s wayward limbs with a practiced ease, and dashes out to the dining hall.
He chokes down two glasses of water to slick his throat, and then reaches for more. More and more and more until he feels like he’s going to be sick. More than just feels like it.
When was the last time he ate? What is there to feel sick on?
He can’t recall anything which means it’s only alcohol which means he’s an even bigger idiot for giving into so much of it last night.
As if he’d given in, Shinji knows for a fact he that last night involved him willingly reaching out for more than his fair share of poorly mixed drinks.
He definitely needs food. Real food. Not whatever snacks he might have had to nibble on during the night, but given the state of the dining hall he’s already missed breakfast. How late did he sleep?
Eleven.
Thirty.
He almost slept through to the afternoon.
He hasn’t done such a thing in years—as much as he’s sometimes wished he could in the early pre-dawn hours of the morning with three alarm clocks ringing in their wake-up calls.
The experience is not as delightful as he had wished for it to be. He could have done without a lot of the things he’s woken up to, but honestly, that probably comes down to the night before. Probably. It’s not the first time he’s woken up to Sawamura, feeling deeply dehydrated and desperate for water and something to eat—something that at this point he should really be able to prevent, but... Sawamura has a way of waylaying his thoughts.
The worst thing about sleeping in though has to be the fact that he’ll now have to wait for lunch to get some food.
He heads back to his room through an eerily quiet campus disappointed in himself and clutching at his stomach. He might actually be sick. He doesn’t want to be but he can feel his insides churning unpleasantly. His first time overindulging in alcohol might turn out to be his last because feeling like this is terrible. Shinji can’t remember the last time he properly threw up but if it turns into today because of drinking he’ll never forgive himself.
He’ll tough it out. He’ll be weak for just one day. Sit still in the dark and under the covers of his blanket and hope he won’t be missed.
Sawamura is still asleep. In his bed. An interesting thing to note given that the other beds in the room show signs of having been slept in. They don’t usually make a habit of sharing a bed in an occupied room. Shinji guesses their open secret has now been simplified into just free information. It’s not necessarily information he wants out and open but given the circumstances, there’s not much he can really do to change that. Shinji doesn’t even know if it’s his roommates that had slept in those beds last night.
He could go back to bed, but he doesn’t want to. He could too easily curl up back around Sawamura—now taking up the entirety of Shinji’s bed—and fall back to sleep, but he doesn’t want to. Instead, Shinji plonks himself down at his desk, pulls down notebooks and textbooks to prepare for the end of summer, leans back in his chair and rests his eyes on the ceiling. He feels too much like shit to do anything. The illusion of studying will do for now.
Time is also an illusion. Shinji isn’t aware of it passing, only aware that in time, a bubbly Sawamura obscures his analysis of marks in the ceiling. A task he didn’t even know he had undertaken until it was interrupted.
“And why are you so happy?” Shinji can only ever dream of waking up in such a good mood himself.
Sawamura doesn’t answer the question. He presses his forehead to Shinji’s for a few too short seconds and then pulls away, pulling Shinji with him, declaring it time for lunch.
The good thing is he hasn’t whiled away another meal, the bad thing is the abrupt movement reminds Shinji of how much water is gushing around his stomach with not much else and how much his stomach wants to protest this very fact. He wants food but also he doesn’t. He really doesn’t feel like it can be kept down.
He should have just climbed back into bed with Sawamura and slept until his body sorted out this whole thing by itself.
On the way to the hall, eyes are following him. Not in a paranoid way, but definitely in a way that Shinji worries for something he’s done. Wide grins and laughing eyes are not the looks he’s used to receiving, definitely not from a majority of the team. The first string team, the managers, others who were brave enough to face down the coaches wrath if they got caught drinking and—
he freezes.
Sawamura hurries him along. Pulls at his elbow, his wrist, his hand, then collects a tray. He piles it up with enough food for the both of them then finds a seat. Sawamura doesn’t even seem to notice Toujou’s and Kominato’s too happy faces, just jumps straight into conversation with them.
Shinji doesn’t touch his food. He drops looks over his shoulder and catches too many pairs of eyes stifling too many laughs behind hands and mouthfuls of food. Shinji turns back to stare at his own.
There’s an answer for this, an easy one. An answer Shinji is fine simply knowing of.
He thinks.
At least, he thinks he doesn’t want to actually know.
What did he do last night?
It can’t have been bad. This is his reason for not needing to know. If it was bad he definitely would have heard about it. If it was bad he wouldn’t be walking around corners to muffled laughter and smiles too wide to have a hope of being hidden—no matter how much the bearers try.
It can’t have been bad because Sawamura is clingier than usual. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. If anything it’s kind of nice. It’s nice to have done away with barriers overnight so Shinji doesn’t have to over analyse how many touches are too many, how close is too close or if people have noticed that somehow he always manages to drag Sawamura’s name up in conversation.
It can’t have been bad because Sawamura is very vocal about things he doesn’t agree with. Whatever Shinji had done last night is clearly something he’s happy with, something that makes him happy at least. Therefore, Shinji reasons, it can’t have been too bad.
“We’ll leave you two alone.”
Shinji nods slowly at the statement, Sawamura beams, “so considerate!”
“We’ll be gone all night, but we’ll be back to grab our stuff in the morning.”
Sawamura nods sagely like he’s been given all the answers to a pop quiz a day in advance and is committing them to memory. “Noted.”
All Shinji notes is that he’s lost. It’s like everyone around him has started speaking in a code nobody bothered to teach him. And why would Sawamura have a code with Shinji’s roommates that he doesn’t know about?
The door swings shut, the lock clicks into place, and in the blink of an eye, Sawamura is on his lap. In another blink, they’ve both fallen down onto Shinji’s bed, his head bashing into the wall and Sawamura’s face crashing down on his shoulder.
“That wasn’t how that was meant to go...” Sawamura deliberates, picking himself up, manhandling Shinji further down the bed and slotting into place against his side. “I expected it to be more romantic.”
Tick, tick—
boom.
“That’s what they left for!?” Shinji’s face burns, he tries to turn around but Sawamura is gripping tightly to him, locking him in place. “What did you tell them?” It doesn’t matter what Sawamura told them, Shinji is never going to be able to face them again. Not without him thinking that they’re thinking about what he’s doing with Sawamura behind closed doors and... he could never.
“I didn’t tell them anything!” Sawamura pouts, “they were just being considerate.”
“I told you,” Shinji presses a finger down on his lips, “you’re not allowed to do that.”
Sawamura opens his mouth, sucks Shinji’s finger in, and it’s so far beyond what he expected that he flinches back.
Out of Sawamura’s grip.
“No,” he says, “no, no, no.”
He’s off the bed and across the room, fighting with the lock of the door under Sawamura’s heavy gaze—funny, that he’s been so happy all day and now Shinji is ruining it for him.
But no, he can’t.
He can’t go from trying to pretend he and Sawamura are just friends straight into the entire team thinking... thinking... his face burns and the lock twists and he’s out. Gone.
He’ll have to face up to Sawamura eventually.
Face Sawamura and his tears and his pout and more of him questioning whether Shinji likes him at all or just said yes out of pity, but that will come later.
Now... now he just needs time to think and come to terms with the fact that the... the laughing and the eyes trained on him all day is because of this.
Now he has to overanalyse what the eyes and the laughs and the smiles mean.
Why did this have to happen? How did this happen? Why did he not get a say in this and... oh...
Sawamura has been happy. Radiant and bubbling and clingy and...
Shinji is the one who told. He’s the one who told.
He told... he... “No, no, no, no, no.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m freaking out,” Shinji says, “in case that wasn’t obvious.”
Toujou hums theatrically, “now that you mention it, the rocking and chanting do give it away a little.”
Shinji grunts a reply. It could mean anything. And after all these years he’s hoping Toujou can translate it into something helpful.
“So—” great, Shinji thinks, a lecture. “What is your actual problem with people knowing?” He stays silent. “Because I’m not going to lie, most of us have known for a while.”
“What!”
“According to your classmates—”
“According to my classmates what?”
Shinji can guess without asking what, he’s aware of the discord. Between Kanemaru Shinji, captain of the baseball team and Kanemaru-kun, just another baseball idiot.
“You spend a lot of time together—”
“We’re in the same class, of course we do!” If he wasn’t there Sawamura definitely wouldn’t have made all the way through to his final year of high school.
“You spend all of your breaks together—”
“If it weren’t for me Sawamura would be happy getting thirties on his tests!”
“Reading manga?”
“I’m not a tyrant!”
“Holding hands?”
He doesn’t have an answer for that. Not for Toujou. He has a lot to say to Sawamura about that because he’s the one who insisted that ‘beneath the desk, nobody can see us anyway’. Cute little bastard.
Shinji’s hands come up to cover his face again and Toujou does him the honour of sitting down next to him. A hand on his shoulder, but any sympathy is shown only in silence.
Eventually, they move. Eventually, Shinji dusts off his pants and moves, feels the need to move. Eventually, through the settling but still audible gurgling of his stomach and the worried glances Toujou gives it, Shinji moves. They don’t move anywhere in particular. Shinji only knows that he needs to keep moving to put off the eventuality of going back to his room. He doesn’t know which is the better option finding it empty or finding Sawamura there, so he’ll put it off.
They wander through the empty campus. Sunday—and god, Shinji thinks, it’s the afternoon now, how has he wasted so much of the day?—means it is blessedly empty of people to continue staring at him or laughing at him but full of corners to duck around as soon as it seems like he and Toujou might not be the only ones out here wandering around.
Time slips away from him again as they walk silently together until Toujou finally gives in. “Not that this isn’t fun, but I do actually have things to do today.”
“So do I!” Shinji says.
“—we know—”
“Do you think I planned this? And no! No! You don’t get to joke about that because now... because now people will always think...”
“They already did think it.”
“I know, but now they know!”
“It really isn’t anything that was unknown before you know?”
“But... but...”
“But...?”
“But earlier, Seto left because he thought... they thought...” Shinji can’t even get the words out. All he feels is his face flame as mortification takes over at what people think he is doing right this very moment.
“Because he thought you and Sawamura wanted some private time together.”
“Yes.” Shinji breathes, quietly, like he’s trying to keep a secret.
“To have sex.”
“Ah!” Shinji shouts, covering up Toujou’s mouth, forgetting for a moment that he’s half in hiding. “Oh my god what if somebody heard you?”
“There’s nobody around,” Toujou says, not even bothering to remove Shinji’s hand. “Also, nobody cares.”
“I care, everybody who was laughing at me today cared.”
“Everybody was laughing because you guys are the newest gossip and also you were kind of out of your mind last night.”
“I wasn’t that drunk,” Shinji says, knowing very well based on the state of his non-existent recollection of last night and the way in which he’s spent the day so far, that he very much was that drunk.
Toujou laughs. Just laughs. “Good one, we’ll just pretend you didn’t ask Sawamura if he was single last night. We’ll just pretend it didn’t nearly make him cry. We’ll just pretend your attempt— I think it was an attempt anyway— to woo him and describe in great detail how carefully he should be looked after and treated didn’t make him actually cry until the two of you were making out in front of everyone.”
“Holy shit.”
“So yeah, that’s why they’re all laughing.”
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“I... what the fuck.”
“You actually don’t remember.” Shinji thinks his wide eyes and horrified stare must do enough to give it away. “Wow, fuck.”
“Fuck,” Shinji echoes, but on the bright side, if there is a bright side to this, all of his morning mysteries have been solved.
