#sasakagi

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When he first catches sight of Shirahama, Sasaki’s mind pings an instinctual disappointment before his first real thought coalesces: It’s Miyano’s friend. That in mind, he says, “Close it quietly. He’s sleeping.”

“I just… came to check in on him,” Miyano’s friend explains.

“Thanks for looking out.”

Sasaki isn’t sure how to handle him, here. Miyano’s friend is tall—almost Sasaki’s height—but gangly, with limbs graceless enough to conjure up memories of middle school growing pains and botched dye jobs. He wavers at the entrance like a legless deer, his presence weighty enough to tell Sasaki he should be doing something, but too frightened to communicate what.

Kuresawa or Tashiro would be much easier—they wouldn’t be here. Kuresawa would have been tactful enough to leave them alone, and Tashiro would’ve been too busy flitting around everywhere to pop into the nurse’s office. But Miyano attracts good people—people like him, with open, careful hearts—and so his friend is standing here, hair shining with meticulous upkeep and gaze cast to the ground.

Sasaki thinks of Miyano, his face scrunched up but peaceful in sleep, and the flitting nervousness threaded through Shirahama’s body like a live wire, and suddenly remembers the way he’d flinched, full-bodied with terror.

“Ah,” he says, mostly involuntarily. “You're on the basketball team.”

Shirahama jolts in recognition. “You remembered that?” he asks, skin reddening, and then adds, nonsensically, “Sorry!”

He shrugs. “Just happened to.”

The curse of height was twofold in its pains, and Sasaki despised its obligatory question: you’re so tall, so why don’t you play basketball? Like it was natural for anyone with his height. Like he’d ever wanted anything.

Hirano was different. Hirano believed that playing basketball meant you needed focus, and drive, and spirit, all of which Sasaki sorely lacked, he’d said.

…Well, maybe not in those exact words, but the way Hirano had looked at him then, and the way he looked when talking about that “Kagi-kun” of his—they were worlds apart.

Sasaki was different these days, too. He couldn’t put words to the why or how of it, but at some point he’d looked in the mirror and become someone else. It wasn’t like every ugly and unlikable part of him had disappeared. It was just that new parts had appeared, each piece grafted to his skin until he’d been transformed.

Shirahama makes a noise of realization. “…Kagiura, right?” he asks. “You were looking for him.”

The words rush out, too quick to be tempered. “I don’t know him.”

Looking implied effort. He could admit to having seen Hirano’s roommate; a brief moment had been enough to recognize the kindred spirit—the flash in Kagi-kun’s eyes, the twist in his mouth—of jealousy. To Sasaki it was a familiar, grounded ghost, pinning his limbs as it settled in the yawning concave of his chest. Even as a reflection, it remained heart-stabbing and all-consuming, but played over the lines of Hirano’s roommate’s face, it no longer locked Sasaki in place.

And then Hirano had gone running after him. No point in doing anything, after that.

“Kagiura,” Sasaki confirms slowly, mind drifting towards the ring he’d spotted on Hirano’s finger. “I just… knew of him,” he clarifies. “Was just curious.”

Wearing it like that—they had to be pretty happy. 

Shirahama grumbles, “He does always get a bunch of confessions on Valentine's Day. Not that—”

“He's popular?” Sasaki cuts in.

Shirahama raises a brow. “…Yeah?”

Hirano’s roommate is tall, and he plays basketball, and he plays it well, and his face looks like that, sweet even in frustration, so it’s—natural, Sasaki supposes. But he hasn’t thought of it past the way Hirano looks at him, and it’s odd to think of girls looking at him like—

Like—

He can’t think about it; noise starts from the bed and Sasaki clamps his mouth shut.

Miyano’s friend locks onto him with his wide, doe eyes, and whispers, in quick succession, “I’ve still got to help out with the festival—just thought I’d check—I’m sure you have it handled—I’m going to—I'll go.”

Before Sasaki can respond, Miyano’s friend flees.

He’s forgotten to keep his voice down, Sasaki realizes. He’d gotten too caught up in everything else here, and now Miyano was going to wake up. But when he peels back the curtains, he finds his boyfriend still dozing, having just curled closer into the empty space Sasaki had left. Wrong-footed and unsure of his sense of belonging, Sasaki sits back down on his side of the bed.

Miyano’s friend is right about one thing—he does have it handled. He’s always known that the year of difference between Miyano and him presented a chasm, and now that they don't have a school to share, the gap has simply been exacerbated. In time, it'll close, he knows, but while those walls between them still exist, he can’t help but turn over old stones. If he’d looked around more—if he was missing something—