Archive of Our Own

Suna Rintarou doesn’t get scared easily. 

This is not an understatement.

He’s never been afraid of the dark, or dragons, or the ocean. Maybe that makes him boring or plain, but it's better than showing weakness in front of the people who are waiting for you to do just that. It's better than telling them you're vulnerable.

Rintarou is either the best or worst person to enter a haunted house with whichever way you look at it. Sometimes he’ll make rude gestures at the clowns as they pass by or crack a snide remark about how bad the special effects are, and he’ll always walk through the entire house with a deadpan expression.

He isn’t scared of old age. He can’t quite bring himself to care what people think of him, and under no circumstances would a ghost story alarm him.

This isn’t a morbid fascination issue; true crime is fun, and supernatural creatures are interesting, but none of them inspire that specific balance of disgust and appeal he’s heard so much about.

So Rintarou doesn’t have many fears, which makes the ones he does have infinitely more crippling.

He's afraid of heights. His one weak point and Miya Atsumu has exploited it shamelessly. It's gotten to the point where if Rintarou sees Atsumu beckoning him into an elevator, he turns heel and runs the other way.

On its own, this is fine to deal with; maybe not easy, but fine. He avoids those virtual reality simulators and won't book a trip to the Petronas Towers. Assuming Atsumu hasn't already spread the word like a fucking neon light-up sign above his head, Rintarou can get by without anyone tapping into this failure.

There’s a certain type of fear heights bring that no night terror can match; knees locking, breath catching, and chest seizing up. Like if he takes another step he’ll fall from the sky, a bird with its wings twisted off. Like if he doesn’t have anything to ground him, he’ll drop right off the face of the earth.

The second, and perhaps more debilitating—or at least more embarrassing to admit—fear is Miya Osamu.

Maybe it’s not Osamu himself, but the way Rintarou can never seem to keep his fucking mouth shut around Miya Osamu. Maybe it’s not this gangly twenty-year-old boy (because still, he’s only a boy, not nearly a man, maybe older but never less childish) with too-long limbs and hair that looks like he’d mixed a tin can into his dye by accident, but the feelings Rintarou gets around him.

It’s how trepidation settles into Rintarou’s gut at the sight of Osamu. How he can’t stop his pulse from banging in his ears. How much he hates himself for agreeing to share a tiny apartment with Osamu because the rent was cheap and he could barely afford microwave noodles by himself.

Miya Osamu inspires a strangely specific urge in Rintarou, a mix of mortification and helplessness. He is irrepressible and unchangeable. He’s been calcified in the sap of Rintarou’s soul, dug his claws in, and scooped out a space in Rintarou's heart nothing else will fit into.

Osamu isn’t otherworldly or out of Rintarou’s reach in the way that most any other crush he’s had was; he’s real, and his smile is like sunshine spreading slowly to all of Rintarou’s limbs until it threatens to burst out at the seams. He’s real. He’s bad at writing exams and he makes a funny noise when he stretches too hard and he’s real. He has a scar on his lip from when he was attacked with a pair of scissors in kindergarten and his squeaky laugh when he’s too tired to function is probably the worst sound Rintarou has ever heard.

He’s real.

Rintarou is absolutely, irrevocably in love with him.

Love is not a word Rintarou uses lightly. If he could, he wouldn’t use it at all, but saying like or infatuation or—god forbid, desire isn’t nearly enough to contain the emotions that bubble up in his chest like dawn when he sees Osamu. Sleep-mussed and barely able to form words, or collapsed on the kitchen counter with a cup of tea in his hand, steam from the kettle on the stove curling to frame his face.

It’s a bit like calling a solar flare a firework: completely wrong. And a gross underestimation.

This is more of a sickness.

Rintarou isn’t under any illusions about how long it will last. He’s banking on the hope that leaving university will erase the heavy-wrought feelings he harbours for his best friend, and that distance will make the heart grow colder. That he’ll get over himself eventually. 

But Osamu has always had a talent for being there when Rintarou needed him most. And when he didn't.

After all, they had to end up at the same university in the first place somehow. This is how it’s always been: one of them leading, the other waiting there to catch them. One takes. The other gives and gives—energy, kindness, time. So much time.

True crime may not bring about feelings of morbid fascination, but Miya Osamu does.

It would be more accurate to say Rintarou’s disgust at himself for developing a…‘whatever this is’ on Miya Osamu is the morbidly fascinating part, but that would mean confronting said ‘whatever this is’ head-on and despite having years to accustom himself to the idea, ignoring it is still much easier.

The sheer magnitude of his feelings makes him want to throw up, because a college boy is objectively the worst person to develop a crush on, let alone a college boy who happens to be your roommate, best friend, study buddy, and biggest source of anxiety—depending on who you ask.

Everyone fears what they don't understand. All Rintarou understands is that he and Osamu will never make it work regardless of how much he wants to.

There is a non-zero chance that Rintarou will accidentally say something before their sophomore year is over, and there’s also a non-zero chance that Osamu will start dating someone else before the opportunity comes.

This non-zero chance becomes about eighty percent one lunchtime when Rintarou walks by Osamu’s lecture hall and, through the frosted window, sees him swinging his legs on the back desk.

Osamu chews on the end of his pen, watching with faint interest as Yamazaki Kimiko moves to sit next to him. There’s a card and a mint chocolate KitKat in her hand. 

They speak for a while. Rintarou shouldn’t be here.

He should leave and let them have their privacy. He should wait for Osamu back at their apartment instead, but his feet are rooted to the floor and he can only watch as Yamazaki places the KitKat in Osamu’s palm. She starts reading from the card.

A door opens across the hall. A TA shoots Rintarou a funny look. He stands up straighter, walking away before he sees anything else.

So maybe Suna Rintarou isn’t afraid of most things. Maybe he can walk through a haunted house without so much as a shiver, maybe there are millions of people, places, paradoxes he could be terrified of and he’s taught himself not to fear a single one. Maybe tall buildings are all that stand between him and invincibility, and maybe those buildings aren’t so bad anyway.

Maybe monsters and loneliness and old age don’t scare Rintarou, but Miya Osamu sure does.

━━━━━━

“Hey.”

Rintarou flinches. “What?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady. He clicks through his twenty opened tabs one by one, realizing too late that his laptop desperately needs to be updated. Still, he makes no move to push the ‘restart’ button.

“Didja eat lunch?”

“Not yet. I will later,” Rintarou answers, knowing full well he isn’t going to. “What were you doing with Yamazaki earlier?” he asks absently, changing the topic. He braces himself for the answer.

Here’s the problem: Yamazaki Kimiko is nice. She’s almost too nice. She helps people find their bus passes if they’ve misplaced them, and occasionally she gives away her food for lunch. She works at the library in her spare time. She has a younger brother. 

(All laid out, it seems a little strange. But they’ve been in the same study group for two years, and Rintarou has resigned himself to absorbing information about her whether he likes it or not.)

Yamazaki Kimiko is nice, and that makes it infinitely more difficult for Rintarou to hate her.

Osamu flicks on the stove and sets a non-stick pan over his favourite burner—the bottom right one. “Kimiko?”

Rintarou nods, scrolling through the pirated version of his Organic Chemistry textbook. He swallows. “Yes.”

Leaning against the mini-fridge, Osamu rips apart a ramen packet. “She asked if I could do her a favour.” He turns the heat up until the water begins to bubble. “She bought me this KitKat, too. We can split it.”

“Oh.” The response doesn’t shake the apprehension in Rintarou’s gut. “Sure,” he replies belatedly, realizing Osamu’s held out the KitKat, ready to break it in half. “I should go. Need to ask my professor something.” 

This is only a half-lie.

“It’s only three in the afternoon,” Osamu notes, tapping his phone screen to turn it on. He tosses the square bundle of noodles on the stove and stirs them with a pair of chopsticks, then shakes out the seasoning packet. Flavouring crystals fall like stars into the bubbling water.

Rintarou stands up and pushes in his chair, the tone grating to his ears. “I’ve got a bio assignment I forgot to finish,” he explains, adjusting his bag. “I’ll see you around.”

(His lab report isn’t due for another week, but he can’t bear to even coexist in the same space as Osamu without threatening to combust. 

Rintarou has his first final exam in a month, his lab partner isn’t answering any of his texts, and his crush on his roommate is nothing more than an annoying obstacle. Also, said roommate might be dating someone else.

It’s not looking good.)

━━━━━━

Somehow, someway, Rintarou ends up splayed on the ugly leather couch he helped lug into Atsumu’s dorm room without the RA finding out. Somehow, he also finds himself face to face with a poster of Atsumu’s favourite celebrity volleyball player, getting an eyeful of toned calves and an entirely too chiselled jawline.

“What do you even see in this guy?” he wonders, probably too rudely. He breaks off a piece of peanut brittle with his teeth as Atsumu rolls over on the carpet. “Isn’t he a little…over the top?”

“That’s the whole point, Sunarin,” Atsumu replies. “Don’t tell me ya wouldn’t let him rail ya. I know ya have a thing for thighs.”

“You’re disgusting,” Rintarou snaps. He pauses. “I mean, I wouldn’t say no if he asked. But it’s a matter of principle.”

“Mhm, yeah. Totally.”

“Shut up.”

“Speakin’ of which,” Atsumu begins, his brown eyes searing into Rintarou’s soul because he’s nosy like that, “who is yer type?”

“Have you ever heard of boundaries?” Rintarou returns, deadpan. 

(Miya Atsumu has never obeyed a boundary in his life. On the contrary, he delights in trampling all over them.)

“I mean, yeah, but where’s the fun in that?” Atsumu says, proving Rintarou’s point with unnerving accuracy. “Yer too uptight, Sunarin,” he hums. “Ya need a boyfriend. Tell me what kinda guys yer into.”

Rintarou sighs, trying to ignore the ache pressing at his ribcage and the image of Osamu that comes to his mind, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, cheeks pinkened with colour. “Anyone but you.”

“I take offense to that.”

“Good.”

“I was talkin’ to ‘Samu the other day,” Atsumu mentions suddenly. “He told me somethin’ I thought ya should know.”

Rintarou nearly gets whiplash from the topic change. “And that’s relevant…how?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Atsumu dismisses him. “He said he liked someone and he wanted to confess to them.”

“Sucks for him,” Rintarou mutters, despite the painful way his gut tightens when Atsumu says this. 

The upholstery of Atsumu’s couch is cracking and flaking off the cushion. Rintarou shifts slightly and his skin sticks to the leather.

“He said he’s liked them fer a long time,” Atsumu emphasizes, leaning closer to him, as if he’s trying to impart some coded message Rintarou isn’t getting. Rintarou leans back as far as he can. “But he’s worried ‘bout whether they feel the same way. ‘Samu worries about everythin’, y’know how he is. Kinda high-strung.”

Rintarou nods slowly, even though if either of the twins is high-strung it’s Atsumu. “Okay.”

“So I’m thinkin’ ya should give him a little push.”

“I’m not the fucking love guru, Atsumu.”

“‘M serious, Sunarin,” Atsumu answers, and his lips are flattened into a thin line, gaze stupidly earnest. “I really wanna help him on this one. I ain’t—I dunno much, but I think they can make each other happy.”

Rintarou truly would rather not be in the same space as Osamu and Yamazaki Kimiko at once, but Atsumu sounds so sincere it’s hard to say no.

And in all fairness, they would look good together, with her striking silver eyes and overwhelming kindness, the soft dimple in his cheek and his penchant for bursting into laughter at inopportune moments.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks, scraping at the leather. “I don’t know much about her—the person he likes,” he amends. “I have no idea how to help.”

Atsumu laughs. “Ya gotta know ‘bout them, Rin,” he says. Now it’s obvious Rintarou is missing a big piece of the puzzle, which makes Atsumu’s smugness infinitely more irritating. “Just…be nice to ‘Samu, ‘kay? Help him study and shit. Drop hints or whatever.”

Rintarou leaves Atsumu’s dorm more confused than he’s ever been, leather bits stuck to his arms that he doesn’t bother brushing off. 

Something sits heavy in his chest. It feels an awful lot like bitterness.

━━━━━━

A comprehensive list of Rintarou’s favourite people outside his family, in no particular order:

1. Komori Motoya is the kind of friend who seems odd when you first meet them but eventually becomes one of the most bearable people to be around. He and Rintarou share one of those bad senses of humour no one else seems to get, and when he’s in a good mood he’ll scan chapters of his textbook and send them to Rintarou to save money.

2. Rintarou has known Kita Shinsuke since his first year of high school, and still, he never fails to amaze Rintarou with the calm and anger he manages to exude at the same time. He’s almost superhuman.

3. Aran Ojiro should be self-explanatory. He sends Rintarou check-up texts every week or so, and always has a few Chuupet sticks lying around for when Rintarou visits. He’s too caring for his own good.

4. Miya Atsumu reminds Rintaoru of a moth that refuses to stop buzzing around a lamp even when it knows it isn’t welcome there. Rintarou can admit his determination is admirable. 

Atsumu is a good friend to talk to when Rintarou is stressed and he isn’t half bad at giving advice, so Rintarou has gotten used to the sight of his dumb couch from Goodwill and the volleyball posters plastering his walls, along with the built, muscular men on them. Atsumu isn’t shy about his tastes.

5. The last person is almost too difficult to explain in a sentence or two. His name is Miya Osamu and he’s single-handedly ruining Rintarou’s life. His presence is calming but Rintarou’s heart goes into overdrive at the sound of his husky voice anyway. He fits into all the empty spaces Rintarou lets him, and he smooths over Rintarou’s rough edges like tempered glass, curbs his temper like the surf brushing against the shore.

In one word, Osamu is kind. Kinder than Rintarou probably deserves, and that’s why Rintarou feels so bad about taking up all of Osamu’s time so he can’t look for other friends or relationships.

That’s why Rintarou would never, ever tell Osamu that he’s been in love with him for about three years, give or take a couple of months, and that he can’t quite imagine living out the rest of his reckless university days with anyone else. Can’t quite imagine being so happy with anyone else.

Can’t even think about what would happen if Osamu was to start dating someone.

The prospect should make Rintarou sad, or at least disappointed, but he only manages to stir up vague resignation. A flicker of grief, then trembling acceptance. 

Rintarou has spent so long training his heart to be happy for Osamu that the phrase on the tip of his tongue melts into: you deserve it.

Loving Miya Osamu is easier than it should be. It’s less a task than a state of being; a habit. It's a fundamental, not an undertaking. Loving Miya Osamu is as easy as breathing.

It’s figuring out what the hell to do with the love that presents more of an issue. The aftereffect is the burden, not the love itself.

At least love gives you something in return for pain; regret doesn’t.

Miya Osamu is like a particularly thorny math problem Rintarou doesn’t know how to solve. An ancient language he’ll never be fluent in.

━━━━━━

While he dozes off in his Basics of Microbiology course, Rintarou starts to form a plan. It's more to distract from the ache carving a spot between his ribs, but he figures he can use it later anyway.

He’s supposed to be tactful, not to say Atsumu told him. He’s supposed to offer to help Osamu confess despite how badly he wants to be the person getting confessed to, and he’s supposed to listen as Osamu waxes poetic about Yamazaki Kimiko.

Kimiko is a good person, really, but Rintarou would rather not be reminded every so often that he’s all Osamu doesn’t want.

This half-baked plan crumbles as soon as Osamu kicks the front door of their apartment closed, keys in one hand and his tongue sticking out as he tries to balance two bags of groceries.

(Well. One sack of easy-cook rice, plus a plastic bag filled with Gatorade powder, Pocky, and seaweed. Finals week is fast approaching. Neither of them has the energy left to give two shits about their health.)

Rintarou groans. “Thank god,” he says, lifting his cheek from where it’s squished against the cold kitchen counter. “Dinner.”

Osamu lifts a bag. “I got one of those soup kits ya like.”

“You’re an angel,” Rintarou mumbles. He doesn’t see the way Osamu’s neck flushes brick-red. “Gimme.”

“Uh-uh,” Osamu says, holding the bag tighter. “Shower first, then we can eat.”

Rintarou jumps off the chair and walks with dragging steps to the bathroom. “I don’t like this system,” he answers over his shoulder. 

In the beginning, it was set up as a reward system to make sure they didn’t neglect their hygiene, but now it feels more as if he’s walking through the nine circles of hell.

“Ya made it up,” Osamu calls. “Not my fault.” 

Rintarou wishes he was wrong.

Dusk is encroaching by the time he emerges from the shower. He towels off his hair and tugs on a pair of sweatpants, opening the door to the kitchen.

When he starts pulling plastic cutlery out of the drawer and setting them at the table, he sees Osamu stretched out in the massive armchair they share, legs swung over the arm and his glasses slipping down his nose as he squints at his phone.

“Something wrong, old man?” Rintarou asks.

Osamu sticks out his tongue. “Yer only a few months younger than me.”

“I don’t have to wear reading glasses.”

Osamu opens his mouth, ready to respond, but he deflates quickly. “Whatever. Gimme ten minutes to shower and we can eat.”

Rintarou hums, perching himself on the back of the armchair. Osamu stands up and stretches. His back cracks twice.

“Old,” Rintarou says again, just to twist the knife in further. 

“Sunarin, let me live,” Osamu complains, but his eyes are soft. There’s a cluster of freckles on his cheek that looks like a constellation.

“Fine,” he acquiesces. He slides down to take Osamu’s place in the armchair. It envelopes him in warmth.

He can feel himself nodding off, eyes drooping slightly until warm fingers thread through his hair and a voice tickles his ear. “Rin?” 

“Hmm?”

“Rin, ya can’t sleep yet. Still gotta eat dinner.” There’s a laugh in Osamu’s voice, half amused and half endeared.

“Don’t wanna,” he grumbles. He makes grabby hands and buries his face in Osamu’s shirt. He smells like eucalyptus shampoo and mint toothpaste. 

“I know ya don’t, but you need food,” Osamu whispers back, patting him gently on the back.

Rintarou finally manages to peel his eyes open. He blushes pink when he notices how close he is to Osamu, breath puffing out against his shoulder and fingers curled tightly into the fabric of his shirt. His throat is dry. “Shit. Sorry.”

“No problem,” Osamu replies immediately, brushing it off. He’s unfairly attractive in a hoodie and pyjama pants, hair dripping wet, lips bitten pink. “It was sorta cute.”

Rintarou groans. “Please stop talking.”

“With pleasure,” he answers easily. “Dinnertime, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

They sit at the dinner table with chopsticks balanced between their fingers and cheap soup spoons raised to their lips. Rintarou picks at a few grains of black rice. “I almost forgot,” he starts, “I was told—I mean, I heard you have a crush on someone?”

Osamu’s eyebrows furrow. “Did ‘Tsumu tell ya?”

“Not exactly,” Rintarou hedges. “He might have mentioned it, but I mostly…guessed.”

“You guessed?” Osamu repeats, a note of dread in the question.

“Yes?”

Osamu slumps. “‘Kay. Hit me with it. Just—don’t be too mean about it, alright?”

“What?” Rintarou wonders, uncomprehending. “No, I was going to say you should go for it. You should tell them how you feel. I bet they’d be lucky to have you.”

A long period of silence passes.

“Oh,” Osamu answers faintly. He stares hard at the vegetables floating in his soup as if they hold the secrets of the universe, and a myriad of emotions pass over his face, but they’re all slightly—strange. As if he knows something Rintarou doesn’t. As if he’s trying to sort through every one of his thoughts at once. “Yeah. Thanks for the encouragement.” His voice is flat.

“I’m serious,” Rintarou says, leaning forward. “You deserve it. You’ve liked her—them for a long time, right?”

Shoving a piece of tuna in his mouth, Osamu makes an affirmative noise.

“Waiting isn’t going to make it better. Confess and get it over with, right?”

Osamu finishes his soup and stands up. “Right,” he echoes. “Um, I hafta—go to the library. Print out my write-up,” he explains.

(Fridays are when Kimiko works at the library. She’s at the front desk until an hour or two before midnight. Sometimes she helps students access the research database.)

Rintarou stifles a yawn. A lump forms in his throat. “Sounds good. I might go to bed early tonight, so I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

Osamu grins, ruffling a hand through Rintarou’s wet bangs as he passes by. “Sleep tight then, Rin.”

Rintarou bats half-heartedly at his arm. “You too.”

After Osamu has left, his keys jangling in the lock and footsteps receding from the door, Rintarou curls back up in the same armchair as before. It still smells like Osamu, just a little, the body wash he uses and the convenience store he goes to after his morning classes.

So Rintarou draws his knees up to his chest and breathes in, out. If he focuses hard enough, it feels as if Osamu is here too, the scent of his shampoo and his body heat permeating the armchair, the dishwasher churning happily in the background.

Rintarou wakes to a warm body pressed against his, shoulder to ankle, and Osamu’s breath ghosting over his collarbone. “‘Samu?” he mumbles, rubbing his eye with a fist.

Osamu makes a snuffling noise and his head lolls to the other side. His fingers are curled loosely in Rintarou’s grasp. His face is peaceful in sleep, unguarded and lax. 

Rintarou curls his hand into a fist to resist the urge to kiss the bare spot on Osamu’s jawline where he nicked himself while shaving. His nails dig into his palms.

“Go back to sleep,” Osamu mutters, mouth slurring around the words. “Early start tomorrow.”

Rintarou swallows. “Night,” he responds. To Osamu, it’s probably nothing, but Rintarou is acutely aware of all the spots where Osamu’s skin touches his, knowing they don’t—and never will—want the same thing.

Loving Miya Osamu shouldn’t have been so easy. If it wasn’t this effortless, maybe Rintarou would have realized what he was doing before it was too late. 

Maybe he would have come to his senses and he wouldn’t be here now, thinking the only way he could make Miya Osamu happy was if he left and didn’t come back. 

━━━━━━

They’re sitting at a back table in the library. A mid-afternoon haze settles upon them. An empty cup of Starbucks coffee sits on the desk beside Rintarou, and he spins a pencil between his fingers as he stares out the window.

“Gettin’ distracted already?” Osamu asks absently. He bends over his notes and underlines a section with a yellow highlighter.

“No,” Rintarou answers defensively. “I’m taking a break.”

“‘Kay.”

“I’m serious,” he says in a futile effort to wipe the knowing smile off Osamu’s mouth. “I’ll get back to studying in—” he throws a glance at the library clock, “—ten minutes.”

“‘M sure ya will,” Osamu drawls, his voice dripping like honey. “Can ya get me a snack while yer on break?”
“We’re not allowed to eat in the library.”

“When have ya ever paid attention to the rules?” Osamu reasons, and Rintarou hates that he has a point.

He sighs. “Yeah. What do you want?”

Osamu gets a satisfied look on his face. “Pocky?”

Rintarou holds out his hand and Osamu drops a banknote in his palm.

“Thanks, Rin. yer a lifesaver,” he says, shooting Rintarou a swift grin, and Rintarou’s cheeks flush hot immediately.

“It’s nothing. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Rintarou heads to the vending machine in the breezeway and pokes the requisite buttons for two boxes of Pocky, depositing Osamu’s bill. The machine spits out a few coins. He shoves them in his pocket and crouches down to collect the boxes.

The snacks are too far back to reach easily, so he has to pull his sleeve past his elbow and shove his arm into the flap. He hisses as a sharp edge catches on his forearm and his fingers brush a Pocky box.

“Suna-san?” A tentative voice interrupts.

Rintarou jerks back, but now his arm is stuck in the vending machine and he feels like an absolute fool. He twists his shoulder back and looks up.

It’s Kimiko.

“Ah,” he says, wishing he was anywhere else. “Yamazaki-san?”

“Call me Kimiko,” she replies, smiling slightly. “Do you need help?”

He shakes his head. “No.” 

(Rintarou does need help, but he’ll be damned before he admits that.)

“Oh, okay.” Kimiko starts to walk away, a breeze ruffling her hair over her shoulders.

Rintarou tries every manner of strategy to get his arm out of the machine. At this point leaving his Pocky to rot and walking away would have been preferable, even if he had to return to Osamu empty-handed. 

Finally, he nearly dislocates his shoulder while tugging his elbow out. His arm dislodges and he falls back. There’s a sore spot on his elbow, red marks from the machine running up and down his wrist.

The Pocky boxes lie on the floor next to him. Both of them have faint dents in the corners and he tries to smooth them out with a finger, wincing at the sound of crumbs shaking around the bottom of the box.

Shoes clack against the floor, getting closer. He stands up; Kimiko is walking back towards him, waving slightly. “One more thing, Suna-san,” she begins. “Do you know if Osamu is busy right now?”

“Osamu?”

“Yes,” she responds, nodding. “I’d like to talk to him, if that’s possible.”

Rintarou falters. “He’s studying right now,” he says slowly, pointing at the wooden doors to the library, “but I can ask him if he’ll be finished soon?”

She presses her lips together. “That’s fine. I’ll find him later. Thanks for helping,” she says, smiling. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem,” he answers reflexively. “See you around.” He tucks both Pocky boxes into a hand and speed-walks back to the library. 

Osamu glances at him in surprise when he drops the snacks on the table. “Why’d ya take so long? I thought ya must’ve ditched or somethin’.”

“I got my arm stuck in the vending machine.”

“Ya what?” Osamu blinks twice.

“I jammed my hand in the vending machine,” Rintarou says, louder. A student at a table near them sends him a look. He rolls his eyes and adds quietly, “Some of the Pocky sticks are crushed, I think.”

Osamu flaps his hand. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, hooking a finger under the sleeve of Rintarou’s sweatshirt and tugging it up to expose the red skin. “Are ya okay?”

Rintarou tries not to shiver at the warm touch. “I’m fine.”

“You scratched yer elbow,” Osamu notes, running a thumb over the scrape. A droplet of blood beads and Osamu pulls a tissue out of his pocket to soak it up. “Gimme a second, I’ll get ya a bandage.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Rintarou protests, but Osamu pushes his chair back and walks to the front desk purposefully.

Rintarou opens his textbook again to a random page and reads the same paragraph three times before he remembers what he’s supposed to be doing. 

Osamu returns and starts unwrapping a plaster, pulling off the plastic covering. He takes Rintarou’s elbow and places the Band-Aid carefully over the scratch, smoothing down the edges. He smiles gently. “Good?”

“Good,” echoes Rintarou, throat dry.

Osamu throws away the wrappings and pops open his box of Pocky. He offers Rintarou a stick.

Rintarou doesn’t take it. “I ran into Kimiko back there,” he mentions, too sudden, too raw to sound laid-back.

“Oh?”

“She asked me if you were free to talk,” he says. “I told her you were studying.”

Osamu bites into his Pocky contemplatively. “What did she say?”

“She’s going to find you later.”

“Sounds good.”

They lapse into silence. 

From their one conversation about him, Rintarou notices Kimiko’s eyes soften at the edges when she says Osamu’s name. In ease or relief or something else entirely.

Osamu doesn’t seem to care whether or not Kimiko speaks to him, but he’s always been oddly deft at hiding his own feelings.

Rintarou bites the bullet. “I really think you should confess soon,” he blurts. He licks his lips and his mouth tastes bloody, metallic and faintly sour. “I’m sure she—they like you back,” he amends, because he’s still trying to pretend he doesn’t know exactly who Osamu has a crush on. “And even if they don’t, it’ll be less painful if you get it done as soon as possible.” Sort of like removing a tumour, or cleaning a wound. Too bad he can’t take his own advice.

Osamu makes an incomprehensible noise. “Yeah. Thanks for the help.”

“Think about it,” Rintarou presses. He doesn’t know why he’s being so determined about it, except maybe it’ll be less painful once the confession is over. Maybe he’ll be able to breathe then.

“I will,” Osamu answers, suddenly detached, and that’s the end of it.

━━━━━━

Finals week is coming up fast, and Rintarou elects to deal with it the same way he does most things: he ignores it until the problem becomes too big to look away from.

At that point, he sandwiches himself between two couch cushions and plants his butt on the sofa with his laptop, determined not to leave until he’s gathered at least a couple of reputable sources for his project.

The first few hours are fine—he opens another window on his laptop and steadily adds tabs to read later until they’re squeezed together too closely to see the title of every tab, at which point he goes through and gives each of them a cursory read, clearing out the less helpful studies and the ones hidden behind paywalls.

He has his textbook open to the most relevant section. He pops in earbuds, slides further down the couch until his back starts to twitch in pain, and gets to work.

This process goes smoothly until he hears the jingle of keys in the lock. 

“Evenin’,” Osamu calls.

Rintarou grunts, half in greeting and half frustrated at finding the rest of the article costs five dollars or a journal subscription to read.

Osamu comes up behind him and rests his chin on Rintarou’s shoulder. “Bad day?”

Rintarou nods. “Forgot to start working on my project and it’s biting me in the ass.”

“I’ll make dinner,” Osamu offers, patting his head like he’s a house cat. “Want me to leave it out or should I tell ya when I’m done?”

“Text me,” Rintarou answers. He holds up his phone. “If I don’t answer, I can eat later.”

“Got it.”

He sinks back into the familiar rhythm of studying. He makes tables, spreadsheets, lists, and starts in on citing his sources properly.

The buzz of his phone is what pulls him away from his computer document. Dinnertime, it reads. Rintarou hesitates for a split second.

He reluctantly peels himself off the couch. Osamu has two bowls of miso soup out, chopsticks and spoons laid across them. 

Rintarou plops into his chair. 

Osamu pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “Are ya doin’ okay?”

“Great. Why do you ask?” Rintarou says automatically.

“You’ve got bags under yer eyes,” observes Osamu. “I don’t think yer gettin’ enough sleep.”

“I can handle it.”

“I’m sure ya can, Rin,” he answers, altogether too patient for Rintarou’s snippy attitude. “Still. As yer roommate and yer best friend, it’s kinda my job to make sure ya ain’t runnin’ yerself into the ground, right?”

Rintarou deflates like a balloon with all the helium let out. “Right. But I still have to finish my outline today,” he says.
Osamu nods, thoughtful. “Why don’tcha do that, then we can watch a movie?”

Rintarou slurps up his soup noisily. “What movie?” he asks. He knows full well that movies are on the list of ‘things he shouldn’t do with Miya Osamu unless he wants to accidentally spill his feelings,’ because movies are in the dark and usually involve physical contact, both things Rintarou is better off sidestepping.

“I’ll find one,” Osamu says.

Rintarou places his bowl in the sink with a clank louder than needed. 

Osamu sits next to him on the sofa, flicking through movies as Rintarou finishes his outline. “Have ya seen Titanic?” he suggests. He angles the remote towards the movie preview on the screen; it’s a boy and a girl, their faces superimposed over a ship.

Rintarou looks up. “No?” He closes the lid of his laptop and sets it aside. 

“Gimme a sec, I’ll pull up the subtitles.” Osamu scoots near him. They bump elbows, but neither of them moves away.

The movie starts alright; the camera shots are pretty and the story is easy enough to follow from the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. Osamu keeps moving closer. Rintarou has no idea if it’s intentional, but it’s so distracting he misses a good portion of the film.

The ship hits an iceberg and everything after that happens too quickly: they start to sink, people jump off the side of the boat, life rafts head out to sea.

Jack sinks. There’s a dull ache behind Rintarou’s nose, a pressure that won’t ease up. 

The movie fast-forwards to Rose as an old woman and the end credits start to roll. 

Rintarou is slightly shell-shocked. He blinks twice.

“Sorry,” Osamu says abruptly. “That probably wasn’t the happy movie ya expected it to be.”

Rintarou shakes his head. “Not really. But I liked it anyway.”

“Don’tcha think it’s sad?” Osamu murmurs, turning off the movie. The TV home screen glows too bright. “Every time I watch it I think ‘bout how Jack could have lived.”

“How?” Rintarou asks. His voice sounds like it’s coming from someone else and echoes in his ears.

Osamu glances at him. They’re leaning against each other by now. Osamu’s shoulder is warm. “There was more room on the door,” he explains. “They both coulda fit.”

Rintarou shrugs. “I mean…they could have, but does it really matter?”

“I think it matters,” Osamu answers quietly. “I think love matters.”

Swallowing, Rintarou leans away from him. “Jack was supposed to die. The story wouldn’t make sense otherwise,” he reasons, and Osamu fixes him with eyes round and luminous as august moons.

“It didn’t hafta make sense,” Osamu protests.

“Isn’t that the point of movies?”

“Not this one,” he insists stubbornly. “The point of this one is love.”

Osamu is a hopeless romantic of the worst kind, not just convinced love is the reason for life but determined to persuade everyone else into thinking the same. Determined to bring the same love to the four corners of the world, to love with all he has and then some.

Rintarou rolls his eyes. He keeps his mouth shut; he’ll be better off humouring Osamu. 

They’re pressed so close that their chests rise and fall in time—breathing together, living together.

“Love is the point,” says Osamu, dogged as ever, too naive for his own good. “Love is the point of everythin’.”

“Sounds like bullshit,” responds Rintarou listlessly.

Osamu’s gaze dims and he looks away. “Yer too pessimistic, Sunarin. Ya always think the worst is gonna happen. Ya don’t have enough faith in the rest of the world.” His throat bobs. “Or me.”

“You don’t think I trust you?” Rintarou asks softly, his heart throbbing somewhere between his ribcage and his throat, as if it might spill out of his mouth at any moment. He blinks twice.

“I don’t think ya trust anyone.”

The conversation grinds to a halt.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rintarou says, deflecting as usual. His chest ices over and he lets out his breath all in a whoosh. “I trust you plenty.”

“Not with important stuff,” answers Osamu. He’s always had a knack for seeing past Rintarou’s awkward pivots and about-faces. 

Rintarou sits up on his knees, stiff from lack of movement. “Why don’t we strike a deal then?” he proposes casually.

“A deal?”

“I’ll make it my goal to trust you more,” Rintarou elaborates, ignoring the doubt clear across Osamu’s face, “and you talk to the person you’ve got a crush on.”

Osamu groans. His expression is half-hidden between the sunset and the faint blue light from the TV, but vague annoyance breaks through the veil. “Yer still on ‘bout that?”

“I’m invested now,” Rintarou replies. He shrugs. “I want to see where this goes.” Call it self-hatred, call it masochism, some twisted sense of schadenfreude; the cause and effect are the same. The only person being hurt is him.

“Ya can’t even figure out who it is.”

“So what?” asks Rintarou dismissively, even though he has a very good idea who it is. “I don’t need to know as long as I can find out whether it’s successful or not.”

Osamu looks like he’s oscillating between exhaustion and frustration faster than a sound wave from the radio. “If ya say so,” he responds, looking more disappointed than Rintarou expected. 

“So what do you say?”

“To what?”

“The deal,” Rintarou explains, yawning as fatigue drags down his muscles.

“It seems kinda subjective,” Osamu says. “I feel like all the burden is on me here.”

Rintarou bites back a ‘that’s how it's supposed to work’ and sighs. “I promise I’ll take steps to trust you,” he replies. “We can ask Atsumu if he notices a difference.”

“That’s a shit idea.”

“You got a better one?”

Osamu is silent.

Rintarou smirks. “Exactly. Besides,” he continues, “we can end this as soon as you confess. You won’t need it hanging over your head, right?”

Osamu hums, tone flat, remote held loosely in his hand. “Sure.” He flicks the television off and stands up. “‘M gonna go to bed. Don’t sleep too late,” he announces shortly, rubbing the grey shadows beneath his eyes. “See ya in the morning, Rin.”

The door to Osamu’s bedroom creaks behind him. The couch feels colder all of a sudden. Rintarou leans into the spot where Osamu sat, looking for some residual heat. It’s still warm, but his chest tightens when he reaches out for the source of the heat and comes up, inevitably, with nothing.

━━━━━━

Miya Osamu, by nature, doesn’t voice his thoughts often. It’s a byproduct of growing up with Atsumu—and Rintarou, to a lesser degree. Most of the time Rintarou appreciates this. Silence is nice; silence is a welcome lull in the high-pitched craze of university. Silence means peace, and peace is a feeling he doesn’t get nearly enough of these days.

There are days, though, when Rintarou wishes Osamu would just fucking say something. There are days he wants Osamu to tell him straight-up to press pause on his crush, as a last-ditch resort to ease the ache or a remedial measure to stem the flow of blood before life support becomes critical.

There are days Rintarou asks Osamu a question only to be rebuffed, even though he’s sure an answer is waiting there if he only tries hard enough. There are days Osamu’s signals are so unreadable the two of them might as well be speaking different languages.

This is the issue with remembering someone better than yourself.

This is the issue with memorizing the cadence of someone’s gait when they won’t even tell you why their footsteps sound so angry today, or why they slammed the door particularly hard as they entered the apartment, and this is the issue with pretending ‘familiarity’ and ‘comfort’ mean the same thing.

This is the issue with knowing Miya Osamu, with knowing him and loving him, because no matter how hard you push, he doesn’t give an inch. No matter how demanding or mean or loud you are, he is immovable.

(The fact that Rintarou is nearly as reticent to share his own feelings is another knot altogether, albeit one that could feasibly be untangled. 

Miya Osamu is a different story.)

Osamu and Rintarou are made up of false starts and fabrications, denial and deviation—on Rintarou’s end, at least. Eventually, every day becomes an exercise in how much kindness you can endure until the string threatens to snap.

Their entire friendship is a logical fallacy of the worst kind, an equation that tracked once but doesn’t anymore; an unstable atom, a linear expression with one too many variables to make sense of at this point and one too many steps to work backwards. It’s easy to solve until you happen upon a negative exponent. 

There are zero and infinite solutions at the same time.

Osamu is the logic, and Rintarou is the fallacy. Simple math.

━━━━━━

They’re sitting at the kitchen counter eating takeout for lunch. Neither of them has morning lectures and Rintarou’s class doesn’t start until three in the afternoon, so he gives himself some time for the stress to ease off.

Osamu picks up a piece of okonomiyaki and munches on it thoughtfully. Grease drips off the styrofoam container, but he isn’t perturbed. He cuts off another chunk and waves it in front of Rintarou’s face.

Rintarou obediently opens his mouth, biting into the fried pancake and closing his eyes as the flavours burst savoury over his tongue.

“What’re ya doin’ this afternoon?” Osamu asks through a mouthful of okonomiyaki.

Rintarou chews. “Studying?”

Osamu squints. “Is that a question or an answer?”

“An answer,” says Rintarou, but that comes out sounding uncertain too. “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out when I get there.”

Osamu’s cheeks puff out as he stuffs more of the pancake into his mouth. He looks like he’s thinking deeply about his next words. What comes out is a short: “Okay.”

Rintarou slouches in his chair and keeps eating. The bonito flakes are too fishy for his taste, he notes, although the mayonnaise balances it out nicely.

“‘Tsumu and I are goin’ back to visit family next week,” Osamu tells him. “Family emergency or somethin’, so we’ll be gone fer six days. D’ya think ya can take care of this place that long?”

Rintarou elbows him. “Very funny. I’m more worried about Atsumu’s dorm. The rats might find that a perfect time to infiltrate.”

Osamu grins, quick and blazing. “He’ll hafta hire an exterminator when he comes back. But really,” he continues, “if ya run into any trouble ya can text me.”

Rintarou waves away his concerns with a lazy hand. “Don’t worry, I can do it.”

Osamu’s phone vibrates. He swipes out of the notification without even looking. 

“Who’s it from?”

Osamu picks up the phone and places it face down, stabbing his okonomiyaki particularly hard. “Kimiko, I think.”

Kimiko again. It’s a little funny that Rintarou has come to associate Kimiko with Osamu leaving. But it’s mostly sad.

Rintarou isn’t jealous—he isn’t. Maybe hurt, yes, because Yamazaki Kimiko is a constant reminder of everything Rintarou is not, but he isn’t jealous. 

He doesn’t wish he were Kimiko, but he wishes someone wanted him. He wishes that someone was Osamu.

Rintarou wants Osamu’s playful smiles, loose limbs and nose splashed with sun-kissed freckles and half-teasing jokes. He wants the mugs of coffee Osamu makes in the mornings, wants the way he inches closer to Rintarou while they watch movies. 

It’s some sort of gravitational force pulling them together—fleeting moments and songs on the radio that never seem to end, someone by his side to combat the overwhelming sensation of an ever-spinning world. 

Rintarou wants everything he already has and then some. He wants it to be real.

“How are you doing with the confession?” he wonders, tracing a groove in the wooden table with his fingernail. He braces himself for the answer. “I mean…are you planning to get around to it?”

“Why d’ya care so much?” Osamu returns lightly, but he sounds tense.

Rintarou’s muscles seize up and a wave of panic runs through him. “No reason,” he grits out. “You should do it soon.” 

“And why’s that?” Osamu’s smile is strained.

He swallows back the bile rising in his throat and shrugs. “I think they’ll appreciate it. I can help you if you’re stuck on inspiration.” The words keep pouring out of his mouth. He’s trying to cleanse a poison from his body but only producing more of it.

“Rin?” he begins, voice sharp, eyes tired.

“Hmm?”

“Drop it.” Osamu’s face is deadly serious, mouth set into a firm line and eyes pleading.

It’s a command rather than a request, and Rintarou leans back slightly in an attempt to absorb the force. He bites his lip until he tastes blood. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Osamu sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I just—can we not talk ‘bout that? Please?” he adds.

“Okay,” Rintarou agrees, wedged in the thoroughfare of relief and regret. Relief at not having to put himself through that again, at not having to push Osamu towards Yamazaki Kimiko with increasing urgency; regret at knowing that this, for the first time in years, brought Osamu to his breaking point. That Rintarou is responsible for whatever emotions Osamu decides to display from here on out.

━━━━━━

He drags himself to Atsumu’s dorm two days later and collapses on the sticky leather couch. He surfs through TV channels until Atsumu comes home from volleyball practice, hair matted with sweat and his shirt clinging to his skin.

“Suna?” Atsumu says, stopping short in the middle of his room.

Rintarou flicks his hand lazily. “Go shower. You smell like shit.”

“You could have said it nicer,” grumbles Atsumu, but he walks into the bathroom and comes out freshly showered.

Rintarou’s eyes are glued to the screen, where some soap opera is playing.

Atsumu sits on the carpet. “So what’s the problem?”

“I dunno if I can do this anymore.” It comes out more abruptly than he intends, and Atsumu blinks twice, trying to understand.

“Do what? School?”

“I mean, that too,” Rintarou adds, “but I meant…help Osamu with his crush. Persuade him to confess. I think—” he winces, and his chest twists. “I think I wasn’t the right person for the job. Conflict of interest and shit,” he supplies lamely. The only conflict of interest is his flaming crush on the very person he’s supposed to wingman for.

Atsumu squints at him. “Whaddya mean ‘conflict of interest’?”

“Opposite investments. We're not looking for the same result,” he clarifies, gut dropping like a stone. This is what he’s good at: deflecting, dodging, moving the goalposts. “It would be disingenuous for me to pretend I’m still helping when I’m really just fucking it up.”

“Ya mean yer not…” Atsumu trails off, but his expression of befuddlement turns into understanding soon enough. “Oh. Okay.”

“Okay?” Rintarou echoes. He hadn’t expected Atsumu’s resolve to crumble so quickly. “You’re fine with that.”

“Yeah. I mean, ‘Samu’s not gonna be happy, but what can ya do?”

Rintarou frowns. “What the fuck?” With one sentence, Atsumu has lost the thread of the conversation completely.

“Don’t worry ‘bout it, Rin,” Atsumu answers. “I appreciate ya tellin’ me this. It can’t have been easy.”

Rintarou shreds up bits of foam from the couch with a fingernail. “You’re welcome. I should probably be going now, so…”

Atsumu nods and waves him off, flicking through his phone. “Right. I’ll see ya around.”

Rintarou leaves the dorm more confused than he was before.

━━━━━━

Rintarou is a mature adult, and this is why he finds himself at a loss as to what he can eat for dinner only two days after Osamu leaves to visit his family. He texts Osamu quickly, what’s a dinner food I can make—then he has a cursory look in his kitchen cabinets—with only rice, sesame seeds, soy sauce, and a raspberry Pop-Tart?

He doesn’t receive a reply for the next few minutes, so he sets his phone down and roots around for other ingredients.

A buzz resounds in the kitchen. The dishwasher cycle stops.

from: miya osamu

just eat the pop tart

from: miya osamu

i’ll tell you what to buy at the grocery store tomorrow

from: suna rintarou

ok

He eats the Pop-Tart. The fake raspberry filling is chalky and the pastry tastes like drywall, but he swallows every flaky bite and goes back to studying without another message from Osamu.

━━━━━━

The good part is that it tamps down his hunger for the next couple of hours. The bad part is that his stomach growls like a garbage disposal at one in the morning, and he only manages to bear it for ten minutes until he’s kicking off the covers and padding back to the kitchen.

from: suna rintarou

are u awake

from: miya osamu

what is it

from: suna rintarou

can i call you

Rintarou’s phone lights up with a call and he presses the ‘answer’ button. “Morning,” he says as soon as it connects.

Osamu groans. “It’s one AM, Rin. Is somethin’ wrong?” His sleepy voice gnaws through the insulation of Rintarou’s heart and comes to rest at the bottom of his chest.

“I’m hungry,” he answers, tapping his finger on the kitchen counter. “There’s nothing to eat.”

“Whaddya wanna do, then?” Osamu is like this sometimes, patient and vulnerable and waiting for Rintarou to make the first move. He’s like this sometimes: hand outstretched, head haloed in late-night wireless static and street lights outside trapped in the crosshairs.

Rintarou makes an inadvertent sound in the back of his throat. “Get food.”

Osamu hums. “KFC is open twenty four-seven.”

There’s a KFC near their apartment building that’s been there for thirty years. It’s got stained seats and an oil-slick floor, chicken breaded in crisp crumbs, fries with salt crystals hanging off them like pieces of jewelry. 

There’s a KFC near their apartment with a neon light board someone changed to read FREE THE CHICKENS that they visit once a month, where they sit in the same booth every time. There’s a KFC near their apartment, and it might as well be theirs.

Rintarou falters. “It would feel wrong, going there without you.” Rintarou steals Osamu’s ketchup and he’s too scared to ask for napkins himself. They split the bill in a ratio of 55 to 45 percent.

“Hey,” Osamu suggests, the sound crackling with feedback and white noise. “If you video chat me and put yer phone on the table, ya can pretend I’m there.”

It’s an awful idea. They do it anyway.

Rintarou walks the five minutes with Osamu’s bedhead and sleepy gaze staring from his phone screen. He passes FREE THE CHICKENS; the signboard is waxing neon, slashes of luminescence crisscrossing over bold black words. Faint moonlight comes low over the KFC roof. He kicks the door open.

He stares at the menu. Osamu usually orders a bucket for them to split and gives the leftovers to Atsumu, but it would be foolish to buy twelve pieces of chicken when Rintarou can barely eat a third of them himself. 

The employee taps the cash register. “What can I get for you today?”

He startles. “Uh…the regular meal?”

She stares at him, gaze empty. “You’ll have to be more specific, sir,” she intones. The shadows beneath her eyes become more pronounced by the second.

“Two pieces of chicken, please,” he answers. He pays for his meal and slides into their normal booth. The sight that greets him is foreign; a red-backed seat and not Osamu. 

He props his phone up on the napkin dispenser and sighs. 

“Sunarin?” Osamu’s mellow voice is tinny through the phone speakers. “You alright?”

He rubs his forehead with a fist. “Stressed out,” he explains. That’s only half of it, but the other half is too difficult to pin down with words.

“Ya good to tell me what’s goin’ on?”

He sighs. “Yeah. Just give me a second.”

Osamu flickers in and out of the screen, freezing every few seconds and speeding up from the shaky internet connection. His voice comes through the phone in bursts. Rintarou barely catches a full sentence.

“Don’t beat yerself up,” Osamu tells him. The sound cuts out, then comes back; Osamu is sitting up in bed with a bedside lamp turned on next to him, looking adorably ruffled.

The cashier calls his order. He grabs it and drops the tray on the table, dipping a fry in ketchup. “I’m not beating myself up.”

Osamu changes tactics. “Ya look sad.”

“I’m tired.” Tired of wanting.

“If you’re tired why’re ya eating KFC at one-thirty in the mornin’?” Osamu points out. 

Rintarou lets out a long-suffering breath and says, “I’m more hungry than tired.” The chicken skin crunches as he bites into it.

“I thought yer goal was to trust me more,” says Osamu.

Rintarou swallows. A chicken drumstick balances between his fingers. “Are you trying to turn my words against me?”

“I just wanna help you,” Osamu answers, raising his hands in the air. He slumps back down onto his blankets, platinum-dyed hair sticking up in all directions, hand over his mouth as he stifles a yawn.

“I’ve got a shit ton of homework and I have no idea what’s on my Organic Chemistry exam. One of my best friends is keeping secrets from me,” he replies, eyes stinging. Osamu is less hiding than dodging, but it works out to about the same. “There’s no food left in the apartment. Atsumu stole my favourite bullet point pen. I lost my microbiology notes last week. I don’t…there’s not enough time in the day to get everything done. I’m just so tired,” he mumbles, burying his face in his hands. “Too tired to deal with this all at once.”

Osamu tilts his head. “We can go through these one by one,” he suggests. “Then if there’s anythin’ else we’ll try to talk it out, yeah?”

Rintarou lifts his head. There’s a spot of oil on the table he’s acutely aware of, and he scoots closer to the edge of the seat to avoid it. The cashier looks like she didn’t sign up for this, his fingers are covered in fried chicken drippings, and his ketchup container is at high risk of spilling. He moves it to a safer spot.

“Homework,” Osamu begins conversationally.

Rintarou nods. “Homework. I got a sixty-two on my lab assignment last week.”

Osamu presses his lips together. “Is it botherin’ ya?”

He swallows hard, because it’s not that he’s ever been a perfect student but he’s barely holding on as it is and a sixty-two has become the boiling point. “It’s a sixty-two.”

“That’s true,” Osamu agrees. “It is. But it’s just a lab,” he adds gently. “It’s not the end of the world, right?”

“No,” Rintarou admits, breaking a fry in two pieces.

“I can help ya study when I get back,” offers Osamu. “And we’ll talk to yer professor ‘bout raisin’ yer mark. But even if we can’t, it’s not a big deal. You’ll do well next time.”

“Aren’t you worried about your own courses?”
Osamu flashes him a smile. “I don’t wanna think about those right now.” He adjusts his camera. The signal cuts off, and a ‘poor connection’ message pops up on the screen before Osamu’s face appears again. “Rin? Can ya hear me?”

He scrapes a particularly large salt chunk off his fry and flicks it away. “I can hear you.”

“Good. And the friend who’s hidin’ stuff from ya…if they bother you I’ll go after them,” he says boldly, and Rintarou chokes on a piece of chicken.

“It’s okay,” he says in a sour twist of irony and hopelessness. “You don’t have to do that, but I appreciate the offer.”

Osamu sighs. “The opportunity is always there. Then the next thing ya said—we don’t have food in the apartment.”

“We don’t.” 

Osamu buys the groceries most of the time, and his absence has left not just empty cabinets but a funny hollow space in Rintarou’s rib cage.

“Call me tomorrow mornin’ and I’ll go shoppin’ with ya. Tell ya what to buy.”

Rintarou wipes his face with a napkin to get rid of any remaining fried chicken crumbs. He’s never realized before how domestic it is: not eating KFC past midnight, but buying groceries together, cooking together, watching movies and fighting about which ending is better. If only he didn’t know there was someone else Osamu would rather do all of this with.

“There’s ketchup on yer chin,” says Osamu, pointing through the screen.

Rintarou wipes it away and throws his napkin in the garbage can.

“Hey. Rin.”

He looks back at his phone screen, halfway through his last bite into the drumstick. He can already feel his blood pressure going up from the fattiness. “What?”

“Yer gonna get through this,” Osamu says, earnest and straightforward as ever. “I dunno what’s goin’ on with ya, or whether it’s somethin’ I can try to fix, but yer gonna get through. You always have.”

Rintarou’s stomach flips. Later, this is a feeling he’ll come to recognize as Miya Osamu reminding him why he fell in love in the first place. Later, he’ll realize this was probably the beginning of the end, the precursor to all that happened later. For now, he throws away his fried chicken container and stands up to leave.

“Ya gonna go back to the apartment?” Osamu asks casually, his voice snapping with the electrical sound of a bad satellite signal.

He hums. “Not yet.” Everywhere else is closed, so he sits on the curb of the KFC parking lot, right next to the FREE THE CHICKENS sign. The flashing billboard brands the sky in whips of neon.

“I’ll tell ‘Tsumu to give yer pen back,” Osamu blurts out. The noise slices through the quiet parking lot, thick with midnight fog and fluorescent lamplight.

Rintarou draws his knees up to his chest. A moth is flickering around the street lamp above his head. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It was makin’ ya sad,” responds Osamu. “That’s a big deal.”

“What do you mean?”

“…didn’t even get sad ‘bout Titanic,” says Osamu, offended, but because of the poor connection Rintarou only catches the tail end of the sentence. “I don’t really think ya have an understanding of human emotion anymore.”

“Titanic made me sad,” Rintarou counters. “Not crying sad, but sad.”

“Ya said Jack was s’posed to die,” Osamu huffs. “That doesn’t sound like a sad person to me.”

Rintarou lifts his shoulders. “Just because I understood what the story needed doesn’t mean it didn’t make me sad.”

Osamu makes a face. “What was the sad part to you, Rin?”

Rintarou puffs out his cheeks. “Probably that they fell in love within less than a week.”

“Oh my god,” Osamu groans. “Whaddya know ‘bout love that makes you an expert?”

He kicks at a pebble and replies automatically, “It’s messy.”

“What?”

“Love is messy,” he repeats, a sob building up in his chest. “It’s hard work. It’s a mistake, sometimes, and usually it happens when we don’t expect it to. Usually it’s not an equal exchange or equal proposition.” 

It’s not always dramatic and high-stakes, with an electric first meeting and a hundred beautiful memories after that. Not always secret moments on a sinking ship. It’s not about dying together; it’s about drowning, first, and realizing only after you’ve come face to face with love how much your lungs missed the taste of fresh air. How much you would miss the stupid scar on his lip and the wrinkles around his eyes if you never got to see him again.

“Sunarin?” Osamu asks softly, his voice lilting, waiting, lingering. “Are you okay?”

He stares at the clouds cloaking the massive face of a lit-up Colonel Sanders and a muted soreness forms in the space between his eyes. “Not really, no,” he says honestly. A sound hisses out of the speakers—Osamu’s adjusting his phone and sitting up straighter. 

“D’ya wanna talk ‘bout it?”

Rintarou is sitting on the curb of a KFC parking lot, cold prickling his bare arms. It’s two in the morning, an hour when the city runs on alcohol and off-key karaoke tracks from the 2000s. The gravel smells like frying oil and potato chips. His phone data is wasting away by the second, neon lights illuminating everything in a wash of psychedelic yellows and reds. The pounding bass drum from a car driving by resonates deep in his bones. The night is pierced with stars, poking through a blanket of light pollution.

Osamu is miles away. He’s on the other side of the screen, looking up at the same sky, waiting for Rintarou’s thoughts on love—on Jack’s death and expertise and the taste of fresh air. 

Rintarou looks straight into Osamu’s eyes through the low-quality FaceTime call and thinks that falling in love with Miya Osamu was the biggest mistake he ever made.

“Later,” is what he ends up saying. “We can talk about it later.”

He presses ‘end call,’ and the line disconnects.

━━━━━━

Suna Rintarou is a bad decision-maker. This is a long-established fact and a constant activity pattern, from high school volleyball at Inarizaki, to choosing the most difficult chemistry course available in his freshman year, to getting his hand stuck in a vending machine in front of the girl his best friend has a crush on.

Suna Rintarou is a bad decision-maker. In one fell swoop, though, Osamu might beat him out for first place on the list of ‘events in which the consequences outweigh the rewards.’

“Shut up,” Osamu groans, slamming his head against the kitchen counter.

Rintarou laughs so hard he hits his forehead on a mug of cold coffee by accident. Osamu reaches out reflexively to pull the mug away before it spills and dumps it in the sink. 

“Sorry,” Rintarou gasps, practically light-headed from laughing too hard. “Sorry, I’ll stop.” All the smiles have been wrung out of him like a wet dishtowel.

Atsumu leans over the cushioned back of the sofa and says, “No, keep laughin’. It’s hilarious.”

Osamu glares at him.

For all his bluster and endless offers to help Rintarou study, Osamu has a look of clear panic on his face at the thought of his own exam. The two of them sit at the kitchen counter, Osamu’s hand on Rintarou’s knee. 

Rintarou holds a stack of empty flashcards to help Osamu memorize his vocabulary. (Sometime in the afternoon, Atsumu had wandered over to their apartment and decided it was time to take up residency on the couch for the rest of the day.)

Osamu’s Introduction to Statistics exam is in two days. He hasn’t cracked open his textbook since the first day of the semester. 

Rintarou caps the pen again. “You’re gonna go find your TA tomorrow, right?”

Osamu nods miserably. “Yeah. I dunno how much she can help me this close to the exam, though.”

Patting him on the shoulder, Rintarou says, “Don’t worry. If you fail, I’ll buy you fried chicken.”

As soon as Osamu’s eyes light up, Rintarou regrets opening his mouth. “Don’t fail on purpose,” he hastily amends. “How about this, actually: if you pass, I’ll buy you fried chicken. If you fail, you can have a consolation handshake.”

Osamu scowls. “Not makin’ me feel good ‘bout my prospects of passin’.”

Rintarou sticks out his tongue. “It’s motivation.”

“I don’t like this system.”

Atsumu calls, “Don’t worry, ‘Samu. I’ll eat the fried chicken ‘fore ya can get to it anyway.”

“Fuck off, ‘Tsumu. Yer not even s’posed to be here.”

Despite the jokes, all of them (well, mostly Rintarou) are serious about getting Osamu a passing grade. Rintarou finds sample questions from the textbook, YouTube videos on the subject, and problem sets online to make a pseudo-study guide. For the next three hours, they hunker down at the kitchen table and work. Atsumu flicks through the television channels and makes snide remarks about the previews that pop up.

Rintarou notices a particularly egregious smudge on the varnished wood-top that looks like a curry udon spill, but he’s too lazy to clean it up so he glares it down until it starts to blend into the rest of the table.

Halfway through, Osamu disappears into his bedroom and comes back with two cups of microwave ramen.

They have different studying styles, but they make it work. Osamu maintains a modicum of concentration the whole time, brow furrowed and eyes boring into the page as he writes notes on a piece of scrap paper next to him. Rintarou’s short attention span and need for chaos force him to study in short bursts rather than steady lengths, fifteen minutes of focus being overtaken by ten-minute breaks to play crossword puzzles on his phone.

Atsumu has settled on watching a volleyball game on the TV, and he keeps interrupting their workflow to crack jokes or insults about the players’ techniques or ill-timed strategies. Rintarou hears more about Player Ten’s thighs than he wanted to in his life.

Focused Osamu takes Rintarou by surprise. He looks nice this way, eyes heavy-lidded and mouth turned up in a soft smile. A lock of hair near his ear that doesn’t lie flat. The light brown birthmark on his cheekbone, especially visible from this angle.

There’s a vein in his forehead that becomes visible when he frowns, and it should be weird but Rintarou can’t stop looking at it. He stares at the curry stain until he goes cross-eyed to avoid looking at Osamu.

After a while, Rintarou’s brain sizzles, sparks, and dies like a plug in a socket. “Hey,” he says, setting down his pencil. “Wanna get out of here?”

Osamu’s gaze doesn’t budge from his textbook. “I’m busy.”

Atsumu looks up. “I’m not.”

“Yeah, but you won’t work well after so long,” Rintarou reasons, ignoring Atsumu completely. “I can already see your eyes glazing over.”

Osamu looks up and blinks in exhaustion. “Where d’ya wanna go?”

Rintarou thinks of the convenience store, its shelves stocked high with Jinro Chamisul soju, and he grins.

━━━━━━

They end up on a street just past campus grounds. A park and a club intersect at the traffic light. Atsumu abandoned them somewhere near the third crosswalk they passed, probably knocked out on a bench outside the cafe. 

They’re both giggly and tipsy like this, the strawberry soju slush from earlier thick and syrupy on their tongues. Osamu trips over Rintarou’s shoelace and laughs.

For a second, his face is frozen in delight, as alcohol-manufactured as it is; the dimple in his cheek pops out, a flame alights in his smile, and Rintarou’s alcohol-soaked brain goes on high alert.

“You look nice when you laugh,” Rintarou tells him, words slurring. “You have a good face.” Alcohol has always made him either braver or more stupid. Maybe both. It seems to be leaning into the latter today.

“Thanks,” Osamu says. “Yer face is good too.”

“I know,” replies Rintarou seriously. “My parents gave it to me.” He tries to press the button for the crosswalk and completely misses. “Fuck,” he says, ever eloquent.

Osamu grabs his hand and pushes the button for him. He swings their joined hands as they walk through the crush of cars, and Rintarou’s face, flushed from the soju, goes even pinker.

They make it to a patch of weeds, right where a small stone bridge begins over a shallow creek. A few more steps and they would have tumbled into the water. Long grasses surround the creek, and Osamu tugs on Rintarou’s hand, pulling him onto the bridge platform.

“Sunarin…” he whines, pulling the ‘n’ out like taffy. “Come sit down with me.” He plops himself on the tiny bench at the crest of the bridge and pats the space next to him.

There’s barely enough room for both of them to fit, so Rintarou ends up with his leg half-splayed across Osamu’s and his shoulder nestled into the crook of Osamu’s elbow.

“Are ya angry at me?” Osamu mumbles, closing his eyes.

“Am I what?” Rintarou asks. He rubs his face with a hand and wishes he hadn’t thrown away the soju bottle when there was still an inch of liquid left at the bottom. 

“Angry at me,” Osamu repeats. “You seem sad. And mad.”

Rintarou picks at a fraying seam on his jeans. “Don’t say it.”

Osamu giggles. “Smad.”

“I’m not—” he pauses. “I’m not smad at you.” The water in the creek rushes beneath their feet, cobblestones blocking out some of the sounds but the quiet blanket of dusk failing to hide the rest. Rintarou wonders dimly if the fish are doing alright down there.

“Ya won’t look at me,” Osamu says, twisting to face Rintarou.

Rintarou looks away. It’s like instinct, now; second nature. He’s trained his body to do it, but sometimes his heart still rebels at the action.

“See?”

“It’s not on purpose.”

“And yer whole thing ‘bout love in Titanic,” Osamu begins. “I dunno what was up with that.”

“I was acting like an idiot that day,” Rintarou dismisses, seeing the situation for what it is in a brief moment of lucidity—Osamu’s head is rested in the curve of Rintarou’s neck, cheeks red and the heat from his face radiating into Rintarou’s shirt fabric. Osamu makes a sound and blows a raspberry on his collarbone. “I’m not drunk enough for this.”

“I’m serious,” Osamu responds, tipping his chin up boldly. “If I did somethin’ wrong, I wanna know.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Rintarou answers faintly. He stares ahead, where now the sun is dipping behind a bend in the creek, moonlight spreading over the water in slashes of silver mist. “I’m being stupid.”

“You’re never stupid, Rin,” Osamu responds, his voice almost impossibly gentle.

He swallows hard and scuffs the sole of his shoe against stone. “That’s debatable.”

Osamu looks him straight in the eye, the brown rings of his irises dark as earthshine. They’re so close their noses nearly brush. “Is it?”

Rintarou nods silently, eyes locked onto Osamu’s.

“Recently someone told me the friend I’ve been in love with for years has a crush on someone else,” Osamu tells him candidly. “I should be happy for them and I know they deserve this, but I can’t help wishin’ they chose me instead.”

Rintarou hates how much it sounds like his own life.

Even if Yamazaki Kimiko has picked someone else, Osamu will never choose Rintarou to replace her. Knowing he can’t even be a stand-in hurts more than anything else.

Osamu’s lashes fan out across the bold, striking slope of his cheekbones. “How mad d’ya think they would be if I kissed them, even if it was just s’posed to be a goodbye? Would they hate me, Rin?” 

Rintarou gulps. “What are you…” 

Osamu’s fingers curl into the hair at the nape of his neck and he kisses Rintarou, honest and open and painfully earnest. It’s nothing more than a pillowy press, a question and a promise. His eyes are unfocused when they pull apart.

“Is this…can I do this?” he whispers, always, always so careful, throwing caution to the wind in case it tosses him off course.

Instead of answering, Rintarou cups his jaw and fits their lips together again. It tastes like strawberry soju and mistakes unmade. It tastes like he’ll mourn this feeling for the rest of his life. Osamu’s mouth goes slack and Rintarou licks into it lazily.

“D’ya wanna take this back home?” Osamu mumbles. 

Rintarou only groans in reply.

They make it back to their apartment with a navigation app, tottering through the campus streets as if they still have some semblance of dignity. There’s a syrup spot on Osamu’s chin that Rintarou licks off before they even get in the door. 

They fit the keys in the lock and tumble through, laughing too loud. In a matter of hours, Rintarou will regret this. In a matter of hours, he’ll curse past-Rintarou for the string of bad decisions that led to him ending up in bed with Miya Osamu. In a matter of hours, the unease will consume him; while he’s wiping the dried spit off his face and the vomit from his chin, while he’s staring into the bathroom mirror, wondering if he’s fucked up the best friendship of his life. 

Right now he chalks his eagerness up to the alcohol tearing through his bloodstream and falls back on the sofa, offering up all of himself, exposing every last weak spot for Osamu to take advantage of.

Rintarou won’t be surprised if the landlord comes knocking tomorrow morning, but Osamu is planting hot, desperate kisses on his neck and he can’t bring himself to care.

━━━━━━

Here’s what Rintarou remembers about Miya Osamu: he was an awkward kid with scabby knees and a chubby face, head too big for his shoulders and arms surprisingly strong for his stature. A dimple on his right cheek, brows thick and shapely.

Rintarou remembers Osamu growing, too, through their three years at Inarizaki—starting to fit into his limbs and his shoulders filling out to match the rest of his body. Connecting the dots, colouring in the spots left blank before. Osamu bleached his hair gray to stand out from Atsumu. The colour made him look softer.

There was no seismic shift from a friendship to a crush. There was never an earth-shattering moment where Rintarou looked at him and thought, I want you to be next to me for the rest of my life, but that might have made for a better story.

It was more of a slow-moving disease working through his bones. Carving cracks into his heart, breaking apart the ground beneath his feet until he was split into both sides of a canyon. 

It was gradual but irrevocable in the same way that Osamu is.

The one rule is that Miya Osamu does not and will never want him back. This is a single law, the sole precedent, the constant in the quadratic formula. This is the grounding force. Osamu looks at Rintarou the same way he always has, and the world keeps turning.

Because Rintarou is the secondary role, the deuteragonist to Osamu’s protagonist, six feet of bad posture and collateral damage. No matter how much he feels like it sometimes, he’s not in a fucking movie. They’re never going to kiss in the rain or hold hands on the bow of a ship while Celine Dion croons in the background. 

He’s going to drown, and Miya Osamu won’t be there to catch him.

This is another caveat of life as a supporting character: the only thing he can’t do is find love with anyone else.

As Osamu scatters kisses on his jawline, lips alcohol-stained and eyes unfocused, Rintarou tosses the rules to the wayside. He forgets about the aftershocks. 

This is the kind of dream that feels real at the moment and slips away in a fog after the rain stops. 

This is the kind of song that’s over before you know it, giving you something you know you can’t keep, burying it deep in your chest, and widening the wound until your body welcomes another stab of pain like it's liquid fire, like it's water slipping down a dry throat.

The dream pauses, rewinds, starts from the beginning. Rintarou leans up to kiss Osamu harder, and he feels whole again.

━━━━━━

One day, Rintarou thinks, when he’s old and alone and Osamu has left to live out the rest of his years with someone who will love him in a way he wants them to, he might go looking for Osamu again, just to prove they’re both still here. Just to show himself the dream hasn’t ended yet. 

Maybe Osamu will remember him. Maybe he’ll remember that he knew Suna Rintarou, once, and that Rintarou looked at him as if he hung the stars in the sky. 

He’ll reach out and say hello. 

Maybe Rintarou will say it back.

As much as Rintarou’s grief stems from an inability to adapt to new situations, a large part of it is because he’s as selfish as he is desperate.

Because sometimes the secondary character wishes they could find love too, and sometimes Rintarou wants to be more than a mere logical fallacy. 

Sometimes he wants to be more than collateral damage.

━━━━━━

Miya Osamu, wing spiker with a devilish smile and a talent for spewing profanity so filthy, it would make a sailor blush.

Miya Osamu, sixteen years old and one of the best volleyball players in the country to boot: tennis shoes that leaked in the rain, knocking on Rintarou’s bedroom window at eleven pm holding a bag of fried chicken in his hand.

Osamu, wing spiker, sixteen-year-old boy, and long-time owner of Rintarou’s heart. Osamu, who snuck out of their hotel room at third-year Interhighs and came back with five different kinds of cupcakes. 

Osamu, who once asked Rintarou if he’d ever wanted someone so much he would run himself into the ground to see them, a pickup vehicle on its last legs, an inch of gasoline left in the fuel tank. Who sang along to the songs on the TV commercials, off-key and missing half the rhythms.

Osamu in their shared apartment, going through a mid-university crisis at the ripe age of twenty. Shuffling around in flannel slippers, fingers wrapped around a mug with the Inarizaki logo poorly embossed into it.

Osamu biting into a KitKat; Miya Osamu, a synonym of three AM KFC runs and frantic late-night studying sessions, who first pointed out FREE THE CHICKENS.

Osamu who, when he was drunk and laughing his ass off in a Tokyo hotel room, told Rintarou they were like binary stars; two suns orbiting a common point, feeding off each other, eclipsing one another in turn, so close they might seem like one bright sunspot if someone was too far to see properly.

Miya Osamu, pushing Rintarou onto the mattress where they spilled Orange Fanta on their moving-in day. Starvation wide and blown in his pupils, skin moonlit, arms veined. A birthmark on the side of his hip that looked like a crescent moon, one Rintarou put his mouth to and memorized the shape of.

Osamu: love is the point of everything.

Osamu, creaky mattress springs and a shoebox bedroom, kisses falling like meteorites.

You don’t have enough faith in the rest of the world.

Osamu, punch-drunk on sunsets and watermelon seltzer, making choice after choice strung along on a necklace of regret.

Or me.

Miya Osamu and Suna Rintarou, binary stars.

There’s a primary and a secondary star in a binary star system, a star A and B; one always brighter than the other. One gives away its energy until it’s left with nothing at all. The other takes, takes, takes—it swells and intensifies like an august moon, like the pinprick of a sun over the horizon.

Somewhere along the line, the switch flips.

When you’ve given everything you have, what are you left with but your own body? Where does the switch flip? When does the fuel tank run empty? 

A boy, and a name. A bucket of chicken. A sinking ship and a life with no point. A self-sustaining force living on its own greed, feeding off hunger until even that is gone.

Until even starvation feels too heavy to carry.

━━━━━━

Rintarou wakes up the next day in Osamu’s bed, the smell of fresh laundry and eucalyptus shampoo surrounding him. The duvet is warm, but the other side of the bed is empty when he rolls over.

Rintarou’s tongue feels like sandpaper on the roof of his mouth. He barely manages to fall out of bed and lurch into the bathroom before he’s emptying his stomach into the toilet. It’s disgusting, but he rests his forehead on the rim of the toilet seat to catch his breath. Once everything has been expelled from his body, he stands up and glances at the mirror.

He looks like death. There’s a strand of hair stuck in his mouth and he spits it out, but the stringy, stale feeling remains. He’s wearing the same shirt from last night; it’s inside-out and backwards. 

Rintarou cringes at the sight of a purple bruise on his clavicle. When he pulls the shirt collar down, he finds three more, all scattered in a line like a clutch of comets.

His head pounds like the hammer game at a carnival, a dull, throbbing infection that starts at the focus point and spreads outward. He digs around in the drawer for aspirin and pops one in his mouth.

Once he’s regained control of his limbs enough to walk in a straight line, he opens the door and walks into the kitchen.

Osamu’s curled up into a ball on the couch. He looks almost as bad as Rintarou; his face is a faint shade of gray and there’s spit drying on his cheek, but at the very least he’s wearing all his clothes properly.

While Rintarou fills a glass with tap water to chug, Osamu blinks his eyes open. His voice is scratchy and thick with sleep. “Sunarin?” he murmurs, holding a sofa cushion to his chest.

“Go back to sleep,” Rintarou says across the kitchen counter. “I’ll wake you up later.” Osamu complies. The movement tugs his shirt up; a few bruises are strewn across the jut of his hip. Rintarou sucks in air through his teeth.

He busies himself with refilling his water twice, three, four times as Osamu snores on the couch. This would be the perfect time to leave and never show his face again out of embarrassment; it’s early enough that people wandering the streets are few and far between, and there’s a mid-morning lull enveloping the campus, swaths of leafy green around the buildings and students half-asleep as they walk into their Sunday lectures.

He doesn’t get any more time to contemplate this possibility, because Osamu sits up straight, sounding significantly less tired, and says, “We should talk.”

Even like this, bangs plastered to his forehead, eyes only half-open, complexion ashen and skin washed out, he’s still beautiful. His pyjama shirt has a rip in the sleeve. Rintarou’s heart shudders in his rib cage.

Rintarou shuffles to the couch and sits down, wrapping his hands around his mug of tea. “We should.”

“D’ya wanna go first?”

“Okay,” Rintarou responds, letting out his breath all in a whoosh. “Did we…”

“I don’t think we did anythin’,” Osamu says slowly. “‘Cause I remember wakin’ up real early and comin’ to sleep on the couch instead.”

Rintarou nods. “I’m really sorry,” he supplies weakly. “I’ll understand if you don’t think we should…I can move out,” he says. “I don’t want this to be awkward for either of us.”

Osamu frowns, then his brow smooths out. “I mean—if that’s what you’d rather do.”

“Do you want me to?” Rintarou asks. It feels like they’re playing the same game by different rules, skirting around the answer, searching and coming up empty-handed. They never intersect, like parallelism on two planes.

Osamu shakes his head. “No, but I wouldn’t be angry if ya thought it was best fer both of us. Since ya know now ‘bout…” he flicks a piece of lint off his shoulder. “Everythin’.”

“About what?” Rintarou mutters, spitting the words out too harshly. “About the fact that you’re in love with someone else?”

Osamu stares at him, mouth slightly open. “‘Scuse me?”

Rintarou scrapes a scab off his elbow. “Never mind.”

“No, I wanna hear,” Osamu insists, his voice growing in intensity. “You think I’m in love with someone else?”

“You don’t have to rub it in,” he snaps. “I can’t—it’s none of your business.”

“Seein’ as yer talkin’ ‘bout who I’m in love with, I think you’ll find it’s definitely my business.”

Rintarou bites back a snarky answer. “Please drop it.”

“I’m not gonna fucking drop it.” He sounds angry, but more than that: desperate.

“Atsumu told me you had a crush on someone else,” Rintarou blurts out, wishing he could melt into the dust bunny-clad carpet. “And he asked me if I would help convince you to confess. I tried,” he says, his voice cracking embarrassingly on the last syllable. “I tried. I really did, but I didn’t know what to do. Every time I just ended up thinking about how much I wished it was me instead.”

Osamu’s jaw clenches like he’s trying to hold back a curse word. “I’ll kill ‘Tsumu,” he mutters. He looks up at Rintarou. “Sunarin, that’s not…I wasn’t gonna confess to someone else.”

“What the hell were you going to do then?” he asks, his patience running dry.

Osamu lets out a laugh, a little helpless. “I was tryna figure out how to confess to you,” he answers finally.

Rintarou swallows. “You. You what?”

“I wanted to tell ya how I felt,” Osamu says. “I kinda—um. I think this is where I’m s’posed to tell ya I’ve been in love with you since second year of high school.”

Rintarou is going to throttle Atsumu with his bare hands. “Can you…repeat that? I don’t think it’s sunken in,” he mumbles faintly, staring at the ground. His slipper has a hole in the big toe.

Osamu uses a gentle finger to tip his chin up and locks their gazes together. His expression is unerringly sincere. “I’ve been in love with you for years,” he repeats clearly. “I told ‘Tsumu ‘cause he kept buggin’ me about it, and I…fuck.”

“What?”

“God, this—didja tell him ya couldn’t help anymore?”

Rintarou nods. His brain feels like it’s moving through syrup. “I thought it was a conflict of interest,” he whispers. “Because it was stupid of me to pretend I was helping you out with your crush when all I wanted was to be that crush.”

Osamu laughs. “Good thing you were,” he says. “I think ‘Tsumu took it to mean ya were into someone else. I was pretty damn heartbroken when I heard that.” His hand falls away from Rintarou’s jaw and rests on the slope of his arm, a chuckle slipping from his lips. “It felt like the end of the world.”

Rintarou inhales, permeating his lungs with air. “Third year, the day before Spring Interhigh. Do you remember when you knocked on my bedroom window at two in the morning?”

“Yeah,” Osamu replies, a grin stretching across his mouth. “I thought yer parents were gonna catch me and kick me out.”

“They didn’t…don’t care about that kind of stuff,” Rintarou says. “I think that was when I realized how scary it would be, going out into the world without you. Like everything happened before then, but that was the day it started to click.”

“I’ve always wanted you,” Osamu replies, reaching out and catching Rintarou’s hands in his. 

They stay there like that, hand in hand, a comfortable weight pressing into Rintarou’s palm. A sleepy apartment, and a bucket of fried chicken. Strawberry soju slush. Two forces. Once self-dependent but now symbiotic.

Miya Osamu, kind and filled with kindness. A boy who’s been in Rintarou’s life for years and then some. Always lovable and always loved. 

Osamu and Rintarou, binary stars.

Parallel suns born into a binary star system have been observed to merge in the past; to spiral in, ever closer; as if by some irresistible pull, as if by a greater power. As if the universe has decided a miracle was long overdue. 

In absence of another outcome, they swirl together and explode as a supernova.

Osamu’s lips tilt up. “Hey,” he murmurs. “You good?” It’s more than a question; it’s an affirmation and a promise, a signal that the worst is undeniable and it comes paired with the best. That inevitability doesn’t mean incapacity.

Rintarou’s lips curl up. “Yeah. I’m good.” 

The sun is beginning to shimmer through the blinds, projecting rays of light across the dust-speckled rug. Osamu leans in and envelopes Rintarou in his arms, burying his face in Rintarou’s shoulder and patting his back. “We’re good. We’re good.”

And they are. That’s all that matters.

━━━━━━

The weekend after Osamu’s Intro to Statistics exam, he and Rintarou take up residence on the sticky leather couch in Atsumu’s dorm.

Rintarou rests his cheek on Osamu’s chest. He hears their pulses thud in time and smiles small.

“Hey,” he says eventually, scratching away pieces of foam from the cracked leather sofa. “What was the favour Kimiko needed help with?”

Osamu lets out a tiny sigh. “She had a thing for some girl in the same Food Safety course as me. Asked if I could put in a good word for her. There was somethin' with a birthday card?”

Rintarou’s chest loosens suddenly. He breathes easier. Pale foam bits from the sofa fall onto the ugly carpet. “And?”

“I dunno. I haven’t heard any updates since I gave Kimiko her number.”

Rintarou hums. “A shame.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

The lock turns. Keys clack outside, and Rintarou resists the urge to groan.

He doesn’t turn to the door, but he hears something clattering to the floor, then Atsumu’s whining voice.

“‘Samu, what’re ya doin’ here, I told ya—Rin?”

Rintarou lifts a lazy hand. “Afternoon.”

Atsumu sputters and picks up his phone from where he’s dropped it. “I don’t remember this happenin’. When did ya—” he scrunches up his nose in disgust, “—start dating?”

Rintarou hums. “Last week.”

Just as quickly, Atsumu’s expression of distaste makes way for delight. “So ya finally understood the hints I was givin’ ya?” he asks, addressing Rintarou.

“No. This had nothing to do with you.”

“Sunarin! Rude,” Atsumu huffs, sitting down with a creak on the sofa. “I thought bein’ in love was s’posed to make you nicer.”

“To him, maybe,” answers Rintarou. He pokes Osamu’s chest with a finger.

Osamu pats him on the back. “Yer already nice enough, Rin.”

“This is awful,” Atsumu groans. He flops against the leather. “I regret even rootin’ fer you two in the first place.”

“Too bad,” Rintarou says placidly.

Atsumu wheels on him and jabs a finger in his direction. “And you. I thought ya liked someone else!”

Rintarou scowls. “That’s your fault.”

“Ya were bein’ vague as hell with yer stupid ‘conflicts of interest’ and shit—”

“Because I thought you knew what I was talking about. Not my fault you didn’t just tell me you wanted ‘Samu to ask me out.”

Atsumu looks affronted. “I was tryna be subtle,” he mumbles, rolling his eyes.

“Trust me, it didn’t work.”

Osamu looks down at him and pats his head. His lashes are dark against his cheeks, eyes sleepy, the sound of his voice rumbling in his chest when he talks. “Get some rest, Sunarin.”

Rintarou obeys. The last thing he hears before he slips away is a whispered ‘you two are horrible’ from Atsumu, and maybe he’s overtired but he hears a note of genuine satisfaction in Atsumu’s words.

Osamu smooths down Rintarou’s hair and murmurs to Atsumu, “Get used to it. He’s gonna be stickin’ around for a while.”

It takes Rintarou a second to realize Osamu is talking about him.

There’s a smile in Osamu’s voice as he says, “At least, I hope he will be.”

Rintarou hopes so too.

━━━━━━

When they get home that day, Osamu and Rintarou fall asleep on the squeaky couch in their cramped apartment, arms wrapped around each other. 

Rintarou blinks his eyes open in the morning to the sight of Osamu snoring. A tiny smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. 

People speak about how slim of a chance this is, falling and staying in love with your childhood best friend. The deck doesn’t usually stack in your favour; one instance becomes an anomaly and an outlier. An aberration.

There are so many deciding factors, shifting and locking in place simultaneously; how you grow up and how you grow out, how much you like the person you become and the person they become. Whether the things you loved about them will turn into pet peeves, whether their endearing side habits will become annoyances, and whether you will make the choice to keep going regardless.

No one expects you to make it work. When you do, it's called either a miracle or a relationship doomed to early apoptosis.

Miya Osamu is a notable exception.

Rintarou has seen all of him. His whining and bickering and codependency, his inability to let bygones be bygones, his deep-rooted fear of never quite being enough. 

He’s seen Osamu’s gentleness and patience. His ratty slippers. The ticklish spot on his neck where he likes Rintarou to kiss him.

Rintarou has witnessed Miya Osamu’s worst and his best, and he chooses to love both. He's past the event horizon; he's traversed the boundary of the black hole and gravitational collapse can no longer hurt him.

Osamu stirs and glances up at Rintarou. “Mornin’,” he whispers, a half-smile on his face.

Rintarou laughs quietly. “Morning to you, too.”

“You ready for today?”

Rintarou nods. Normally he’d say I wish or give me a few more minutes or I hope so, but with Osamu, the answer will never be anything but: “Always.”

You can’t speak of love without speaking also of ruin, and also of happiness. They circle each other for millennia. Binary stars in orbit, because both, at their extremes, are indefinable. And both, in their worst forms, seem like messy, mottled nebulas of unsaid words floating in space.

Sometimes they collide. Sometimes they crash together and fall apart in a cosmic act of realignment. Either way, they’re connected by the same gravitational core.

Because a life without love isn’t much of a life at all, and love follows us wherever we go. Because love can rip us apart, but it can also make us whole. Because it can—and will—change us, whether we like it or not.

Because love is the point.