Chapter Text
Tomo is five years old when his father brings him out of the house for the first time, takes him to an unfamiliar room in what Tomo later learns is called a school, and immediately turns to leave.
He almost doesn’t notice his Papa’s departure, at first, because he’s so busy peeking inside of the room. It’s a confusing mass of motion and sound, with other children running about and playing with toys that look much shinier and better than the ones Tomo has at home. From the corner of his vision, he spots a particularly colorful set of building blocks by one of the walls, and he unthinkingly inches forwards before the sound of his Papa’s footsteps pull him back.
In a few, frantic seconds, Tomo registers exactly what’s happening here, realizes that his father isn’t going to be coming with him, and he scrambles after the man, nearly tripping over both himself and the stuffed giraffe in his arms to catch up.
“Are we going?” he asks his Papa, and the man goes still, lets out something of an impatient sigh as he glances at his watch.
“I am. You’re staying here, boy. Until I return.”
Tomo blinks, unsure if he’s heard his father correctly, his hands starting to tremble from where they’re wrapped around his giraffe.
“But,” he starts, then trails off when his father starts walking again--faster, this time.
It takes another hurried chase down the hallway, but Tomo’s reaching fingers finally manage to grasp at his Papa’s pant leg, his grip halting the man’s stride.
“Don’t go.”
It isn’t something he asks of his father often, because he’s gotten somewhat used to the man’s absences, and Tomo’s already grown up enough to protect their apartment on his own. But this is the first time Tomo’s ever been properly outside of his home--he’s not ready to be alone yet.
In response, his Papa reaches down for his hand, merely breaking Tomo’s feeble grip away from his pant leg. Then, placing an ungentle hand against Tomo’s upper back, he gives Tomo another push, until he stumbles in the direction of the room once more.
“Go,” he says, moving away from Tomo, the distance between them widening with every step. “Maybe you’ll make a friend. Gods know you need something else to do.”
There’s a harder edge to his father’s tone, one that leaves no room for argument, but it isn’t this that stops Tomo’s next protest in his tracks. Rather, he’s considering what the man has said, about making a friend --because Tomo has never done that before.
Muffins is his only friend, as far as he knows, and Tomo hadn’t really had to make friends with him--they’d simply been that way from the start, ever since the kind older lady who lived across from them had given the stuffed giraffe to him as a gift.
Surely, making people-friends couldn’t be the same as making giraffe-friends. After all, no one was going to give a person to him. Unless that really was how it worked?
He’s about to speak up again, to ask his father how--
But when he looks up, he’s alone.
Despite his father’s hopeful predictions, Tomo is terrible at making friends.
The reason for this, as he comes to discover, is that he cries. A lot.
Tomo’s father, in one of the few direct conversations they’d actually had, has always told him that he isn’t supposed to cry, that it’s something men aren’t allowed to do. But even though he tries,Tomo isn’t any better at not crying than he is at making friends.
He cries when he spills his apple juice at snacktime, even when the teacher gets him a new cup.
He cries when he uses the wrong color on his tree by accident, then again when he smudges the paper with his tears.
And he cries when he trips and falls while running across the carpet, coming away physically unscathed but tearing open a seam in the back of Muffins’ head.
By now, the rest of the class is so used to Tomo’s crying that no one comes to check on him as he curls in on himself, his shaking hands holding his giraffe close, his palm pressed protectively against the torn fabric of the toy. Even still, Tomo can see that everyone is watching him as he sobs into Muffins’ fur, and somehow, this only makes him feel worse, his cheeks burning even as shudders wrack his small frame.
He tries to catch his breath, to calm himself down, because his hiccups are becoming so sharp that each one hurts his aching stomach, but every time he runs his fingers against the loose threads and exposed stuffing, a fresh wave of tears pricks at his eyes.
Muffins might never be okay again, and it’s his fault--he wasn’t careful enough.
Not wanting to be looked at any longer, Tomo swipes at his eyes and twists away from the rest of the class, buries his face in the stuffed animal as he hears everyone slowly return to what they’d been doing.
The sound of their chatter washes over his senses, conversation fading into a low murmur beneath the sound of his own sobs, and so he barely hears the hesitant, nearly soundless steps that come towards him. Then, there’s the softest of tugs at his sleeve, a motion so shy that Tomo almost misses it, until it happens again.
Slowly, he lifts his head, and comes face to face with a pair of curious red eyes, set in an unreadably blank expression. It’s a boy he only vaguely recognizes, if only because he’s so distinct in appearance, the paleness of his hair and skin interrupted only by the red streak in his bangs.
He’s a little taller than Tomo, enough that Tomo still has to look up at him when he sinks silently down to the floor at Tomo’s side, his small hands holding a box to his chest.
Tomo sniffles, tries to straighten up and make himself look presentable in the wake of this new visitor.
“H...hello?” he tries, but the boy doesn’t respond, preoccupied with digging through the box.
After some effort, the boy manages to produce a sparkly bandage from the box’s contents, peeling off the wrapper and leaning forwards to plaster it against Muffins’ head, right over the torn seam.
Tomo blinks at the repaired injury as the boy leans away, dipping his head at Tomo to signify that he’s completed his task.
A moment goes by, then two, Tomo’s breath frozen in his chest.
Then, for some reason, he bursts into tears again.
At this, the boy startles in alarm, biting at his lip nervously as he attempts to discern what went wrong.
But even Tomo doesn’t even know why he’s crying this time, his tears seeping into the sleeves of his jacket, only that he can’t seem to stop. It’s embarrassing, and he wants to swallow down his tears, at least for long enough to thank the boy, to maybe--
Something warm and gentle wraps itself around Tomo, and Tomo faintly registers the scent of strawberries as he looks up. The boy has pressed himself against Tomo’s trembling form, is holding Tomo securely against him in what Tomo distantly realizes is a hug.
He’s never been hugged before, but he immediately decides that he likes it, his sobs quieting as he settles into the new sensation. His hiccups subside, his breaths evening out as the boy’s fingers rub at his back, and they stay like that until the last of Tomo’s tears finally dry against his cheeks.
When the boy pulls away, Tomo almost misses his presence, almost wants to catch his wrist and tug him back.
“T...thank you,” he mumbles instead, remembering that he’d meant to say that in the first place, before he’d begun crying. “I’m Tomo, and, um, this is Muffins. Do you want to hold him?”
The offer earns him an uncertain glance, but after a moment, the boy reaches out to take Muffins into his arms, holding it away from him at arm's length. The interaction doesn’t last for very long--just a simple squeeze and a confused pat to Muffins’ head before he hands the giraffe back, like he isn’t sure what to do with the toy.
Then, he smooths out the wrinkles in his clothing and gets to his feet, giving Tomo something of a little bow before he leaves.
It’s only several minutes later, while he’s still staring at the sparkly bandage, that Tomo realizes he never learned the other’s name.
Afterwards, he makes it his personal mission to befriend Muffins’ savior.
He’s confused, at first, because the boy doesn’t seem to have any other friends, despite how nice he is. From what Tomo can see, the boy is always snacking alone at snacktime, napping alone at naptime, sitting in the corner and quietly reading picture books at playtime.
None of the other kids hang out with him, although some of them do peer at him closely, not with the same dislike they show to Tomo. Sometimes, a few of them approach him, to invite him over to their circle, but their hesitant attempts immediately fall through in the wake of the boy’s absolute silence.
The boy doesn’t seem to notice any of it, much less respond to it, his features always carefully expressionless, even when Tomo approaches him.
Tomo isn’t sure that the boy is paying attention, but he still decides to try--
“I’m Tomo,” he introduces himself again, just in case the other’s forgotten him since yesterday’s encounter. “And we’re going to be friends, forever! What’s your name?”
This proclamation--and the following question--earns him no answer at all. The boy merely lifts his eyes from his book, studies Tomo for an extended moment, then turns the page and continues reading.
It’s not a no, though, so Tomo takes an eager seat at his side and begins happily building a block tower for Muffins.
“He needs a place to live,” he explains eagerly to his new friend, eager to have found someone to listen to him. “‘Cause giraffes don’t live in people houses, they live in giraffe houses. Those are different, you know. They have to be big, and they have to be tall, and--”
He chatters on about giraffe architecture while he constructs the door, sets up the windows, adds the finishing touches on the decorations, coming to a pause only when the boy closes his book with a gentle snap.
He gets to his feet, and Tomo goes finally silent, something empty twisting in his stomach, because this is familiar--this is the part where the other kids got tired of his talking, too.
But to his surprise, the boy doesn’t leave. Instead, he merely twists around to carefully slot the finished book back into its shelf, then slides out the one beside it before sitting back down.
He settles neatly back on the carpet, opens the book up to the first page, then looks at Tomo expectantly.
Oh.
At the silent cue, Tomo picks up right where he left off, directly from the middle of the sentence he’d stopped at. The boy never contributes to the conversation, not even once, nor does he help Tomo with his block tower, but when Tomo is finished, the other offers him the smallest nod of approval.
Tomo beams, savors in his finished work for another moment, then instinctively reaches for the boy’s hand without thinking. He freezes as soon as their hands touch, when he realizes how pushy he’s being, but the boy doesn’t seem bothered by the contact, glancing down at their linked hands and then back up at Tomo.
“You...don’t mind?” Tomo asks, just in case, which earns him another confused tilt of the head. “Me making you follow me, I mean.”
The only response he receives is a series of expectant blinks, and when Tomo experimentally sets off in the direction of the crayons and paper, his new friend obediently follows him, easily trailing behind.
Something feels like it settles in Tomo’s chest then, a little like the world falling into place. But he doesn’t really think much of it--they have a tree to color, after all.
It takes two weeks for Tomo to hear him speak.
Although it’s a bit strange, not knowing what to call the other, Tomo decides to make their friendship more official. He spends most of the morning hard at work, unbending paper clips until they resemble little metal lines, so focused on his task that he even ignores his crackers and juice while he works.
The boy sits at his side, taking tiny nibbles of his cookies as he goes through his book. When he turns the page, Tomo takes the opportunity to examine his hands, measuring out the width of the other’s finger in his mind as he bends the paperclips into shape until they form something of a patterned ring.
He’s seen adults do this all the time on television--even their teacher has one, a shiny, jeweled thing on her left hand.
“It’s for you,” Tomo declares, presenting the ring to the boy as soon as he’s done. “Because we’re friends now, and this proves it.”
This, of course, is returned with silence, but the boy blinks at him, clearly considering the matter seriously. For a moment, Tomo thinks the other might refuse, but then he extends a small hand, lets Tomo slip the ring onto his finger.
He turns back to his cookies in quiet contemplation, looking between Tomo’s untouched crackers and his own snack. Carefully, he breaks one of his cookies into uneven halves, and then hands Tomo the bigger piece.
And so they’re friends--maybe even best friends. Muffins will just have to understand.
Once they’re finished with their snack, Tomo drags the other over to the blocks again, and he’s pleased to feel the metal of the ring brush up against their linked hands, reluctant to separate even as he sits down to play.
This time, his companion looks noticeably more interested in the activity than he’d been before. Although he’s still reading, Tomo notices that he keeps peeking shyly over the cover of the book to inspect the tower’s progress, his red gaze turning somewhat curious when it passes over a few of the stray blocks on the ground.
“You should play with me,” Tomo finally says, after the fifth or sixth time that this happens, and the boy freezes in place, looking as if he’s been caught.
Then, he turns his eyes to the ground, bites his lip with uncertainty, and gives the tiniest shake of his head. But even the flatness of his expression can’t disguise his obvious longing, and Tomo feels a strange sensation swell in his chest, something that makes him push forwards and grab the other’s pale hand in his own.
“I’ll show you how.”
Without waiting for a response, he bends down, puts one of the blocks in the other’s hand, and then helps guide it over to Tomo’s tower. Together, they place it carefully on top of one of the walls--a little decoration, to make things nice.
“There! It’s fun, right?”
Tomo grins at his playmate proudly, fully expecting the boy to simply nod in response, but now the other lowers his eyes, inches himself closer until he’s practically leaning against Tomo.
“...Yes,” he whispers, so softly that Tomo wouldn’t have caught it, if they weren’t right by each other. “And...my name is Kazuha.”
Kazuha.
It’s the prettiest name Tomo’s ever heard.
He tells his Papa about his new friend as soon as he gets home. His words trip over themselves in his excitement, his feet scrambling unsteadily beneath him as he tries to keep up with the man’s longer strides as he makes for the exit of their apartment.
His father always leaves the house around this time, right around when Tomo comes home from school. Tomo’s always found it strange, how the hours of their schedules seem to line up like this, but he’s never questioned his father’s activities.
Still, he tries a new conversation topic on the man every day, squishing in his words in these few minutes that he has, because if he picks the right thing to say, something good enough, something that makes his father want to hear more, then the man will stay.
He has to--that’s just how it works.
“His name is Kazuha, doesn’t he sound pretty?” Tomo tries this time, his words wobbling off into the silence in the air.
To his surprise, the man actually pauses at that, stopping with his hand on the edge of the doorframe.
“The Kaedehara boy?” he asks, and Tomo, after recovering from the initial shock of being responded to, hurries to make sense of this new name that he assumes to belong to Kazuha’s family.
A familiar hope rises in chest, encourages him forwards into this unknown territory as he latches onto his father’s interest.
“Um, yes! He’s very nice, Papa--he’s soft, too, and he’s nice to hug, and--”
“I hear he’s quiet, Katsuro’s son. Perhaps you’ll learn from him.”
He takes one step out the door, and then another, and then the thin walls of their apartment rattle as his father slams the door closed.
Tomo stares at the surface of it, lets his breath escape in an unsteady sigh. The sting of this is familiar, too, but Tomo’s determined not to let it bother him.
He’ll get it right next time.
Kazuha is quiet, although Tomo quickly learns that it isn’t because Kazuha is weird--like the other kids say--or that he’s being stubborn--like the grown-ups think he is.
It’s only Tomo who gets it, and he only gets it because of the way that they hold hands everywhere they go. With his fingers wrapped so tightly around the other boy’s hand, Tomo can feel the way that Kazuha tenses up whenever he’s expected to speak, whenever a question comes his way or a person looks to him in askance. He has a habit of shrinking behind Tomo, of biting at his lip and staring at the floor, until the silence stretches on for so long that the other person gives up entirely.
This tactic works in some cases, but not in others, like when their teacher taps her foot impatiently in front of him while she waits for Kazuha to produce an answer to her question--if he wants apple juice or grape.
Tomo twists around to peek at his friend, to where Kazuha has his free hand pressed against his mouth, every part of him tense with discomfort, and Tomo knows he has to rescue him.
“He wants grape,” Tomo says aloud, which draws the teacher’s glance towards him instead.
Still, she doesn’t seem to be inclined to believe Tomo at first, which is, in his opinion, very unfair--doesn’t she know that he and Kazuha are best friends? They know everything about each other.
“Is that true, Kazuha?”
Kazuha nods his head, and his expression doesn’t change, but when their teacher turns back around to find the grape juice, Tomo feels Kazuha’s hand tightening around his own, giving him something of a grateful squeeze.
After that, Tomo takes it upon himself to answer for Kazuha whenever he can, letting Kazuha shrink into the safety of his shadow while Tomo happily chatters on enough for the both of them. He learns to read Kazuha’s silences too, to figure out when the careful tug at his sleeve is meant to draw his attention or to pull him away, when Kazuha’s staring at the floor means that he’s unhappy or simply just shy.
It’s easy, once Tomo gets the hang of it, and it makes him wonder why it’s so hard for everyone else, to just listen to what Kazuha isn’t saying.
Maybe they just don’t want to try.
Later, they start going to real school, the kind where they have to sit at desks and memorize hard words.
It’s a terrible time for Tomo, who misses bringing Muffins to school and has to work extra hard to avoid falling asleep in the middle of class. He’s always late to school, too, because now that he’s seven, his father expects him to start walking to school by himself, and Tomo has a bad habit of wanting to stay in bed until the last possible second.
Tomo is forever making Kazuha wait for him, the boy standing by the entrance with a woman that Tomo later learns is Kazuha’s maid and not his mother. Privately, Tomo thinks that his way of making them both late is a good thing--he’s saving them from a lifetime of boring lessons.
But Kazuha seems to genuinely enjoy them, always sits up straight and pays attention and takes neat notes for Tomo to sneak answers off of whenever the teacher calls on him.
It’s this last part, really, that poses the most problem for Kazuha. He and Tomo are seated next to each other, like always, so Tomo can feel the sheer alarm radiating off of his friend the first time the teacher calls on him.
Tomo tries to step in, of course, the first time it happens, but the diversion doesn’t work—he gets little more than a gentle, slightly reproachful smile before the focus is back on Kazuha.
It’s not just the teacher, either--the other kids are starting to take notice of how quiet Kazuha is, too, and a few of them corner Kazuha at recess one day, prodding at him with curious fingers and searching words.
“Are you mad at us?”
“Are you sick?”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Kazuha, incredibly, shows no reaction to any of this, merely shakes his head, then slips past them and goes to tug Tomo away from where Tomo had been about to interrupt. Tomo frowns, wants to twist around and tell the other kids the truth, because there’s nothing wrong with Kazuha. His best friend is perfect.
But the touch of Kazuha’s hand against his, the cool metal of the handmade ring still wrapped around the boy’s finger--it quells some of the unbearable pressure in Tomo’s chest, makes him reluctantly back off and clamber up to the top of the playground slide with Kazuha.
Still, Tomo isn’t very good at ignoring it, especially as getting Kazuha to speak becomes something of a game amongst the rest of their class over the weeks. Their classmates try everything they can think of, calling Kazuha names, offering him lunchtime bribes, and then, when all of it is met with unresponsive silence, one boy finally comes up with a solution.
That day, at recess, while Kazuha is still turned towards Tomo and listening to him ramble on, the boy sneaks up behind him, pokes him hard in the hand with a freshly sharpened pencil, hard enough to hurt.
Kazuha yelps at it, drops Tomo’s hand to cradle his own close to his chest, and the boy barely has the time to savor in his victory before the growing helplessness in Tomo’s heart feels like it snaps. He jumps forwards, knocks the other boy to the ground and into the mud, and both of them go down, struggling for the upper hand as they claw at each other in the grass.
By the time Kazuha manages to pull Tomo away, the teacher is already upon them, another student hurriedly spilling out the entire, sordid tale. Tomo and the boy with the pencil get sent home that day with permission slips that Tomo’s father doesn’t bother to sign, and they’re forced to spend the next day’s recess writing out apologies to each other.
Tomo is still wiping frustrated tears from his eyes when Kazuha sneaks into the empty classroom, his soundless steps getting him past the fact that Tomo is supposed to be in here alone. He climbs up into the seat beside Tomo, peering at the paper as he investigates Tomo’s progress--which is practically nonexistent, because apologizing to Kazuha’s tormentor is unthinkable.
His empty apology letter is smudged with tears, eraser tracks, and a large bite mark from where Tomo had unsuccessfully tried to eat the paper in protest.
Kazuha flattens it against the desk, smoothing out the crumpled edges, and Tomo catches sight of the red mark still on the back of Kazuha’s hand, left behind from the pencil’s attack.
“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Tomo blurts out, unable to contain himself for another instant. He shakes his head insistently, swipes at his eyes again, and Kazuha blinks at him steadily. “Even if you don’t talk. Even if you never talk. You’ll always be my best friend.”
Kazuha looks down, and then something like a smile curls at his lips, one of the rarest expressions that Tomo’s ever seen on the boy. Beneath the table, he twines his hand with Tomo’s own, uses the other to put the pencil back in Tomo’s grasp.
Grudgingly, Tomo begins to write out his apology, pausing only when Kazuha points out that he’s spelled something wrong in the faintest of whispers. Then, after a pause--
“I want to try,” Kazuha murmurs, speaking up the way he sometimes does when he and Tomo are alone. “...talking, I mean. I...want to be like you.”
Tomo doesn’t think he wants that--he wants Kazuha to be like Kazuha, because Kazuha is perfect. But even still, he grins, squeezes Kazuha’s hand under the table as he signs his name on his apology with flourish, big and blocky letters that take up nearly half the page.
“Then I’ll help,” he decides.
It’s as simple as that.
Tomo is ten years old when his father loses his job.
He doesn’t know the details, mostly because his father doesn’t bother to inform him of this development outright. Rather, Tomo overhears it from where he’s crouched behind the wall, watching as his father spits out the furious tale over the phone, his words slightly slurred and his clothes smelling strongly of a foreign scent, sharp and bitter to Tomo’s senses.
His father turns, and Tomo shrinks away so that the man won’t see him, but he’s too late.
“What are you looking at, boy? Go to bed,” his father snaps, and then Tomo just barely manages to pull himself away as the bottle in his father’s hand ends up against the wall in a shower of glass.
He creeps back soundlessly to his room, shuts the door behind him and sits with his back to the door.
Strangely, he no longer feels the same sting that he used to at his father’s dismissals, at the rough tone of his voice and the distant set of his expression. It’s more of an empty feeling now, an ache that’s rapidly turning to something like numbness, with every day that this goes on.
Tomo tilts his head, stares across the room to the small pile of his possessions--his backpack, his untouched homework, a few dirty clothes, and his old giraffe, Muffins. The sparkly bandage has managed to cling to the giraffe’s fur, even after all these years, and the sight of it makes him smile, drowns out the noise of his father’s angry cursing, the loud sounds of the man forcibly rearranging their furniture with his rage.
Tomo’s too old to sleep with his stuffed animals, but he doesn’t need them to fall asleep anymore. Instead, his thoughts turn towards tomorrow as he climbs into bed, settles easily into a dreamless sleep with his and Kazuha’s next adventure still curled at the tip of his tongue.
In the morning, his father is nowhere to be found, although the destruction he’s left behind is clear, and there’s an extra hole in the wall that hadn’t been there the night before. Tomo shrugs as he steps around the broken glass and splintered wood, kicks a stray bottle out of the way of the fridge as he reaches for the milk.
He makes himself a bowl of cereal for breakfast--only the finest of Kwazy Krunchies--and leaves for school without a second thought.
Kazuha, though, is considerably more concerned when he hears the news, tilting his head worriedly as he bites at his lip.
“Are you certain it’s okay?” he asks softly, setting down his chopsticks beside his half-finished lunch. Whoever makes Kazuha’s lunches must not understand him very well, Tomo thinks, because Kazuha always takes forever to finish his food and never manages to eat all of it, anyways.
More often than not, Tomo is on cleanup duty, with a much bigger appetite than his friend, despite the fact that Kazuha is still --unfairly--taller than him.
“Yeah,” Tomo says, around a mouthful of food, and Kazuha, as always, skillfully manages to interpret this incomprehensible sandwich speech. Still, Tomo swallows his food before he continues speaking, if only to avoid spraying his friend with crumbs--a lesson that Tomo will never forget after one particularly unfortunate moment. “I mean, why wouldn’t it be?”
Kazuha doesn’t answer, looks down at his lap with a frown. Although his practice at speaking up has paid off over the years, he sometimes still lapses into the occasional silence--but Tomo can tell that this one is a thoughtful pause instead of a nervous one, so he polishes off the rest of the sandwich until Kazuha is done.
“It’s a big change, that’s all. If you need help…”
Tomo waves away the offer before Kazuha can complete it, suddenly uncertain that he wants to be on this topic for much longer. He’s done a pretty good job at taking care of himself, in his opinion, and he’s grown-up enough to keep at it--ten years old is double digits, after all.
“Nah, it’s all the same. Are you going to eat that?”
He nods at Kazuha’s unfinished lunch, and Kazuha neatly sets his chopsticks aside, slides the plastic container of rice and vegetables over to Tomo’s side.
“How come they always give you so much?” Tomo mumbles out, stuffing his face with as much as it can contain so he can get back to talking as quickly as possible. “I mean, it’s tasty. But...isn’t it a lot for you?”
Kazuha blinks at him, gives Tomo a funny sort of look, the hint of what could be a laugh passing through the red of his gaze.
“I pack my own lunch.”
Aside from the increasingly empty state of their fridge--a problem easily solved by Kazuha’s also-increasing leftovers--another effect of his father’s unemployment is that Tomo finds himself with a lot of freedom.
The man is very rarely home anymore, is often gone for days at a time, only stumbling back usually after nightfall, when Tomo is already in bed and asleep. Without his father present, Tomo is able to go wherever and whenever he pleases, so he doesn’t have to ask for anyone’s permission when he decides that Kazuha is going to learn to swim.
Kazuha tentatively follows Tomo to the town pool, the summer sun warm against their skin, his fingers tangled in the back of Tomo’s shirt to avoid getting lost. Tomo, who has no reservations whatsoever about getting into the water, strips down to his swimsuit as fast as possible and jumps in as soon as they cross the threshold.
He resurfaces, shaking stray water out of his eyes, then swims over to the edge to where Kazuha is still fully clothed, looking down at the water with mistrust.
“Come on,” Tomo tries to encourage, splashes a bit of water onto the ground so that it laps at Kazuha’s bare feet. “It’s nice in here, promise. And aren’t you hot?”
“I...suppose. But I don’t know how…”
Tomo grins, pats his own chest confidently. “That’s what I’m here for! I’d never let anything happen to you. Swimming is fun!”
At this certified Tomo-guarantee, Kazuha carefully lowers himself so that he’s sitting on the edge, experimentally dipping his feet inside. The cautious expression on his features turns somewhat lighter as he tilts his head, swishes his feet through the water so that ripples form around his legs, lightly tickling at his skin.
“It’s nice,” Kazuha agrees, and Tomo beams at his friend--then, quicker than Kazuha can react, he lunges forwards, seizes Kazuha’s unguarded wrist, and hauls his friend into the pool with him.
Kazuha flails about in an unusually undignified fashion before toppling into the pool with an enthusiastic splash. Tomo cackles at the victory, but he makes sure that Kazuha’s weight is on top of his own, that his arms are securely around the other’s waist while Kazuha clings to him, his fingers digging into Tomo’s back.
“You’re okay, see? Wasn’t that bad.”
Against him, he feels a slight tremble pass through Kazuha’s form, and Tomo feels a brief flash of terror--with the way that Kazuha’s face is buried in his shoulder, Tomo thinks that he’s maybe just made Kazuha cry.
“Uh. Hey, Kazuha--?” Tomo starts, loosens his grip in concern, which is when Kazuha breaks free of him entirely, uses the wall to support himself as his other hand shoves Tomo’s head beneath the water.
Tomo goes in with a squawk, bubbles escaping his mouth as he recovers from the blow, and when he resurfaces, spluttering and soggy and slightly outraged, he looks up to see that Kazuha is laughing.
“You’re right, Tomo,” Kazuha says, struggling to catch his breath, wiping tears of mirth from his eyes. “This is fun.”
Tomo blinks, still startled because he’s never seen Kazuha laugh before--only ever his shy, reserved smiles, and sometimes the softest of giggles, if they’re alone. But this is different--Kazuha’s laugh lights up his whole face, makes a strange warmth swell in Tomo’s chest, and he wants to memorize the sound of it forever.
They stay in the pool until the water wrinkles their skin, the chlorine stinging at their eyes, and then Tomo walks Kazuha home. Although Kazuha’s house is only fifteen minutes away from Tomo’s, it couldn’t be more different--it’s large enough that even one of the rooms is bigger than Tomo’s entire apartment.
That, and Kazuha’s father is actually home to answer the door.
This part isn’t a good thing, because Kazuha’s father is so terrifying that Tomo briefly wonders how he’s even related to his son. Between the man’s broad shoulders, his stern jaw, and the overall disdain radiating off of his red gaze, nothing about elder Kaedehara resembles Tomo’s best friend, aside from the color of their eyes.
“It’s late,” is all he says as he grabs at Kazuha’s arm and hauls him inside, and Kazuha’s expression shutters, his gaze dropping obediently to the floor as he quietly apologizes. Then the man turns his gaze towards Tomo, looking over every inch of him in clear disapproval, grimacing at the pool water that Tomo is dripping onto their stainless marble floors.
Tomo is just starting to feel that this entire thing was a bad idea when Kazuha peeks out at him around his father, offers Tomo the tiniest wave goodbye, his grateful smile edged with a hint of mischief.
Because Tomo’s still being stared down by the Kaedehara father-vulture, he wills himself not to react. But he sees Kazuha’s smile in his mind the entire way home, replays Kazuha’s laugh until he grins at it himself, smiling like an idiot at nothing.
Totally worth it.
On the flip side, the first time Kazuha visits Tomo’s house is something of a disaster.
The visit is only allowed to happen because Kazuha’s father takes an extended business trip the following summer, one that leaves him out of the country for three uninterrupted months. This is probably a good thing, because Tomo suspects that if the man saw the state of the apartment that his son was setting foot in, he might have popped one of the veins in his uptight head.
“Here you go,” Tomo says, hastily shoving an empty pizza box off of their ratty looking couch and patting one of the torn cushions for Kazuha to sit on.
While Kazuha gets settled, Tomo scurries away to make popcorn, and then they curl up together with their snacks and cans of soda and watch Kazuha’s first-ever movie. Tomo’s father hadn’t been around to pick one out for them, of course, so they’re really just watching the first thing that’s on television--which is some sort of horror movie.
It’s something about puppets, as far as Tomo can tell, but he’s paying much more attention to how hard Kazuha is trembling at his side. The other boy barely eats any of the popcorn, because his hands are too busy plastering themselves against his eyes, the barest hint of red peeking out from the gaps of his fingers on occasion.
Tomo is just starting to think that he should maybe change the channel when the storm outside reaches its peak--a heavy gust of wind slams into the apartment, makes the thin walls shudder, and then the power goes out.
Kazuha jumps so hard that he upends the bowl of popcorn with something not unlike a screech of terror, and Tomo turns to stare at his friend through the dark. He’s never seen Kazuha lose his composure this way, and something about it makes Tomo feel lighter, somehow, a helpless sort of grin tugging at his lips.
He doesn’t want Kazuha to be scared, though, so he tries reaching for his friend’s hand, feeling blindly around until his eyes start to adjust to the lack of light.
“It’s just me--don’t worry,” Tomo reassures, when he feels Kazuha jerk away from the contact with another muffled squeak.
“But...but... the puppets,” Kazuha whispers, and Tomo tries to swallow down a laugh, makes a mental note to watch something friendlier next time, as he adjusts his grip to hold Kazuha more securely.
They don’t really hold hands or hug anymore, because they’re eleven and that stuff is no longer cool. But no one can see them like this, so Tomo decides to shelve his concerns about his reputation for a bit in favor of squishing himself closer to the other boy.
With his free hand, the one that isn’t linked with Kazuha’s, he grabs at the blanket at the other side of the bed, pulls it up over the couch until it makes something like a cave. Then, he tucks Kazuha closer towards the inside of the couch, beneath the little blanket fort, and wraps his arms around the other until Kazuha’s trembles subside.
“Um...is it better now?” he asks, presses his hand soothingly against the small of Kazuha’s back.
Kazuha twists around to face him, his soft hair tickling at Tomo’s neck, the scent of strawberries enveloping Tomo’s senses. They’re pressed so close together that Tomo can feel the pendant of the necklace that Kazuha wears beneath his clothes--a chain with Tomo’s old paperclip ring on it.
He’s surprised that Kazuha still has it, after all this time--he’d simply assumed the other had stopped wearing it when he’d outgrown it. For some reason, the thought makes his face grow warm, a heat spreading to the back of his neck and down to his chest, but he decides not to mention it.
“Mm. I’m okay,” Kazuha says softly, his fingers curled loosely over the beat of Tomo’s heart.
But even still, he doesn’t try to wiggle away, and Tomo doesn’t let go of him, either--no matter how uncool this looks.
They fall asleep like that, even with the wind howling and the rain crashing down on the apartment roof from above, spilled popcorn and orange soda splattered across the carpet.
Tomo celebrates his first month as a teenager with a broken nose and a trip to the principal’s office.
He is, for once in his life, absolutely silent as they haul him into the room and force him to sit in one of the uncomfortable chairs with a cloth pressed to his still bleeding nose. The secretary gives him something of a tired glance as she types up the record of the incident, asks him questions that he refuses to answer.
Instead, he looks away, stares at the posters on the wall, counts the tiles on the floor, plants the tip of his boot against her desk and settles into something of a comfortable lounge.
As comfortable as he can get with all the bruises on his back, anyways.
Who started the fight? The other kid, obviously, but Tomo definitely finished it.
What was it about? Nothing that even really matters, when it comes down to it.
Do you understand what you’ve done, young man?
At this last remark, Tomo merely shrugs, but unease twists at his stomach, because he doesn’t--he doesn’t understand why he’d gone so far, doesn’t understand why he couldn’t have just pulled himself off of the other boy and walked away.
It’s what Kazuha would have told him to do, if he’d been around to keep Tomo out of trouble. But now that they’re getting older, Kazuha’s father has taken it upon himself to start dragging his son along with him on his business meetings, in the hopes that Kazuha might learn something about the trade.
So Tomo’s been on his own for quite a bit, these days, which isn’t a good thing for anyone, it seems.
“I’m going to call your father,” the secretary informs him, and Tomo shrugs again, but this time something like a little thrill shoots through him, a low anticipation that he doesn’t understand any more than he does the rest of this.
He listens idly in on the one-sided phone conversation, hears the secretary’s curt goodbye as she hangs up, and it isn’t until his father actually appears before them, impatience written across his every move, that it all starts to make a sick sort of sense.
Without a word, the man takes Tomo to the hospital, stays absolutely silent as they set the break and splint it, giving him some pills to take for the pain later. Tomo sits in the backseat of the car on the way home, his fingers still curled around the pill bottle, a dangerous excitement curling in his stomach as he watches the clouds gathering across the dark of his father’s face.
This silence between them--uncharacteristic for the both of them--stretches out until the apartment door locks behind them, and then his father’s rough hand shoves him backwards, forces Tomo hard against the wall.
“Do you enjoy wasting my time?” the man hisses out, and Tomo doesn’t even flinch, instead lifts his head and meets his father’s glare head-on.
He’s gotten taller over the summer, enough that he nearly comes up to his father’s shoulder now--and Tomo feels like something else has changed in him, too.
They share the same eyes, the same face, the same hair--he’s often been told how much he looks like his father, and it almost scares him how true he finds it now. But at the same time, the anticipation in his gut hardens into a vicious satisfaction, because his father is finally, finally looking at him, is finally acting like he sees Tomo, after all these years.
“What am I wasting? Sort of makes it sound like you’re doing something worthwhile, doesn’t it?”
A hand fists in his collar, his father’s eyes so dark that the light of them is nearly gone, and for a moment, Tomo thinks the man might strike him. He grits his teeth, braces himself against the oncoming blow, and strangely finds no fear in his heart--only a white-hot adrenaline burning through his blood.
But his father doesn’t hit him.
What he does is worse, because of how well Tomo knows it--he does nothing.
He releases his grip, turns his back with a muttered curse, then kicks open the fridge to fish out another bottle of beer.
“Go to your room, boy.”
And then he sits himself on the couch, leaves Tomo with his heart pounding and his hands shaking, his anger seeping away into a growing emptiness in his chest. He makes to step towards his room, and watches his father take a long drink out of the corner of his eye--the man so easily forgetting their conversation, as if nothing had happened at all.
The bruises on his back fade in two weeks, and his nose heals over nicely, leaving nothing but a slight scar across the bridge. Tomo examines it in the mirror one day, and decides that he likes it. His image could use some toughening up, anyways.
But Kazuha runs worried fingers over the length of it, washes off Tomo’s scraped knuckles with a clean cloth as they sit on the apartment floor.
“Don’t get into fights anymore,” he whispers to him, his fingers squeezing Tomo’s gently before they leave his hand entirely.
Tomo shrugs, laughs awkwardly as he rubs at his neck, and promises to be good. But the next time Kazuha is gone, at his father’s side instead of Tomo’s, Tomo cuts up his hands again, comes away with a bruise on his jaw and a hollow victory in his veins.
Unsurprisingly, Tomo spends a lot of that school year in detention, which is good for catching up on sleep and disastrous for his grades.
While in the past, he’d lacked motivation to study, now he lacks both time and motivation, and this festive combination makes him sink to lows that even he hadn’t thought himself capable of.
To the administration’s chagrin, though, Tomo can’t really find it in himself to care, until he’s genuinely at risk of failing out and having to repeat the year.
Which means he’ll no longer share classes with Kazuha. Ever.
This prospect alone is so frightening that Tomo is actually awake when Kazuha sneaks past the detention monitor to see him that afternoon. The teachers on duty always let Kazuha in, because he’s quiet and gets good grades and is generally the opposite of Tomo in every way.
As soon as the other sits down, Tomo fairly lunges across the table to grab at his hand, desperation dripping from his every syllable.
“I have no idea what’s going on. Help.”
Kazuha blinks at him for a moment, looks between the open textbook on Tomo’s desk and the panic on his face. Then, he smiles serenely, and proceeds to put Tomo through the torture exercise known as eighth-grade geometry.
“It’s not so bad,” Kazuha reassures him, speaking slightly louder than usual, to make his words audible over the sound of Tomo’s face meeting his book as he drops his head in defeat. “Just...more practice is in order, perhaps.”
Tomo, who doesn’t think that any amount of practice will lessen his urge to strangle himself, turns his face to the side so that he’s resting on his cheek, looking pitifully up at Kazuha.
“Nah, it’s fine. You don’t have to sugarcoat it. It--this--it’s just terrible. Who even uses this stuff in real life?”
“It has practical applications. Imagine if you wished to know the area of a cookie--”
“It has no area, because I ate it.”
Kazuha covers his mouth, can’t quite stifle his amusement at that, but he taps his pencil gently against the next question in the textbook anyways, attempting to be stern with Tomo’s curriculum.
With a dying shriek, Tomo forces himself upright, reluctantly squints down at the question as he tries to make sense of the words, numbers and lines blurring together in his head.
“Okay. It’s a triangle,” Tomo observes, wisely, and Kazuha nods encouragingly. “So...we…”
He trails off, because he genuinely doesn’t remember what he’s supposed to do, despite the fact that Kazuha almost definitely just told him. With a groan, he runs a hand through his hair, leans back in his chair as he stares up at the ceiling, then closes his eyes.
“You know, maybe it’s a lost cause. Gotta know when to fold them, right? No use wasting any more of your time on me.”
Tomo tries for a quick laugh, means it mostly as a joke--but he can’t hide the hitch in his breath, the frustration that creeps into his voice, because why is this so hard for him, when everyone else can do it?
The sound of Kazuha’s writing stops, and when Tomo looks up, Kazuha is staring at him, the smallest of frowns etched into his expression.
“Don’t ever say that again,” Kazuha says, quietly. “Not if you mean it.”
Tomo blinks, suddenly at a loss for words, and Kazuha neatly rips out a fresh sheet of paper from his notebook, starts to draw up an explanation for the question. Then, he slides over the finished work to Tomo, meets his gaze with an even stare.
“I know you can do it.”
With a weak sort of chuckle, Tomo takes the paper, swallows past the strange tightness in his throat.
“Well, if the boss insists.”
The tension leaves Kazuha’s frame, a good-natured exasperation crossing his face, and he turns back to his own work until Tomo has need of him again. Tomo, for his part, stares down at the paper, tries to focus on numbers and logic and math--
--and not the warm, inexplicable flutter in his chest.
With Kazuha fairly dragging him over the finish line, Tomo does manage to pass.
He scrapes by with the bare minimum on his report card, sneaks his way into the next grade against the express wishes of some of his teachers, and even manages to silence his father, who’d been making grim predictions about Tomo’s future aloud on the few occasions they’d been home together.
And then, miraculously, things start to change.
He turns fourteen that summer, and the moment he steps back into school, the coach of the basketball team takes one look at the six feet of height that Tomo’s grown into and practically begs him to try out. As Tomo later learns, the team is in desperate need of salvation, having failed to score even a single winning season in the past fifteen years.
He also learns that he’s good at basketball. Really good.
This is something of a novelty for Tomo, this being good at something. He hadn’t thought himself particularly talented in this area—or in any area, for that matter—having only really played with Kazuha and some of the other neighborhood kids. But he not only shows up to the tryouts, he also completely demolishes his competition, entirely by accident.
Afterwards, Kazuha, who’d of course shown up for moral support, suggests that he take a shot at some of the other sports their school has to offer. So Tomo, still riding the high of his earlier success, goes on to discover that his inability to sit still, his constant energy, his awkwardly long limbs--all of these have become surprisingly, incredibly useful traits.
He makes it onto the track team, too, and the baseball team, and the three coaches work out some sort of rotating schedule for him that will let him attend all three practices equally, while still allowing him to go to class.
It’s incredibly bizarre, to have teachers paying positive attention to him, to be looking at him with hopeful pride instead of apathy or disappointment.
Another effect of his newfound talent is that he’s suddenly shot up on everyone’s friendship meter. People pass by him in the halls and nod to him, pat him on the back, ask to hang out with him after school.
He gets along especially well with Yoimiya, who does track with him, and Ayaka and Thoma, who drop by on occasion to discuss the Sports’ club budget.
But every day, after practice is over, Tomo always ducks under reaching hands and open invitations, and goes to where Kazuha is waiting for him instead. The boy smiles softly at him, fishes through his bag to hand Tomo an extra water bottle that Tomo is forever forgetting to bring, then tucks the book he’d been reading away.
Tomo loops a cheerful arm around his friend’s shoulders, pulls him close, and sets off on the walk back home.
It’s a cold day, with the season shifting deeper into fall, and Tomo shrugs off his jacket when he feels Kazuha shiver against him, drapes it easily over Kazuha’s smaller frame.
The shoulders of Tomo’s jacket fairly dwarf Kazuha now, and when Kazuha puts his hands through the sleeves, they go well over his fingertips. Unlike Tomo, who’s outgrown even his own father, Kazuha hasn’t had the same luck, his head coming up only around Tomo’s chest.
“You got so tall,” Kazuha complains, as he rolls up the sleeves to his wrist as best as he can, only for loose cuffs to drop back down once more. “What even happened?”
There’s an undeniable pout on Kazuha’s delicate features, and Tomo can’t hide his laugh, a warm affection for his friend bubbling up in his chest. He resists the urge to ruffle Kazuha’s hair, only because he knows that Kazuha can be pretty deadly when he tries, and instead gives the other a playful nudge.
“Not to worry, Princess,” he answers easily, having recently fallen into the habit of peppering Kazuha with nicknames. “You’ve still got room to grow. Daddy Kaedehara’s pretty tall, right? Although I guess that’s the demon blood in him.”
“Would I not carry that same blood, if that were the case?” Kazuha asks dryly, although he does smile, shifting his bag to his other hand so he can nestle closer to Tomo’s side, gravitating towards his warmth. “Where is my demonic blessing?”
It’s...nice, somehow, the look of Tomo’s clothes on Kazuha’s frame, some strange, unexamined part of him oddly pleased to see it. With how small Kazuha is beside him, Tomo only has to look down to see the slightly exposed curve of Kazuha’s neck, the shadow of his long, snowy lashes brushing at his pale cheeks.
Suddenly, Tomo’s mouth feels very dry. He swallows hard, his hand reaching out before he can think better of it, and then he hooks his fingers into the fabric of the jacket, pulling it up so that it covers the bare strip of skin Tomo had been looking at.
Kazuha tilts his head at him at the motion, blinks in confusion, and Tomo tries for an awkward grin, removing his hand to rub at the back of his neck.
“Uh--just thought you might be cold.”
“Oh. I was. But I’m okay now.”
“Good. I mean, great. I mean, uh.”
Luckily, they’ve already stopped at the gates of Kazuha’s house, so Tomo’s sudden attack of incoherence earns him little more than a strange look before Kazuha pats him on the arm in farewell, still dressed in Tomo’s jacket.
Tomo watches him go, his cheeks flushing red--something he very quickly blames on the cold.
tomoto!! [4:45 pm]
kazuha
hey
kazuuuuuu
hi
hi
hi
u hate me
:(
Kazuha [5:00 pm]
?
I don’t
tomoto!! [5:00 pm]
ik ur at boring club BUT LOOK
[Image Attachment]
Kazuha [5:01 pm]
It’s literature club, you should come
wait
Tomo is that a cat?
tomoto!! [5:01 pm]
yes!!!
found her at school
outside of school
still school
im keeping her
what should i name her
wht do u think of kumo
Kazuha [5:07 pm]
Why not Muffins
Also, what about your father
tomoto!! [5:07 pm]
kazuchan i was 5
and muffins is still ok name
for GIRAFFES
this is a cat
dads busy slutting it up w new gf
alsoalso i dnt care about him
u should ditch and come over
come overrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
u can see cat
mweo
mewo
meow*
Kazuha [5:10 pm]
I dont think i can leave early today
tomoto!! [5:11 pm]
but
why
we r best furends
how can i purrsuade u
life is pawful w/o u
Kazuha [5:15 pm]
...
I’ll be there in 30 minutes
tomoto!! [5:15 pm]
OK!!
ILY
ur purrfect
i luv u the meowst
do u like these
a m i hissterical
hello
(Read 5:20 pm)
They decide on Tama, for the cat’s name, and between the three of them, life goes on swimmingly for all of six months before taking a straight dive off of a cliff.
Sometime after Tomo’s fifteenth birthday--where Kazuha bakes him a cake in three flavors and Thoma falls into the lake--Tomo’s father exits his life entirely, more or less. It isn’t a matter of death, although Tomo can’t entirely say that he’d even care if it was.
Rather, his father gets remarried.
Tomo, who comes home to find his father packing his possessions into sealed cardboard boxes, isn’t sure what he’s more surprised by: the announcement or the fact that the man is actually sober. He doesn’t even know who it is his father is getting married to, only that it’s a woman who lives across town with her own teenage son, and Tomo’s father is joining them, effective immediately.
It doesn’t sound as if there’s room for Tomo in this picture--because there isn’t.
“So, what?” Tomo bites out, the edge in his tone hiding his rapidly spiraling unease, and he digs his fingers into his palms to steady them. “You’re just going to leave, and I--”
“I’ll keep paying the rent here until you’re eighteen,” his father cuts in, looks impatiently down at his watch, like he’s already counting down the seconds until this is over. “But I don’t really care where you go.”
Tomo blinks at that, feels what he’d thought was a long-dead ache flare up in his chest, because while he’s always understood the nature of his relationship with his father, this is the first time the other has really, truly admitted it out loud. He looks down at his lap, tries to think of something cruel to say in response, but every reply sticks in the sudden tightness of his throat before it can rise out of him.
In the wake of Tomo’s unusual silence, his father tapes up the last of his boxes, drops his apartment key on the crumbling kitchen counter, and slams the door when he closes it behind him.
Just like old times.
“Then...he’s gone?” Kazuha asks, and Tomo can hear the frown in the other’s voice, even over the phone.
“Seems that way. I mean, it’s not really worth mourning him. What’s that saying again? Good riddance to big bastards?”
“Not...exactly. But--what are you going to do, Tomo?”
Tomo shrugs, switches his phone to his other hand so that he can feed Tama another piece of dried fish.
“What I always do,” he answers, which really isn’t an answer at all.
He’s still figuring that out.
Once the initial shock has passed, Tomo thinks that living alone might not be so bad.
He’s already spent his entire life practicing for this, after all. All Tomo has to do is take his father’s two, three days of usual absence and multiply it by forever--while he still isn’t very good at math, Tomo figures that he’ll be able to handle himself. He cooks his own food (sort of), does his own laundry (sort of), and keeps the apartment clean (not really).
He even gets a job, gets paid in under-the-table cash at the local auto repair shop. The old man who runs the place is ancient and grumpy and has a tendency to smack Tomo on the back of the head with the day’s newspaper whenever Tomo runs his mouth. But he’s also definitely paying Tomo at least three times more than what he deserves, and forces him to stay late two times a week to eat dinner with him and his wife.
Tama seems happy about the state of things, too, which is really the most important thing--if the cat’s happy, Tomo’s happy, and overall, no one outside of Kazuha even realizes that anything’s changed.
In fact, Tomo is so highly effective at pretending that nothing is wrong that the reality of it doesn’t really sink in, not until some two months later.
He’s walking home with Kazuha as is tradition, taking the long way around because construction’s been blocking their old path for about three weeks now. They don’t usually prefer this route, especially in the fall, because it takes them by the park and kicks Kazuha’s seasonal allergies into overdrive.
Luckily, Tomo’s come prepared--he fishes through his pockets and unearths a small stack of crumpled restaurant napkins right before Kazuha gets around to his first sneeze.
“...thank you,” Kazuha sniffles out, then sneezes again, and Tomo bites back a laugh, because the other’s sneezes are always so cute.
A weird way to describe it, Tomo’s sure, but with all the tiny squeaking and sniffling, he can’t help but get the impression that he’s walking next to a little white mouse instead of his best friend.
Wisely, he chooses to keep these thoughts to himself, merely offering Kazuha a soothing pat on the back in response as they turn the corner, going past some of the trees. Some of the leaves are already starting to turn, are gathered on the ground in piles of orange and red, and a little kid races across their path, dives into the leaves with an audible glee. A second later, his sister joins him, the two children peppering each other with grass and bits of tree.
“Looks like fun,” Tomo grins, shoots Kazuha a mischievous glance, and Kazuha shakes his head vehemently from behind his bundle of Wanmin Restaurant panda-print napkins.
“Don’t you dare--I’d die.”
As if to emphasize his point, he sneezes again, then wipes at his watery eyes with the sleeves of his jacket--Tomo’s jacket, actually, but he’d never gotten around to asking for it back.
It looks better on Kazuha, anyway.
“Then I’ll follow you to the grave,” Tomo vows solemnly, chuckles at the flat look that Kazuha sends in his direction and means to say more when his voice suddenly trails off.
He’s not sure why, but he can’t stop watching those kids, out of the corner of his eye, his attention helplessly drawn towards where their father is helping them up, picking the leaves out of his daughter’s hair and brushing at his son’s clothes.
“Don’t tell your mother I let this happen,” he warns insistently, fixes both of his children with a stern look, which quickly dissolves into an easy grin. “But I’m glad you two had fun, yeah? We’ll just say we got caught in the wind. She’ll have to believe us.”
His declaration is met with emphatic agreement, and then the man scoops the younger child into his arms, takes the other by the hand, and leads them away from the grass. Tomo stares at their turned backs, feels a hollow sort of twist in his chest, and it isn’t until there’s a soft tug at his sleeve that he remembers he’s supposed to be walking.
“Tomo?” Kazuha asks softly, his fingers curled in the fabric of Tomo’s clothes, and Tomo shrugs away the moment like a shadow, shakes his head to clear it and slides into a smile.
“Just taking in the scenery. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
He starts forwards again, keeps his pace at a reasonable stride--mindful of Kazuha’s much shorter legs--as he breaks into aimless chatter about an incident at basketball practice. Kazuha nods along as he listens, carefully adjusting his bag over his shoulder, and Tomo sinks with relief into the normalcy.
It isn’t until he sees Kazuha off at the other’s house and waves a cheerful goodbye that the emptiness he feels starts to expand, becomes such an unbearable pressure in his chest that he isn’t even sure how to give it a name. It’s a restless sensation, his jaw clenched so hard that his head aches, because he can’t stop seeing it, the gentle look in the man’s eyes and the kind touch of his hand against his daughter’s head, because it’s finally, really occurred to Tomo that he’s walking back to an empty apartment.
He slams the door behind him when he gets home--which doesn’t make him feel better--and kicks at a chair before tossing his bag onto it--which doesn’t make him feel better--and then whips around and puts a fresh hole in the wall with his fist--which makes him feel worse, because the movement startles Tama. She’d come up to greet him, as usual, only to leap away with a frightened hiss.
Tomo looks at her, at that, his emotion still written across his face, and she returns the dark of his stare with something of a reproachful look. A moment goes by, then two, and then the fight feels like it drains out of him all at once, the pressure from earlier collapsing and leaving only a tired quiet behind.
“...sorry,” he mutters, sinks to the floor and lets Tama jump into his lap, uses his stinging hand to pet gently at her soft ears. The back of his hand is red, the knuckles scraped from the impact with the plaster, and Tomo knows they’ll be bruised by morning.
Tama forgives him easily, curls against his stomach with a quiet purr, but Tomo can’t help studying the mark he’s left in the wall, looking at the way it matches his father’s own. Regret settles heavily in his chest, makes his next swallow difficult, and he goes very still.
He’s still sitting like that when Kazuha finds him some hours later, steps easily through the unlocked door with a bag of something in his hand. The boy’s red gaze passes briefly over the pitiful scene--the overturned chair, the freshly decorated wall, and Tomo, on the floor and in the dark with his cat.
“It looks terrible in here,” Kazuha says honestly, and then joins Tomo on the floor.
Tomo breathes out, expects to be surprised that Kazuha’s here at all, but there’s nothing--only a distant relief.
“We can’t all live in fairytale castles, Princess.”
Kazuha shakes his head fondly, takes out a container of what Tomo immediately identifies as his favorite takeout food. Tama perks up at the scent, pokes at it with a curious paw, but Tomo rescues his dinner before she can steal it.
They don’t say much, because Kazuha is busy cleaning the scraped knuckles of Tomo’s hand and Tomo is busy inhaling chicken and rice. That, and they’re fifteen year old boys--emotions are strange, foreign things that Tomo doesn’t want to have, much less have conversations about.
But he hadn’t needed to say anything, for Kazuha to know to come here. He hadn’t needed to ask, for Kazuha to know that he’d needed help.
Kazuha just knows him, understands Tomo in this unnameable, unmatched way, and it's this, more than anything, the not needing to speak that makes him want to do it.
“I’m...not ready to be alone,” he admits, stares at the faded orange soda stains on the carpet so that he doesn’t have to meet the other’s eyes.
Kazuha smiles, Tomo’s injured hand still held between his two smaller ones. He gives the cut skin of Tomo’s knuckles a final, gentle wipe of the cloth, then squeezes at Tomo’s fingers before he retreats.
Then, he inches closer to Tomo’s side, leans against him until Tomo looks over at him at last to see the steady promise in Kazuha’s eyes blinking back at him.
Suddenly, things feel very simple.
“Then I’ll help.”