Work Text:
Makoto is incredible, and you don’t seem to impress yourself as much, anymore.
In Chemistry, your class is currently discussing the properties of solvents and solutes. Sodium chloride is no longer visible when fully dissolved in water, but if one ingests the resulting solution, you can still taste the ocean.
Sometimes when you see his brilliant technique or perfect grades, you kind of want to do the same thing. Sometimes you dream about abandoning your aches and pains and responsibilities and just living to comfort him, support him, watch him; like the sticker on the inside of a library book. Dissolving into his current would be as easy as falling asleep.
When you get skunked by Kong, the only sounds on the train ride home are your sniffling and the carbonated clicks that Makoto’s fingers make against his phone. You lean your rosy, fat cheek on the point of his shoulder and shove yourself up against him. You pout and squint at the garish magenta and cyan lights of the screen, but you don’t look away. When fat drops of salt roll down your face and onto the fabric of his shirt, you don’t move away. When he doesn’t notice, you don’t think that he is pretending.
Later that evening, when he’s invited you to sleep over as a bit of a placation, his parents are absent. Again. There’s only a dim light over the kitchen table when you gobble up a haphazard meal of instant ramen, protein bars and sports drinks. He eats minimally and delicately, and you feel as if you’re nursing a sickly butterfly when you press the styrofoam soup cup into his pale hands. Don’t worry, Smile, you think. I’ll eat enough for the both of us.
The two of you fall asleep in front of the television, in the clothes you were wearing well, yesterday. It’s a bit past three in the morning when you and Makoto blearily stumble to the bathroom; where you hazily blink at the light, brush your teeth, change in front of each other, and head back to bed. Makoto crawls under the covers, and doesn’t resist when you nudge him over to make room for your body. You pull the blankets up to your chin, and find his calf with your toes. Later, his teeth chatter and he nuzzles his cold face into your neck.
If you were to play ping pong again, you’d play it with him, for him.
You do.