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It's four in the morning, too goddamn late for Tomoya to be awake, but here he is, huddled into the corner of the room, as his body grows hot and heavy for no reason at all, at least none that he would be able to name, but all he knows is that if he were to stand right now, the air would be too cold and his body would feel like a dead weight caged around his soul.
That same body shakes, wracked by a sudden sob, and hits the drawer he's nestled against, nearly knocking one of the trinkets off. It's fine, he reasons, because they're his own, and someone as plain and insignificant as himself shouldn't worry so much about the trinkets he decorates his living space with, not when they're just as worthless as he is, and merely act as a gilded coating over his plain character.
God, if he's going to be so meaningless, then why does he have to cry like this? Why does everything seem so bad and catastrophic, even though none of it matters in the end? Why?
He curls in on himself further as another wretched wail falls past his lips, throwing his head forward and not giving him the chance to muffle it. He'll probably wake his roommate up, and then he'll be forced to remind himself that he's an adult who ended up crying in the corner of his room.
He feels disgusting — his cheeks and nose are sticky from the tears and snot, and he just wants to go hide in the nice, warm bath, and maybe never leave. Another violent sob nearly makes him vomit, and he debates actually moving to the bathroom.
It's too late to think about those sorts of things, though, because there's a hand at his cheek, an awkwardly lingering warmth that tries to wipe his tears away. He blinks, because suddenly, there's a light in front of his face, or more specifically, a picture of Mitsuru, Hajime, and himself — Mitsuru's phone background, actually — is illuminating the room, and he can see Mitsuru kneeling in front of him, eyes still heavy with sleep. Mitsuru must've woken up and used his phone to light the way to Tomoya, and now he's stroking Tomoya's cheek and sitting before him.
“Tomo-chan? What happened?”
A choked sob answers his question, as Tomoya grabs Mitsuru's wrist to push it away from his cheek.
“I'm… fine,” he manages with a halting breath.
“Then why're you crying?”
What is he supposed to answer? How could he even think about passing this burden onto Mitsuru — his bright Mitsuru, with a name only befitting of his nature? He messily wipes the snot off his nose with his sleeve, trying to straighten himself out for Mitsuru.
“C'mon, Tomo-chan,” Mitsuru prompts, pushing himself up for a moment to grab a tissue for Tomoya. “I don't wanna see you cry.”
“I know, I'm sorry, I just…” He takes the tissue gratefully, blowing his nose almost violently.
“You don't have to apologize!” Mitsuru huffs, lifting his now free hand to pat Tomoya on the head — half to scold him and half to comfort him. “Everyone cries, yanno? I just want to help you feel better.”
“I've never seen you cry like this,” Tomoya points out. “The only times I've seen you cry were at Nii-chan's graduation and our own, and everyone cries then.”
“That doesn't mean I don't feel sad.” Taking the tissue from Tomoya, Mitsuru stands, rising to his full one hundred eighty centimeters (courtesy of his growth spurt during their second year), and walks over to the door to toss it into the wastebasket and turn on the lights.
“That's not what I—” The light startles him, an hour sitting comfortably in the dark making this new presence of something bright and joyous — even if it's as mundane as the fluorescent light bulbs within their cutely decorated lampshades — seem threatening and foreign. “Hey, at least warn me before you do something like that!”
Mitsuru ignores him. “Get up and change into something comfortable, I wanna take you somewhere.”
“It's…” Craning his neck, Tomoya reads off the time, in disbelief at both himself and Mitsuru equally. “Ten past four.”
“Well, yeah,” Mitsuru shrugs, already slipping out of his pajamas and into a t-shirt and shorts. “If you're gonna cry at four in the morning, I'm gonna have to cheer you up at four in the morning.”
“What kind of logic is that?” Tomoya gripes, but he still stands up and waddles his way to the dresser. He picks out a tracksuit and throws himself back onto his bed to change into it.
“You know I don't do logic.”
“Oh, sorry, I forgot.” And Tomoya laughs a little, too, already feeling a bit better just from talking to Mitsuru, who manages to always be so brilliantly warm. Mitsuru laughs fully, a sound that bottoms out Tomoya's stomach and makes him feel like he could float, before making his way out of their room.
Tomoya follows him into the kitchen, watching him pull some bread out of his stash. “For later,” he promises with a grin.
Tomoya's eyes are still red as they walk to the station, side-by-side with their hands just barely brushing. He eyes Mitsuru, chomping down on some bread, and gives him an incredulous look. “Is this what you meant by later?”
Caught red-handed, Mitsuru can only smile guiltily, ripping Tomoya a piece to eat himself.
They huddle close once they're on the train, fairly empty due to the time and the fact that it's a weekend. True to Tomoya's assertion about him being like the sun, there's an astounding warmth wherever Mitsuru touches, settling deep into Tomoya until he leans in, finally feeling comfortable in his own skin.
He knows for a fact that Mitsuru won't ever quite understand him, the same way as it is for Tomoya (regardless, Mitsuru keeps trying his best, and that just makes him more admirable), but he isn't really surprised when Mitsuru throws a muscular arm around his back.
They get off west of central Tokyo, and Mitsuru practically drags him to their destination: Tama River. More specifically, the Tama River trail, where he and Mitsuru share another small piece of bread.
At this time of year, the path is lined with cherry blossom trees. They dance prettily through the air and glide gracefully over the river itself, the very definition of ephemerality, with every frail curve and fleeting rosy hue. They may be pretty, but ultimately, they're susceptible to disease, and in large groups like this, disease spreads quickly.
Maybe that's what Tomoya is like — a cherry blossom: a fleeting part of the swaying mass, easily swayed and overtaken by any sort of weakness that may sweep through their numbers.
If he's the cherry blossom, then Mitsuru is the bark.
An unwavering strength beside him, unwavering no matter what season or scenario, holding him up so that others can look at him, and admire them both. Yes, he may seem pure brawn, but under the komorebi , he shines in the light of those he pushes up, and in the blink of an eye, he's blindingly radiant.
His moment of pensiveness proves just as ephemeral, because there's a strong slap to his shoulder, before Mitsuru is chirping “You're it!”, and bolting off down the trail.
Just like that, his moment of peace his broken.
So, instead of serenely gazing upon the cherry blossoms dotting the river's surface, he's left watching Mitsuru's receding back, realizing that, crap, if the trail's really long, and he lets Mitsuru run too far, he'll be stuck out here at four forty in the morning.
He breathes in once, slowly, and exhales, feeling resolve enter his body, and tension leave in turn.
And then, with a strong step, he dashes.
It's exhilarating, he decides, feeling himself finally begin to loosen up, sweating all of the constricting thoughts out through his pores.
“Hey!” he calls out, but it's really for naught. Mitsuru just laughs, somehow picking up the pace, and leading Tomoya further down the trail. The cherry blossoms still glide through the air, occasionally getting stuck in the mass of wavy curls that make up Mitsuru's hair, and with the sun just begun to rise, Mitsuru's figure becomes backlit from Tomoya's point of view, making his silhouette glow a lazy pink, casting Mitsuru as an angel, or maybe just the sun itself.
However frustrated he would feel at any other time, being left to chase after one of his peers, it doesn't matter, because Mitsuru's right there for Tomoya to grab, not distant, or unaware, or smug about the fact that he's in front. Yes, he's right there, so Tomoya abandons the common sense telling him to conserve his energy and breaks out into a sprint.
It burns through his muscles, but the pain feels rewarding — earned — and he pushes through, reaching out to let his fingertips graze Mitsuru's back.
(Ah, he likes this. Gentle fingers laid out over soft skin, characteristic of the lazy mornings when Mitsuru had snuck into his bed and flung an arm over his waist, and, finding himself unable to pull away, Tomoya had gently traced his fingers up over the bare skin of Mitsuru's back. He'd traced the strong lines of Mitsuru's ribs with just a bit of pressure to his back, luxuriated in Mitsuru's warm, slightly smelly breath against his forehead, and felt this toned muscles of his stomach pressed against his own t-shirt, all pushing him down further into this rabbit hole of love and adoration.)
Abruptly, Mitsuru's sprinting comes to a halt, and he eases himself into a carefree jog with no warning. Tomoya crashes into his back with an undignified squawk, and wraps his arms around Mitsuru to balance himself.
“Don’t just stop in the middle of running like that!” Tomoya half-scolds half-screeches, but the feeling of annoyance is mellowed when Mitsuru turns and giggles. “Seriously…”
“Sorry, sorry,” it’s non-committal, but Mitsuru apologizes, and surges forward to envelop Tomoya in a hug, sweat-slick skin and all — tellingly, Tomoya doesn’t find it disgusting. “I thought you wanted me to stop so I stopped.”
“I would have said so, you idiot!” Tomoya hisses, reaching out for the afterglow of an annoyance that he knows he won’t find.
“Then why did you try to pull me?”
That’s a tricky question, because Tomoya isn’t exactly sure. Maybe he sounds stupid when he finally answers, he probably does, but he knows Mitsuru isn’t good with abstract concepts, and therefore can’t judge him for his inability to portray one in a way that only half-explains himself.
“I wanted… to run next to you. It’s strange, but I was tired of always following behind you, like I was just leeching off of you, or something.” Mitsuru furrows his brows in a look of pensiveness, but says nothing. “I guess that’s the whole problem with me. Uh, yeah.” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry, I sound stupid.”
“No, I kinda get it.” The furrowed brow stays, but one of Mitsuru’s lips curls up into a smile. “It’s like when you’re running in a marathon and no matter how much you try to surpass them, you can’t pass the person right in front of you. Like, it’s not like they’re particularly better than you, but they’re always just a little ahead, so you get uh… paranoid (I knew there was a word for it) that you’re falling behind of where you should be, right?”
“Oh, yeah, that,” Tomoya affirms eloquently.
Actually, he’s kind of relieved that Mitsuru doesn’t understand abstract concepts. Does anyone really? Maybe that’s the problem: no one understands the issue, but they pretend that they do and never really fix it. Only Mitsuru, with his easy acceptance of the fact that he’s an idiot (though that’s a strong word, really) is able to look at those feelings and think, I don’t understand this at all, with full conviction, and simplify them into easily-understood shapes so he can piece them together like everything is just one big puzzle.
“See? I’m not that stupid, yanno?”
“Now that I’m thinking about it, I might be the stupid one,” Tomoya admits with a grin.
Mitsuru just laughs, cupping Tomoya’s cheeks with his palms. “I kinda doubt that.”
“It might be true.” Breathing in, Tomoya inhales all the warmth radiating off of Mitsuru, and in the half-second when he stops thinking so hard, he whispers, “I love you.”
The words get lost between the moment he says them, and the moment that Mitsuru surges forward to brush his lips against Tomoya’s in a feathery not-quite kiss. He’s brimming with light, and it’s spilling out and over Tomoya so that even though Mitsuru’s silhouette casts a shadow over him, he can’t feel like he’s being left in the dark.
They pull away, a little bit drunk on the moment.
“I can see why you always make such a fuss over running at the most inopportune times,” Tomoya grins, and when Mitsuru’s face scrunches up from the teasing, he leans to whisper in his ear, “you’re it.”
He takes a breath, then step forward, and breaks out into a run, with nothing to tell him that he’s not enough, leaving the creeping thoughts of failure and loss in the dust.
Mitsuru follows and catches up, grabbing his hand and pulling him faster so that Tomoya can think nothing besides: this is it, this is how things are supposed to go.
We’re going to win this time.