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His day starts somewhere around six in the morning. Not necessarily because he planned it to, mostly just that somehow over the years he grew to wake up around that time every day. It starts at six in the morning in the dark, with popping joints in his neck and a few from rotating his shoulders. It starts quietly when he tiptoes into the bathroom even though he knows nothing will wake his company before 10 at the earliest. Except maybe the dogs, but he can hear Masami snoring and grumbling at his feet when he swings them out from under her and off the bed. She wouldn't be moving anytime soon.
Miyuki stretched his hands out in front of him, up above him, and down to his toes. He hadn't been able to reach them all the way in many years, but he could brush his fingertips over his ankles a little more than last month and that was more than enough. With his slippers he plodded over their creaking wood floor to the bathroom to wash his face.
The water was cool, and now in another room he could have the light on and watch himself in the mirror. He was fortunate to have survived his youth without creating too many worry lines (despite his chronic frowning as a teen), but he did worry as much as any person would and it showed in the old creases on his face. But there were other ones, too, around his mouth and eyes, that came from smiling as often as he did. Especially now. Miyuki heard Sawamura snort and sigh in his sleep and grinned to himself. He had a lot to smile about.
After he got himself up out of bed and the sun started rising, Miyuki spent his early alone time in any number of ways. He would jot down little plots for novellas that he never explored enough to actually write or read the news or the same old books he'd had lying around forever and considered old friends. When the sun rose he'd open his window to check on his planter, he'd muse to the spiders about his week and ask how theirs are going, he'd check on his donkey tail hanging by the back porch and watch for the cats he liked to feed every morning. Sometimes they nudged his palms and flicked their tails, sometimes they brought their friends, but more often than not they came and ate their fill and left and Miyuki didn't mind one bit. He didn't know what they were up to, and for all of that they could be very busy. He still thought to himself that he'd like to meet them properly some day.
He heard a rustling and a clicking that could only be Masami's claws tapping against the floor, followed by slow footsteps and a familiar voice seeping through the acoustics of their little house. Masami greeted him first, tail thumping against the floor while a wet nose bumped his elbow where he sat on the back threshold. She circled him, all-too-excited to nudge her head under his arm so he could scratch her ears. Sawamura followed her, a telling groan escaping him when he knelt to sit next to them.
"Hey, old man. Why don't you stop sitting on the floor if it's so hard for you?" Miyuki teased, eyeing him and resting his chin on top of his canine friend. Sawamura scoffed in response.
"You're really something, calling me old when you're sat out here waitin' for cats to show up like a regular grandpa."
"Someone has to feed them."
"Listen to yourself, Kazuya. You see yourself as their grandpa, don't you?" He paused and waited for Miyuki to concede. "You sap. I knew it."
Miyuki watched Sawamura's lashes while he batted them lazily, sweeping over crow's feet and golden eyes that didn't dim even after all this time. He reached to brush his thumb over those crow's feet, along his cheek and under his jaw. Sawamura leaned in to kiss him good morning, Masami panting happy and content to be between them.
"You're up early," Miyuki noted, "the sun just rose."
"Yeah, well, someone forgot to let the dogs out when he woke up, so Natto was whining by our door. You should have seen him! He had to go so bad. He almost didn't make it outside you know." Miyuki paused and looked him over, his face twisting into a smile, so pleased he could sing. Might sing.
"Did you...just call him--" Sawamura scrambled for purchase.
"I meant Wanwan-nator! Not that awful nickname you gave him!"
"Eijun, 'Wanwan-nator' is an awful name to start with. I was doing him a favor." Sawamura looked pretty ruffled and Miyuki laughed again. "And besides, he doesn't even answer to that. He knows his name is Natto."
"But natto is awful! It smells terrible and it's slimy!" Sawamura complained. Miyuki laughed at him and moved to stand slowly, dismissing the other's complaints.
"It's not my fault he doesn't answer to the name you gave him." He stretched his back again, rubbing his wrists idly before habitually holding out a hand to help Sawamura up (to which he replied the same way he always did, swatting it away and standing too fast on his own).
"Oh, that made me dizzy." Miyuki clicked his tongue.
"You're so reckless. You can't just spring up like that first thing in the morning when you haven't eaten anything. Come on, I'll start breakfast."
"What are you making?"
"Natto."
"Oh, no! Kazuya!" Sawamura geared up to dive into a string of complaints before Miyuki whistled, tapping his lap and looking around for the young puppy with an old soul.
"Where are you, boy? It's breakfast time." He smiled and Sawamura grumbled. It was a silly trick that he'd used before, and somehow Sawamura still fell for it every time he said it. And somehow, he fell for Sawamura.
Miyuki stopped. That was embarrassing, even for him. Sawamura peered over his shoulder and laid his chin on it.
"What're you thinking?"
Miyuki hummed.
"Nothing."
"Bullshit! You were thinking something romantic again, weren't you? Tell me!"
Miyuki refused and flew away to get some rice cooking. Sawamura grumbled but eventually gave up, opting to sit at the counter and watch him cook instead, idly sifting through Miyuki’s handwritten drafts piled neatly in the corner.
Miyuki planned a lot of disconnected vignettes, novellas and poems in his spare time. He didn’t think any of them were particularly good; they weren’t art, just a way for him to assign a physicality to all the anecdotes swimming around in his head. Sawamura loved them--raved about them, claiming Miyuki should look into publishing them or finding an editor. Miyuki didn’t know how to tell him that in one way or another, they were all about him. Sawamura inspired him and ignited something in him the day they met that still flowed through him so many years later.
“How do you want your eggs today?”
“Over hard, if you don’t mind.”
“Mm.”
His day starts somewhere around six in the morning, alone in the dark before the sun rises. Those were his hours of solitude or quiet company. Miyuki used those few hours to indulge himself in the silence and isolate himself, but every morning the sun rose and light filtered through the windows and the rest of his household bustled around noisily and without grace. Miyuki used to crave that silence and darkness and solitude, but something convinced him to step into the warmth that the morning sun’s rays provide and he flourished in it. It enthralled him, it charmed him, and it overtook him. Sunshine poured through his skin and warmed him somewhere he couldn’t quite find no matter where he sought it. Not that he needed to. Living the way he did left him so content and comfortable that there was no need to seek answers and find sources. He just wanted to exist in the world he and Sawamura had created for each other.