Work Text:
Ding.
Yotasuke’s gaze flits from the elevator floor to its opening doors, letting out a sigh of relief at the lack of a welcome.
At least no one’s here , he muses to himself. I can’t tell Ms Ooba I didn’t learn anything from her lessons.
Fist further strangling the fabric of the bag dangling over his shoulder, he takes a tentative step into the dimly lit and empty hallways of the prep school. Yotasuke’s lonely footsteps echo in his trace as he somberly takes in the last he’ll remember of the school. His fingers feel like lead as he shoves material after material into his bag, prone to causing his back discomfort on his way home. There’s an odd tightness around Yotasuke’s heart, and his eyes sting once he finds no more reason to stay.
Yotasuke’s head swims as he stands up from his squat on the floor, ready to retrace his steps out of the building.
Yotasuke’s face scrunches up from its previously stoic, uncaring expression with each move.
Yotasuke’s hand itches to clench his chest so it’d stop slamming against his throat.
Yotasuke’s intellectual brain gets the brilliant idea to take a pitstop at Ms Ooba’s class. Why? Just to stand there like a mannequin, of course. As his fingers graze the cold iron door, Yotasuke does not expect the sob and unmistakable clang of a brush thrown into a pail. It’s the sound his own hands make when he’s upset over their inability to draw, a sound so raw and full of unbridled emotion.
Yotasuke should run and leave no trace of his witness behind, leaving the person inside to skulk and burn in the embers of despair, so he steps into the doorframe instead, looking for the artist shackled in self-hatred. Yotasuke notes that the dying blood of the evening sunset dapples the atelier in place of the harsh fluorescent lights. Yotasuke figures that the artist inside must’ve ripped the curtains wide open.
And the windows too , he monologues gruffly, as a gust of evening wind ruffles his hair.
Ready to reprimand the artist for working in poor lighting, he boldly steps into the classroom, only for his carefully constructed words to wilt on the edge of his tongue.
Yatora is crying in the room, judging from the way his silhouetted shoulders tremble.
“Yatora?”
His voice tastes uncertain, salty uncertainty sitting on his lips.
“Yotasuke…” afraid of speaking, the proud, bubbly delinquent whispered coarsely. It’s a sensation Yotasuke dislikes. To see the other as broken like shattered glass feels as if the sun turned blue and disdainful. Yatora cleared his throat, rubbing his face on the clean hem of his shirt, unaware of his paint-stained fingers in an attempt to appear less miserable.
“Are you oka-”
“Why do you hate me so?”
Ah. Yotasuke retracted the hand he unconsciously held out, Yatora watching it fall to his side uselessly. He does not hate Yatora in the way he hates everyone else. He just feels a tight warmth when Yatora smiles, when Yatora asks to hang out despite knowing the answer and when Yatora begs for critique. Slowly, the pieces click in his mind, and Yotasuke figures that Yatora must be asking for art advice.
“I don’t like your composition and your inability to understand the meaning of a painting.” A bitter lie. Yotasuke admires Yatora’s steady growth in his skillset and his adaptability.
“Your tool choice is limiting your ability.” Now he’s pretending he never saw Yatora never analyze the possibilities the sharpness his pencil could bring a drawing.
He swallows down the restriction in his throat that grows with each lie, body tensing into itself. He’s aware that Yatora’s eyes are steely on his. “You are brand new to art. I don’t get- I don’t understand how you think you can aim for TUA.”
Yotasuke has to cough his last lie out, body rejecting it into the heavy air, and somehow Yatora laughs.
The formerly dejected artist smiled softly as he carefully stood up, tiptoeing past the canvas before him to untangle the fist knotted in Yotasuke’s shirt.
“You have a bad habit of scrunching your shirt up when you lie, Yotasuke.” Yatora whispers, “You’ll wrinkle all your clothes like this.”
“Mhm.” He replies dumbly, panicking at how close Yatora was. Their fronts touched as Yatora’s stained fingers smoothed the front of his shirt.
Yotasuke feels like screaming, pressure building up in his head and neck. His hands are on my fucking hips! Jesus fuck, Yatora!
“I still appreciate your advice, but I was thinking on more of a personal level? Not just my art.”
In such proximity, Yatora could definitely feel Yotasuke’s breath hitch if he lied. In their space, the shorter of the two had a chance to observe the other’s red-rimmed eyes and remnants of tears. Even though Yatora’s features were red-rimmed from crying, Yotasuke still found him remarkably handsome. If the sun were any brighter, Yatora might have laughed at the smattering of pink on Yotasuke’s face at the realization.
“Yatora, I think you’re like melted glass,” he whispers, watching Yatora’s eyes widen in the shadowy sun. “You hold a lot of raw potential and possibilities, and you burn just as bright. You get frustratingly better under pressure, and I can’t figure out how you do it. I like you so much, but I hate thinking about you.”
Yatora’s lips parted, and Yotasuke annoyingly thinks about how badly he wants to feel them pressed against his. Yatora wore the sunlight like strings of liquid jewellery, and Yotasuke wondered how beautiful it would feel to drown in his embrace.
Then all he could process was Yatora, Yaguchi, Yaguchi Yatora until he could feel his slightly chapped lips on his, filling him with warmth, unlike any sun. Yotasuke’s hands embraced Yatora’s warm, paint-streaked face, heart slamming against his chest as blood burned like melted glass in his veins. They break hesitantly, and Yotasuke can feel his head spin and vision blur, pressing his face into’s yatora’s chest to avoid falling over.
“I take it that you don’t hate me, Yotasuke?” Yatora asked, the puff of his breath matching the rhythm Yotasuke can hear pressed against the side of his face. His arms tighten as Yotasuke hums out a reply.
“I don’t.”