🌈💙✨

Kyo lidded the pot. He didn’t move, and neither did Yuki. Though words sat on the back of Yuki’s tongue, a petty and offhand means of saying I didn’t know you bothered listening to me, the moment had passed, and they stood muted as they allowed the low sounds of simmering to speak for them instead.

And this was where Yuki expected it to end. It happened every time. The stretch of silence would last for too long, and, after making motions to speak but never actually carrying through, one or both of them would end up leaving the room in pursuit of air more breathable and less fringed with things unsaid and unknown.

And every time, Yuki realized the catch: this didn’t happen with anyone else.

-

Yuki gets comfortable with silence. Kyo makes dinner.

“C’mon, Kimi, he didn’t tell me anything.”

She clicks her tongue with a soft tsk. She places her hand on his knee, faux consoling and all condescension as she says,

“You’re so nosy. It was just a kiss.”

Bull, he thinks, and shit. He believes well enough that they didn’t actually have sex, because he thinks Yuki would have looked more than just bothered about it over lunch the following afternoon if they did (catatonic maybe, or maybe he wouldn’t have shown at all). But Kimi never “just” does anything. Wherever the line’s drawn, she always teases herself over it just a little more, just to show she can. Consequence, real consequence, is a foreign thing to her, and that pairs very beautifully with her dislike for things being out of her hands. Figuratively and literally.

He squints at her hand on his knee, and then at her.

“…You didn’t go after him just because I left, did you?”

With a roll of her eyes, she draws her hand back to herself and pushes herself up to stand.

“Don’t think so highly of yourself, Kakeru. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Was that too much?”

“What?”

Kakeru jutted his chin at Yuki’s shoulder. Looked at it, and then to Yuki. That.

Yuki squeezed his elbow and let go.

“...It’s fine,” he managed, but the way Kakeru’s brow quirked made him double-back and ask, “What was that all about?”

His friend shrugged. A non-committal I dunno sat in his throat.

“Felt like it,” he said. Then, he raised a hand and brushed the offending kiss from Yuki’s shoulder, swiping the spot over twice as if trying to get rid of a stray fuzz, or a bug. Yuki watched his hand, perplexed, until Kakeru returned it again to his phone. “But then you looked like I shot you or something.”

-

Yuki gets a kiss. Yuki has a dream.

“So,” Kakeru started, "speaking of. Are you feeling better?”

He glanced at Yuki as he asked, but there was something heavy weighing the edges of his voice, like he wasn’t sure if he was asking the right question. Yuki caught his eye.

The tarry, awkward, dreading feeling that had sunk into him the night before as he listened to Kakeru's last voicemail wormed back into his chest. He nodded slightly, but looked away again down to his arms as he did. There was, again, an acute awareness of the morning illuminating what had safely been hidden in the dark, under a blanket arched around him like a crypt.

“Yeah. I am,” he said. Drawing in a small, deep inhale, he spoke carefully. “Thank you for worrying about me. But, I'm also sorry I worried you. Really. I know I can be stubborn, but… well. Thinking back on it, I guess I was acting pretty strange."

It was an understatement. Kakeru made a flat noise in his throat and attempted to tiptoe around his words.

“You were, but, I mean… No, yeah, you did kind of freak me out, I won't lie. But, look, I’m just glad you’re not dead. Have you ever seen those stories of people just up and walking into the ocean? Freaky stuff.”