Chapter Text
Hiiragi Kashima has not always been strong in times of crisis. He knows that. Turmoil makes him hesitate. He does not like to get involved. What point is there? Makes him fold inward. Remember every version of himself he’d rather forget.
But never like this.
He sits on the bed. THEIR bed. His back against the headboard, the sheets cool against his skin. He's naked. It felt wrong to put anything between himself and the place where HE should be. Especially now. Hiiragi wants to be close to HIM. As close as he can get.
Any minute, he thinks. He'll wander in. Even though he knows better.
He lifts the glass again. Hibiki 21. The good bottle. The one HE gave him on his twenty‑fifth birthday. Hiiragi takes a sip, slow, letting it settle. It’s smooth. Silky. Like HIS skin. Caramel. Honey. Something like peach. Or apricot. And that faint orange peel note he never could pin down.
Complex. Like HIM.
Hiiragi has spent the last hour — or longer, he’s not sure — trying to understand those complexities. The whisky’s. And HIS. The way both of them unfold if you sit with them long enough. The way neither ever lets you reach the bottom.
He’s had years to understand HIM. Years to try.
And somehow he’s only just beginning.
He tightens his grip on the glass. The tremor in his fingers is small, but it’s there. The room is too quiet. The bed is too big. Hiiragi is bare — in every way that matters.
Waiting has never felt so much like losing.
He closes his eyes and sees HIM on stage. The intensity. The way HE could command a room without even trying. That soaring voice — smooth, effortless, layered like the whisky in Hiiragi’s hand. Sweet at first. Then sharp. Then something deeper underneath, something only the people who really knew HIM could hear.
Hiiragi had watched HIM every night of the tour. The one they had finished barely a week ago. Stalking across the stage, eyes wide, pulling the crowd along like a tide. Conjuring with his guitar. And on the keys — Kamisama, the keys — where HE always seemed closest to breaking open and closest to becoming something untouchable.
It hadn’t always been like that.
Last year in Nagoya had been a low point. One of the lowest. Hiiragi had disappointed HIM. Not for the first time. But that night had been worse. Hiiragi drunk. Ritsuka a fucking volcano. The two of them colliding until everything felt like it was drowning in whisky‑tinted lava.
And HE had run.
To New York.
To someone who should have been more destructive than either Hiiragi or Ritsuka.
To Ugetsu Murata.
A storm. Chaotic.
…another layer Hiiragi hadn’t known to look for.
But that STORM had shaped HIM. Driven HIM. Forced HIM to grow in ways Hiiragi never could have predicted. And then Julian Carter — steady, brilliant Julian — had unlocked another layer, another undertone, another complexity Hiiragi hadn’t known to look for.
HE had emerged from all of it changed.
Sharper. Brighter.
More HIM than ever.
The tour had proved it. Every night. Every city. Every stage.
Dazzling. Unmistakable.
A force no one could look away from.
Hiiragi took another sip of the whisky. Let it burn. Let it remind him.
Because now all he had was the traces.
The echo of the voice.
The storm‑shaped brilliance.
The memory of HIM standing under stage lights like he was born from them.
The bed is still too big.
And the silence is still too loud.
He closed his eyes. The whisky coated his tongue, and for a second, it's not whisky. It's the taste of HIS mouth after he comes. Salt and something sweet. Something uniquely HIS.
The memory hits him like a physical blow.
Two days ago. Before the strike. Before the sirens.
He remembers the weight of his hips in his hands. The way the dim light caught the sweat on his collarbones. On his stomach, face turned away, red hair a mess against the white pillowcase. That perfect, vulnerable arch of his back.
God, that skin. So smooth. Flawless.
Hiiragi's hands knew every inch. Knew the places that made him shiver, the places that made him gasp.
He remembered the slick heat of his own fingers first. One. Then two. The tight, clenching resistance that slowly, so slowly, gave way to him. The sound he made—half-gasp, half-moan—buried in the pillow. A sound just for him.
Then himself. Pushing in. That first, impossible tightness gripping him. The way he had to pause, breathe, or it would be over before it started. Watching himself disappear into HIS body.
So tight. So perfect.
He remembers setting a rhythm. Slow. Deep. Mafuyu pushing back to meet him, silent except for those sharp, hitching breaths. He had wrapped his hand around his cock, feeling it pulse and leak against his palm. Stroking him in time with his thrusts. Matching the rhythm of their bodies.
He remembers looking down. Watching his face, turned toward him now looking at him over his shoulder. Those beautiful amber eyes, wide and hazy with pleasure. Not just pleasure. Love. So much love it hurt to look at. His lips parted, wet. A silent gasp as Hiiragi hit just the right spot.
Right there. Right there, Ragi!
He remembers the moment Mafuyu came. The way his body locked, his back bowing, a choked-off cry tearing from his throat as he spilled hot and wet over Hiiragi's hand. The way his ass clenched around his cock, pulling his own orgasm from him in a blinding, shuddering rush. Filling him up. Marking him. His.
He remembered collapsing onto Mafuyu's back. Both of them shaking. Sweat cooling on their skin. The smell of sex and Mafuyu's shampoo filling the quiet room.
He remembers whispering HIS name against the nape of his neck. "Mafuyu."
Now he could barely think that name, much less speak it aloud. And the sleepy, sated response.
"Hii..."
The last time.
The last time he felt that smooth skin under his hands.
The last time he felt that tight heat around him. The last time he watched those beautiful amber eyes go wide with love as he brought him to climax.
Hiiragi opens his eyes. The glass is trembling so hard he had to set it down. The whisky burned a trail down his throat, but it's nothing. It's ash and paper compared to the memory of that fire.
The bed is empty. The silence is absolute.
And the last time is now the only time he has left…
Ritsuka Uenoyama didn't knock. The door was already ajar. The light, still on.
That’s wrong. He stands there for a second. Just looking.
The bed. The lamp. The bottle.
Everything exactly where it shouldn’t be.
He steps inside anyway. The door closed behind him with a soft click.
Too quiet.
The bedside lamp burned low. Steady. Unchanged. The bottle sat open. Hibiki 21. Half gone. A glass beside it. One swallow left.
Ritsuka’s eyes moved
Hiiragi.
Naked. Sprawled wrong across the bed, like he tipped over and never corrected. One arm pinned. The other slack.
Not sleeping. Not really. Just… stopped.
Ritsuka felt it in his chest before he understood it.
—Kamisama.
Hiiragi missed HIM.
He missed HIM, too. Gone. All at once.
Not memory. Not pieces.
Absence.
The room felt bigger because of it.
The bed felt bigger. Everything felt like it stretched around something that wasn't there anymore.
Ritsuka moved closer.
Slow. Careful.
Like the quiet might break if he rushed it.
He sat on the edge of the bed. Watched Hiiragi. There’s a calm there. But it’s wrong. Too still. Like something burned out and hadn't come back yet.
Ritsuka knew that feeling. He exhaled.
Then he moved. He lay down beside him. Close. Close enough to feel the heat of his skin. His arm came up, hesitated—
Then settled around Hiiragi’s shoulders.
Pulled him in.
Hiiragi shifted slightly. Not awake. Just responding. Like his body knew what to do even if he didn't himself. Ritsuka tightened his grip. For a second, it felt wrong.
This isn’t his place. This bed. This space.
This—
The thought breaks.
Because there is no place anymore.
Not without HIM.
Ritsuka presses his face briefly against Hiiragi’s shoulder. Breath held. Eyes shut.
—Kamisama.
He missed HIM.
The silence is too loud. The bed is too big.
It should be three. It was always three.
Ritsuka’s hand tightens in the sheets at Hiiragi’s back. Hiiragi breathes. Slow. Even. Unaware.
Alive. Here. Ritsuka held onto that.
Because that's what’s left.
Because it has to be enough.
Even if it isn’t.
His mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
The question sits there anyway.
Unfinished.
How—
How do they—
He can’t finish it.
He already knows.
Ritsuka’s grip tightens. And the thought settles, heavy and immovable:
Without HIM—
It’s just THEM.
And he doesn’t know how THEY survive that.