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For a moment, Hiori sees it all from above, like he’s playing through the actions in third person. His breath, haunting him in pale bursts as he climbs the porch stairs. His arm, outstretched, soaked jacket clinging to his shivering frame. His hand, poised to knock.
It's Karasu who answers the door. And it shocks Hiori back into his own skin, the incredible relief of it. Thank God. He didn't know what he would've done if it hadn't been Karasu; despite being calmly, coldly aware of every step he took to get here, the possibility that he wouldn’t have answered never crossed his mind once the entire way over.
"How do ya know where I live?" Is how Karasu greets him, low and cautious. Ever the pragmatist. Even at a quarter to midnight and in the pouring rain.
"I followed ya one day. A- a different day than the first one." Hiori admits, because he can't fake it and he sees no point in trying now after he's come all the way here. Cold water drips from his drenched bangs into his eyes, and he blinks it away, voice steadier than he feels. "I'm sorry. I just didn't know where else to go."
Karasu stares for several moments longer, looking at Hiori through the narrow gap in the door, a weightiness to it that soaks him through just as completely as the rain pelting the world around them. It’s impossible to read his expression from here. The single eye Hiori can see is dark.
But then he relents, backing out of the doorway and letting it fall open. Hiori only hesitates briefly before crossing the threshold.
It’s warm inside Karasu’s house, and he closes the door quickly behind Hiori, sealing away the outside chill. When he reappears before Hiori he sees he’s dressed down in a dark sweater and gray sweatpants, the sharp, stylish hairdo he normally sports undone, layers of midnight dark hair falling long and straight around his chin instead. Hiori’s surprise must show because Karasu smirks at him, the narrow slip of his indigo eyes familiar even if so little else of him is right now.
Karasu gestures with his chin and watches Hiori fumble his sodden sneakers off in amused silence before leading them from the entryway. The house is dark, the only light coming from what seems to be the kitchen at the end of the hall, a pale glow spilling out over the dark wood and illuminating snatches of other spaces.
Hiori makes out a home office and bathroom near the entryway, shrouded mostly in shadow, and a living room directly across from the kitchen, cozy with bookshelves, a large leather sectional, and at least four blankets Hiori can count from the hallway. It’s all completely normal, the house and the things within it, nothing at all like the upscale neighborhood Karasu had tricked him into thinking was his the first time Hiori followed him. As anxious he had been then, it almost makes him want to laugh now. He’s bursting into others’ houses again, but there is no one at fault for it but himself.
Karasu walks into the kitchen and Hiori stalls in the hallway, unsure if he's meant to follow. He looks down at himself, and then at the floor behind him. He’s soaked to the bone, having unwittingly dripped all the way down the hall, the trail of water glistening back at him like eyes in the dark. Ah. I hadn’t realized-
"C'mere and sit down, already. Ya look like yer about to bolt."
He whips around, seeing Karasu peering around the doorframe back at him, eyebrows arched impatiently. Hiori goes into the kitchen and, at risk of getting impaled on another sharp look, sits, taking the closest stool at the island counter. Karasu nods, looking satisfied before turning and walking to a door at the back of the kitchen, leaving Hiori alone to drip on the counter.
He comes back shortly, something white in his hands that he launches at Hiori.
It’s a towel. Hiori thanks him graciously and sets about working it over his head. In between the shift of fabric and hair, he catches the outline of Karasu moving around the kitchen, and when he pulls himself free, sees he’s procured a mug and a box of tea.
He selects a bag of tea without input, an already steaming kettle clicking off a few moments after he flicks the button to heat it back up. And it relieves Hiori a little, knowing he was not putting him out any more than he already is. That this towel was easily available, the kettle already out, filled, and warm.
"Here." Karasu murmurs as he sets the mug down on the counter, not directly in front of him but within easy reach. "Ya hungry?" He asks then, again not waiting for Hiori to answer before going to dig through a cupboard anyway.
Hiori retrieves the mug, the heat of it a shock between his frigid fingers. It’s got some sort of mascot on it, probably from another town, one Hiori’s never been to and knows nothing about as much is the case when it comes to Karasu. He sips the tea, the burn of ginger warming his throat pleasantly as he watches Karasu pull a cup of instant ramen from a cupboard and pour the remainder of the kettle into it.
I can't have that today, Hiori thinks but doesn't say as Karasu flattens the seal back down, long fingers diligent around the edges. Carbs would upset the meal plan. But then Karasu is setting a timer and moving away and the moment to speak up is gone.
Hiori reconciles this with himself by deciding to pick through all the vegetables first, sectioning out the noodles from there. It's ingrained. Instinct.
He doesn't do that. The timer goes off and Karasu places the cup and a pair of chopsticks on the counter, once again within reach but not directly before him. And Hiori's lack of lunch and dinner and mounting dread of the entire day careens into him with such swift and devastating velocity that he starts eating without giving any of it a second thought, so quickly he nearly chokes. Karasu leans on the counter across from him and says nothing, just watching Hiori scarf down the food as he sips his own tea. Outside the rain pours on, the drone of thunder tolling in the distance, not quite atop them but not so far away either.
"Thank you," Hiori says once the entire cup is empty, noodles and all. He doesn't remember the last time he was handed food and drinks freely, without instruction or caveat. Small snacks from the convenience store snuck after practice hardly counted when every other waking moment was calculated in macros and micros, to the closest calorie.
“Yer welcome.” Karasu says and then grunts, standing up, mug in hand. "Well. I was in the middle of somethin', so,"
Oh. It's time then. Hiori's overstayed his- intrusion.
"O-of course. I'm sorry. I'll just-"
"No, shit- enough of that." Karasu snaps, and it startles Hiori, how the frustration in it feels directed less at him and more at Karasu himself. "I ain't tellin’ ya ta leave. I'm telling ya to come back upstairs with me."
Hiori doesn't know what to do. Going upstairs with him sounds- far too comfortable. And casual. And easy. With this indefinite, loose form of Karasu, even more so. He doesn’t know what he wanted when he’d made the choice forty-five minutes ago to walk through the pouring rain to come here, only that he had to be somewhere, anywhere else, and even after coming all this way he still isn’t sure what he needs. It’s like there’s a knot in his heart he can’t choke out, no words coming to him to quantify this two-faced thing he feels.
So he doesn't try to. He doesn't want to leave, so he nods.
Karasu's room is the first one at the top of the stairs, hazy lamplight leaking from under the door. Karasu lets Hiori go in first, and these surroundings he takes in curiously too. His walls are blue and his floor is clean, bed neatly made and shelves organized within an inch of their life. On the large desk a variety of awards and trophies are displayed, books and trinkets tucked in the various cubbies, and in the middle a packet of papers and an accompanying textbook languish untouched. Ah. Of course.
Karasu doesn’t comment on Hiori’s open and rather impolite gawking, moving around him to get into the closet. He emerges with some clothes but doesn't do anything besides setting them on the bed.
And then he turns to his desk, sitting down and opening his book without a backward glance.
Hiori is confused until he realizes. Karasu is giving him space. Karasu is letting him get as comfortable as he wants. The tea, the ramen, the clothes, placed within reach but not directly handed to him. There if he wants them. His choice to make.
Karasu is the type to observe. Hiori knows this. And to have been observed so thoughtfully, so thoroughly- it’s pathetic, how badly it rattles him. Pitiful, how he yearns for it too, to be seen. With his heart in his throat and hope wrapped so tight it scratches through skin, hits nerve and bone and cuts all the way to the core, this knowledge that Karasu sees him and knows what Hiori needs even when he himself doesn’t is an intimacy he didn’t expect. The utter relief of having both the acceptance and refusal of it in his hands is something completely foreign.
But his freedom lives on a leash, and Hiori's not above taking any leeway given. Karasu is kind. And he is so grateful for it.
He grabs the clothes and changes right there in the room. They’ve shared locker rooms for nearly two years at this point, and it's not like Karasu is paying attention anyway, still focused on his work. The slap of wet fabric hitting the floor is the loudest thing between them, the intensity of the rain rendered softer in this space, behind glass and pulled curtains. Karasu’s blue hoodie and black joggers are warm and worn soft when Hiori slips them on, and they’re closer in size than he expected, Hiori's shoulders filling in for Karasu's easily, their long arms and torsos not too different as far as this fabric was concerned.
He thrills at it for a moment, strangely sated by this peculiar fact. But after standing there in the middle of the room for several minutes, suddenly felt quite silly about it. And the awkward realization that the seating selection was rather limited not settling any better, Hiori makes the daring choice to climb up on Karasu's bed, curling up atop the covers in the corner where the walls meet.
And though he's nervous to do it, Hiori’s on a hot streak of committing to mortifying choices, and so retrieves his phone. Predictably his parents have blown it up with texts and calls but Hiori feels composed, oddly calm as he swipes through them.
He reads the texts but does not listen to the voicemails, opening a gaming app when he gets sick of their false sincerities and decides he’d rather kill his brain cells a different way. Hiori loses himself in the easy meticulousness of it, sinking into the warmth of Karasu’s bed and nest of pillows bodily as his mind returns to its preferred eagle-eyed view of the world.
After a while Karasu closes his books and swivels around in his chair to face the bed. Sensing the movement, Hiori looks back at him over the top of his phone, and catches the way Karasu’s eyes flicker over him. He doesn't shy away from the surveyal, remains patient until Karasu has had his fill.
Karasu watches him in silence for another moment before taking a long drink off his tea, setting it down with a sigh.
"So. We gonna talk about it or what?"
Hiori tucks his chin, laying his phone on the comforter. "About… the other time I followed you around, or about tonight?"
Karasu snorts, pointing at Hiori with an accusatory finger. "Don't think I'm lettin' you off the hook fer that, but I was referring to ya showing up at my door in the middle of the night, yeah." When Hiori doesn't immediately answer, the finger gets filed away in a fist Karasu rests his chin on. "We don't gotta. But I would like ta get my story straight by the time the cops arrive."
Hiori blinks, panic a tight fist in his windpipe. "Ya called the police?"
"Of course not, ya idiot. What kind of moron do ya take me for?" He drawls, but then nods to the phone on his bed. "But I don't imagine yer parents are gonna be so kind if ya keep ignoring them."
Hiori swallows hard. Caught. But not surprised, so he doesn’t bother pretending otherwise.
"I… overheard my parents fighting. It's not the first time it's happened, but," His vision glazes over, and he suddenly feels cold again, as cold as he had on the walk over, as it felt nearly every day in his own house. "It was the first time I spoke up when they did."
Hiori liked games, specifically third-person ones, because it put him above it all. He could be a part of the world and action but none of it would be able to reach him, to hurt him. He often thought of himself in that way, a character in a video game, going through the motions input into him, acting within his character settings so everyone would be happy.
To feel his emotions, not as the Hiori Yo designed by his parents but as himself, the Hiori Yo who often didn’t know how he felt or what he wanted, only that it was different and other than what was expected of him, was to betray his coding. It killed all sense of suspension. It put him back on the ground, allowing him to hurt. To hurt others.
Hiori isn’t hurting, necessarily, as he recounts the events of the night that had led him to Karasu’s porch and now his bed. And while conversely saying it all out loud does not really make him feel any better, it gives shape to these things inside him and that must count for something, making them real in a way that can be addressed in some capacity.
"So, yeah." He finishes, fisting his hands in the sleeves of his borrowed shirt, trying to find the warmth again. "It's my fault if they get a divorce. I've always understood this, and yet…"
The chair creaks as Karasu readjusts, Hiori glancing up in time to see the trace of something harsh, fast and faintly like anger in his expression before it's smoothed away in favor of a calculating one.
"Are ya the type that's good at everything ya try?"
"I…" Hiori blinks, taken aback. He feels, suddenly, like he's selected the wrong dialogue option somewhere along the line. "I'm not sure what ya mean by that."
"Yer pretty smart, I've gathered. Not just in terms of soccer but I figure academically too. Plus yer a good gamer, and no one dislikes you. Sounds ta me like yer used to a certain amount of success in life."
"Yer… not wrong."
Karasu snorts, threading his fingers together, looking not unlike an evil mastermind at the end of a game. "Hiori Yo, you are remarkable."
Hiori feels himself flinch. The words reverberate through all of his newly emptied spaces with the intensity of thunder, and it’s not- it’s not what he wants to hear right now. The shock of it might just send him floating back up, back to his untouchable third-person point of view.
He can’t look at Karasu. It feels like too much, suddenly. "You've told me that before."
"I've told ya this before too. You should worry about yerself, first and foremost. Because none of that has anythin’ ta do with you." He says this like Hiori is the idiot here and he needs to be reminded of that, each word a clean slice through the air. "Didn't think I'd be the one ta have to tell ya this, but you ain't married to either of them. They're yer parents, I get it, but what's between them is on them."
"It always goes back to soccer. All I have to do is be the best, and then everyone gets to be happy. It's exhaustin' but what else can I do?"
"Fer you it might be about soccer, but fer them it's about control. And feelin' owed. Some people just ain't cut out to make it, no matter how hard they try." He shakes his head, the strength of conviction in his voice astounding. "But you, Hiori Yo, are more than capable. Ya just gotta decide what it is ya wanna do."
One exhale and it feels like it bares him of everything. There’s a crispness to it, like a cleanly folded edge. This is one side and that is the other, delineated with one unbroken stroke, like it’s a ledge, the roof of a building and everything else below; Hiori knows what it feels like, coming upon that surprise ledge, the destabilized, dizzying plummet. The shock of the floor and how much it hurts when you realize with startling clarity where you are.
"... Are you gonna call my leg erotic again?" Hiori asks, feeling the genuine smile on his face cautiously peering out from wherever it hides most of the time.
"I hate repeatin' myself, ya know. If ya still don't get it at this point, I ain't gonna be the one ta break it to ya."
Hiori doesn't get it but he laughs anyway, a quiet, small thing. These months he's known Karasu, he's gotten used to it- laughing again. Maybe that’s what he needed, coming here tonight.
"Ya can stay the night, by the way. If ya want." Karasu adds, offhand and casual, like it's a stray thought that just happened to cross his mind he decided to take pity on. "So long I don't get arrested, that is."
"No, no, I'll make sure of it." Hiori laughs again, rubbing his face with both hands. "I'll call them in a bit. I'm sure I'll be in fer it when I get home, but..."
"But that's something to worry about tomorrow."
When he pulls his hands away Karasu is looking at him again. It's the sort of look that makes Hiori want to position himself directly in front of Karasu, so that he may always receive it. Makes him want to unfurl and offer more to see, to pick apart, so that he might observe something else in Hiori that he himself missed. Anything to justify this desire to be looked at more, especially when Hiori is not doing a single thing worthy of looking at.
"Yeah."
Hiori sits up, drawing closer to the edge of the bed. Karasu stays right where he is, still watching him.
"Thank you, Karasu-kun. Fer hearing me out." He says quietly, facing him on folded knees. They're perfectly at eye-level here. "And fer not turnin' me away."
"Well ya showed up looking all pathetic like that. I ain't that heartless." Karasu rubs a hand up the back of his neck, a genuine thread of worry putting a stitch between his brows. "And I'm kinda responsible fer it at this point, ain't I? I'm the one who keeps tryin' to push ya into breaking out of that mindset."
"I'm grateful for it. Sometimes I find myself wishin' everyone would just give up on me, but ya always have a way of making me consider things differently."
"I may be the one pushin', but it ain't my fault if ya can't commit."
They're still looking at each other. Karasu always calls him out. Karasu, who brought warmth to Hiori's cold, cold existence time and time again; with hands that bring him tea and ramen and inside, with words that soothe and shock and see him. Karasu, who strikes at Hiori's weaknesses the same as any opponent and reminds him why it matters to allow himself to come down long enough to hurt sometimes.
In another moment of daring, Hiori leans over and cups Karasu's face within his hands. Once again, Karasu doesn't put any distance between them, letting himself be caught here. His skin is cold. Hiori wants to return some of it to him, the warmth he has so freely given, time and time again.
"I'll take responsibility for it too then. It's just the way I feel, after all."
He brushes the loose strands of hair from his cheeks and then leans in slow, tipping his head and closing his eyes and doing everything he thinks he should to communicate his intentions. He's sure Karasu could stop him even at his quickest but he makes no move to do so, silent and still all the way up to where Hiori delivers their lips together.
For a moment he is unsure if Karasu will only afford him this kindness too, but then a soft exhale against his mouth breaks the tension, and he feels Karasu move with him, pressing his lips to Hiori’s with purpose. It’s so grounding it aches, painstaking nearly in its care when Karasu reaches up to thumb along Hiori’s jaw. Hiori revels in it, the deliberateness, and it solidifies in his chest. Asking to be let in and then balking at the acceptance. No more. He’ll take what he wants when it’s offered and he won’t think twice about it.
Outside the storm drones on, just a collision of rain and sound, and they are far away from it all as they tuck together that night, in Karasu's sweaters and under his blankets. Leaving all the hurt and noise behind, at least until tomorrow.