Work Text:
"Hey."
Kiryu stares. From where he's gripping the door with one hand, his fingers are pressed yellow against the dark wood. His pulse is racing so rapidly that his legs are quickly turning numb, toes sinking unfeelingly into his slippers. There's a prickle of his eyes that indicates dryness, but he can't bring himself to blink in front of this sight.
They're on the precipice of winter. Although the leaves have long turned shades of red and gold, the different colours are all dyed into the same black in the darkness of night. When he answered the door, he didn't bother throwing on any winter gear over his pajamas. Now, as the biting wind rustles the shadowed leaves and the freezing cold settles into his clothes, he can't hold back a shiver. In the distance, there is a hurried flapping of wings like a bat making an unannounced exit.
The boy standing before him is dressed simply. He has a long coat thrown over his outfit, pulled tightly enough that Kiryu can't see what he's wearing underneath, and a yellow scarf wrapped securely around his neck. Throughout the painful stretch of seconds that Kiryu has been staring at him, processing his presence, he hasn't moved. As the time ticks over to a minute, the curve of his one visible eye cracks open to look at him. His smile, though, remains as placid and pleasant as ever.
"Why are you..." Kiryu hears his own voice croak. "What are you doing here?"
The other boy's eye catches the warm light spilling out from inside the house. Bathed in orange tones, the usual sharp scarlet of his iris melts into something more closely resembling honey. It fixates solely on Kiryu, triggering a shiver that wracks Kiryu's entire body. His smile curls tighter, akin to the pull of a noose.
"Shall we go for a ride, Kiryu-kun?" Suo says, smiling.
"Fuck you, Suo-chan," Kiryu tells him, then asks, "You can drive?"
Suo beams in a way that very unsubtly implies, you'll find out if you come along. He still has that stupid secretive crook of his mouth that misaligns one side of his lips higher than the other. It's infuriatingly attractive. The evil-villain-mastermind crinkle of his eye that really should look like a warning, but looks much more like an invitation, doesn't help Kiryu's traitorous heart either.
Kiryu looks down at himself. He's clearly clad in pajamas, painted neon pink and littered with hello kitty heads. Although it's enough to tide him over a cold autumn night, that's on the condition that he stays indoors instead of dumbly venturing out at midnight. Even the light breeze that's blowing his nape is making him shudder, sending ice crystals down the slope of his spine.
Suo is right there, though. In reach and close enough to touch. Standing there like an illusion, edges fuzzy and dreamlike, wearing the same amiable expression as ever.
Kiryu squints at his bunny slippers, weighs the merits of changing into his leather shoes, then decides leather shoes and hello kitty pajamas would not go well together. He steps forward and lets the door close behind him, cutting off the light from inside and plunging them into blackness. Now, lit only by moonlight, Suo looks even more elusive than he did before. The delusion lasts only as long as it takes for Suo to shift, then turn and begin to walk away. Kiryu watches as the low light drifts over him and roughens his sharp edges.
He follows behind.
They stop by a car that's still running. Despite the tinted windows, Kiryu catches a glimpse of movement in the driver's seat. So Suo won't be the one driving, then.
When Suo dares to try and get the car door for him, Kiryu flips him off. He grasps the handle himself to the sound of Suo's soft laughter and yanks open the car door none-too-gently. By the time he plops himself defiantly into the seat, Suo is already climbing elegantly into the seat beside him. He scowls at him, without any effort to hide how he feels about this spontaneous night drive. Suo just simpers back with a placating twist of his lips that sits wrong in Kiryu's chest.
Suo exchanges a few murmured words with the driver before they set off.
It's an expensive car, Kiryu can surmise that much. They're not jostled at all as they transition to the road. The movement is so smooth that he has to glance out the window just to be sure that they really are moving. There's no audible cues either, no roar of an engine nor squeal of tyres. They merely glide through the night, the same way a hawk would spread its wings to ride the wind. It makes for a silent ride that neither of them deign to fill with words.
Kiryu stares outside. He can't quite bring himself to lay his eyes on Suo, not after that same silhouette has plagued his thoughts and dreams for what feels like a lifetime. Even so, he feels the other boy's presence next to him keenly. He looks a little different, Kiryu thinks. Suo's always held himself in a manner distinct from others, back kept straight and arms posed carefully, but this feels unfamiliar somehow. It's as if he has shed some false layer of himself. Kiryu guesses that this new demeanour isn't yet his true self either, though it does feel more genuine. It feels a bit closer to whoever he actually is, more than the version of himself he wore at Furin. He wonders if he'll ever get the chance to see Suo wholly, entirely, without any acts or masks or lies.
Outside the window, the trees blend into one another to form a blank slate of ink. It melds into the sky that sits above it, equally devoid of clouds as it is of stars. It's a rare night where the sky is fully cloaked in pure ebony without a speck of white. The only source of light that sits apart from the rest is the moon, hanging low in the sky and radiating cold light. Kiryu watches its glow fade as they begin to enter a more urban area, shops bright enough to drown it out even at this hour.
"Run away with me," Suo offers.
Kiryu turns and runs his eyes over him, wordless. The city lights skim over Suo's side profile as he gazes out the window, brushing light over the tip of his nose like languid kisses. He's staring at the passing buildings, their electric lights reflected in his uncovered iris. When they come across the rare pedestrian, either a drunk salaryman stumbling home or a wannabe delinquent out for trouble, his gaze pauses over them for the barest of moments. Head tipped to the side, the visible side of his mouth is quirked up into a smile. Strangely, the crook of it seems almost sad.
"You're not serious," Kiryu tells him. Though he lilts his voice to sound certain of his words, he's not so sure of their truth himself.
"Hmm," Suo smiles. "Who knows?"
"You're not serious," Kiryu repeats. This time, he sounds like he's as much trying to convince himself as he is Suo.
Suo twists the corners of his mouth upwards, and doesn't respond.
Kiryu watches him. There are a million words that fizzle in his chest and surge up his throat and lodge themselves between his teeth. He rolls them around in his mouth, tastes them on his tongue like expired candy, and doesn't speak a single one of them aloud. This atmosphere between them feels fragile, like something that could be broken with the wrong remark. He wants to be mad at Suo, really, wants to curse and rail at him as an outlet for all the pent-up sentiments he’s been holding. Now, though, Suo is here and alive, and all Kiryu wants to do is bring him home. He missed him like an ache in the chest. Still, he doesn’t do either of those things.
Suo is right there, should be right there, but Kiryu also senses distinctly that he's not somehow. It's like if Kiryu stepped wrong, ventured the wrong comment, the ground beneath him would crumble and he would be thrown back into a world where Suo was once again gone. Though he sits there beside Kiryu, real and tangible, the look in his eyes is distant. Suo watches the world as if it's something he can't reach, as if he were somewhere faraway and isolated.
Behind Suo, the neon lights smear into blurry lines. They glow against the dark in unnatural colours, shades of orange and blue and yellow that clash with one another. When the car halts smoothly at a traffic light, Kiryu watches how a puddle of water melts the colours into a gradient that smooths out their glaring contrast. Streetlights blink past in a neat, orderly line, their stark white illumination spaced out with consistent lengths of pavement. A convenience store sign flickers like a dying candle.
"Come back," Kiryu pleads. It's barely above begging. His voice wobbles on each word and he reaches out like a wounded animal, splaying his fingers over the empty space between them. The fabric is soft beneath his fingers. The air is frozen around them. The distance stretches like an insurmountable chasm, close enough to touch but not close enough to reach.
Suo is still smiling. When Kiryu looks over at him, though, he shivers inadvertently. It's all wrong. There's no crinkle by his eye. The slope of his mouth, the curve to his lips, the angle of his smile, every bit of his expression is so undeniably off. It unsettles Kiryu in an instinctual way, like a forest that's gone dead silent.
Suo doesn't say anything, unmoving on the other end of the backseat.
Kiryu turns away from Suo as if the other boy will disappear the second he leaves his sight, and presses his temple against the car window. The vibration of the glass trembles through his head and rattles his teeth. He doesn't realise why the lights outside blur in his vision until he blinks and a droplet splashes against the back of his hand. He brings a hand up to his face and traces his cheek. It's wet against his fingers.
Oh. He's crying.
Warmth blooms on his other hand. Kiryu jolts, startled, and turns with hope glimmering in his eyes. Suo is looking straight at him, curve to his lips, crinkle by his eye. It's the same smile he wore when he was around the five of them, laughing along with their mischief. It's the same smile Kiryu pictures him with, in idle daydreams and melancholic dreams. It's the same smile that makes Kiryu's heart jolt in his chest, in classrooms and on patrols and even now.
The warmth enveloping his hand shifts, and fits itself perfectly between his knuckles. Suo links their fingers together, but keeps the grip loose. It would be easy for Suo to simply slip his hand out of Kiryu's grasp, Kiryu thinks dizzily. His fingers twitch in response, but he doesn't tighten his hold. His pulse quivers in the crook of his fingers. Suo's palm is warm against his hand.
For a second, Kiryu looks at Suo and really does believe that they are merely sitting opposite each other in Furin again, hands laid out on the table and just close enough to overlap, talking about everything and nothing at all. He imagines the world shifting back into place and things returning to how they were, like the gleam in Suo's eye now and the beat of his heart in his chest. He thinks of grabbing Suo's hand, tugging open the car door, pulling Suo out and running. He thinks of the two of them disappearing into the shadowed tree line and escaping from all the things that govern them. He thinks of running away with the boy he loves.
"I'm sorry," Suo says.
The dream shatters. Kiryu feels his eyelashes flutter, feels the warm tears that run down his face as a result. His heart shivers, in a million unsaid emotions that spill into his chest. There is a numbing cold that is quickly spreading over the span of Kiryu's back, eating away at his limbs, that is just barely being held off by the warmth of Suo's hand on his.
Suo is smiling at him with something that is not quite sympathy, though it is more piteous than sorrow. There is grief in the slope of his brows, heartache in the crease of his eye, repentance in the angle of his mouth. He curls his lips like the smile itself is an apology, like it is everything he can offer Kiryu. He smiles like the expression is the last thing he can give to Kiryu.
Suo's hand pulls away from Kiryu's. Instinctively, Kiryu grabs back. He's a second too late. His fingers close on empty space, missing Suo's by a hair's breadth. Suo's hand returns to his lap, out of Kiryu's reach. Kiryu's hand is suspended for a singular moment in the air between them, before it drops back onto his leg.
"We're back," Suo says. Kiryu looks out the window and—they're back to where they started from. Suo's dropping him off at his house.
"Thank you for coming with me, Kiryu-kun," Suo adds. His tone is perfunctory, his smile impeccably performative. Kiryu stares at him and feels sick to his stomach. He sits, motionless, and considers the notion of staying there until Suo is forced to drag him bodily out of the car. The outcome is inevitable, though. He can't stay here, not in this half-formed dream of a midnight drive.
Kiryu grabs the door handle. He climbs out of the car silently. Car door in his hand, Kiryu leans down. He meets Suo's gaze easily, feeling the wind dry the tears on his cheeks.
"Come back alive," Kiryu tells him. "We're all worried about you, Hayato."
He says "come back alive" like "stay safe", and "I'll be waiting", but also like "I love you". He says it like a confession, like soft words he shapes into existence with shaky lips, the same way he calls Suo's first name. Suo's eye widens the smallest fraction. Kiryu wonders if he understood what he was saying.
Kiryu shuts the door. After a moment, the car begins to move. He watches as it drives away, retreating into the distance to somewhere Kiryu can't follow.
He turns, fingers freezing and empty at his sides, and walks to his door. The moon sits luminous in the sky, lonely without stars.