Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the dingy yellow light of the cab’s back seat, Tadashi flips through his conference notes, licking his lips thoughtfully as he pages through the information he’d gathered that week. Eventually, he tucks them away and smiles to himself wearily—it had been a good week, he thinks, especially since it had culminated with his research proposal getting approved, and his advising professor commending him on his publication acceptance. It makes him giddy to think about it; all the hours he’d been putting in feeding information into database after database, jigsawing genomes together base by base in front of a computer had paid off, and he was excited to go home and tell Kei all about it.

He jiggles his leg a bit in the seat, suddenly very restless with the desire to be home. He’s not sure how he could have managed if he’d not snagged a last minute flight opening and had to wait another whole day to go home; he misses his bed and Kei terribly. It feels like, between the conference, his work, and his research, he’s barely had any time with Kei at all.

It’s late, but he thinks Kei will still be up. They can talk over hot chocolate and the box of strawberry cake that’s resting in his lap, and he can snuggle into the blond’s arms and sleep. He can listen to Kei talk about his work and catch up with the office gossip even though he’s never met the people involved and smooth his hands over Kei’s tense shoulders and they can go out on a date for the first time in ages. He can’t wait to tell Kei about the conference and his pending publication; Kei’s the only person who can keep up with his technical prattle these days even though he’d quit his own training a few years ago. The idle planning makes him feel warm and happy; it’s been hard, recently, for them to be on the same page, but he thinks that now that everything’s settled down with his research and his thesis well underway for his doctorate’s, it can be smoothed out and they can work out the rougher places, and they’ll be better for it.

He slips out of the taxi and passes the driver the fare, bidding him goodnight with a sleepy smile. There are lights still on in their little townhouse; the living room light and the bedroom light glowing in the late night’s darkness. He beams to himself, glad that he’d been able to catch Kei before he went to sleep. Small things like that, that he can still predict Kei’s behaviors, even after all those years, make him happy.  

He slides his key easily into the lock and quietly drops his bags at the entry way. He pauses, noticing an unfamiliar pair of shoes turned messily over, like they were kicked off, next to Kei’s regular loafers. It’s strange; the next thing he notices, when he goes to slide the cake into the fridge, are all the bottles of beer littering the table. Kei’s not a teetotaler by any means, but it’s still too much for him to drink alone. He pads out into the living room and frowns.

Something’s wrong; it churns heavy in his stomach, but he ignores it and carefully steps around the clothes on the floor. He chews on his lip and pads quietly up the stairs; he doesn’t have to strain his ears to hear it. He wishes he had to; he wishes he didn’t hear it at all, really.

It’s the sound of heavy breathing and the rustle of sheets. Moans. The sounds of two people having sex.

Someone is having sex in his and Kei’s room, and he can tell by the voices that one of those people is Kei. He thinks that maybe, if he was a stronger person, he would stride in and stop it. He thinks, that after ten years of a sometimes, admittedly, off-and-on relationship with Kei, he would be brave enough to break it up. He’s not.

Instead, he peers through the cracked door and watches, shame burning hot behind his sternum. Kei’s laid out flat on the sheets, writhing as he’s pressed into; Tadashi swallows back nausea as he watches his boyfriend submit himself to the man crouched above him, a dark-haired man that is distinctly not him.

He recognizes the other man, and he feels his hands start to shake as he watches Kei’s body twist and strain, opening up nicely in ways that Tadashi doesn’t think he ever got without substantial resistance. It’s Kuroo. Of course it’s Kuroo. He’s always been afraid of this, deep in the back of his mind.

He’s always been, even when he and Kei hold hands or kiss or fight. He remembers how, if it weren’t for him, and his and Kei’s preexisting attachment, Kei and Kuroo could have had a real chance to get together. He remembers the tension, he remembers the flirting and how the rest of their teammates barely believed that he and Kei were a thing, compared to how much raw chemistry and tension Kei had with the older boy. He remembers Kuroo’s crush on Kei and Kei’s reciprocal crush and he remembers being willing to just step back and give up. He remembers how much it hurt to find out that Kei liked someone else that wasn’t him, even though they were still together; he remembers the feeling being much like this burning shame, and thinking that nothing else could hurt as much as finding out that, as they were cuddling on the sofa for a movie night, Kei was texting someone else he liked.

He was wrong then, because there are worse hurts. He’d been brave then, and had told Kei that they could break up, if that’s what would make him happy. He’s not brave now.

This shouldn’t be happening, he thinks as he watches Kei loop his arms around Kuroo’s shoulders, mouth falling open with each little sharp gasping moan. He’d given Kei the choice all those years ago: Kuroo or him, or neither, if he wanted. And Kei had chosen him. Kei had turned down Kuroo despite liking and wanting him because he was dating Tadashi, because Tadashi adored him. Because he’d had previous ties and he liked them both. Because he didn’t want to hurt Tadashi.

It seemed like that didn’t matter much this time around, that he and Tadashi were lovers and roommates and that it’d been almost a year since their last break-up/make-up cycle. He knew that during the times when they were separated, Kei saw other people, and that was alright, sort of; but they always got back together—Kei had always said that they were easy together, that they’d always come back together. Tadashi thought everything was fine—a little strained at times, but just fine.

It doesn’t look like it. It looked like everything was so, so wrong. And the way Kuroo’s handling Kei, it doesn’t seem like it’s a one night, drunken affair. Not that that wouldn’t hurt, but that idea is a lot less painful than realizing that Kei’s been sleeping with Kuroo behind his back for what seems like a while now.

He wonders if it’s always been like this, with Kei and Kuroo fucking in Kei and Tadashi’s bed when Tadashi’s away at conferences or staying the night in the lab. If Kei’s not on business trips when he says he is, or if his late nights aren’t spent working. He wonders how long Kei hasn’t loved him enough to be faithful. To be honest with him. He wonders if Kuroo even knows that he and Kei are back together—he doesn’t think Kuroo knows, because back in high school, Kuroo had been very careful to not put himself in situations where he and Kei’s interactions could be misconstrued. Tadashi could never bring himself to resent Kuroo—he can’t even now, because Kuroo had always been so nice to him.

He thinks maybe it heart wouldn’t feel like it was tearing itself into two if Kei had been upfront with him. With them both. He thinks it’s lucky he doesn’t throw up as he watches them kiss. How long had it been since he and Kei last kissed like that?

Now that he thinks about it… He doesn’t think he can remember, and that breaks his heart just as much as watching does.

Tadashi’s mouth is dry and he can only barely swallow back tears as he backs slowly away from the door. He gathers his stuff back up and flees, locking the door as quietly as he can. He thinks it’s a miracle that he doesn’t cry until he’s sitting on a cheap hotel bed.

He doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t even know what options there are; all he knows is the shitty pattern on the hotel carpet and the rough scratch of cheap Kleenex against his face, and when he’s exhausted that box, the wet patch on his shirt because he can’t gather the energy up to get a towel or toilet paper.

He doesn’t want to confront Kei over it. He doesn’t want to admit that he saw it and ran away, doesn’t want to know the exact reasons why he’s not enough anymore—maybe he never was.

Kei’s not like him—Kei can fall in and out of love with anyone. Tadashi has to know a person exceedingly well to open up; it took five years of constant company for him to fall in love with Kei, and even then, it was slow and awkward and fumbling. He’s not the best at being intimate the way Kei likes, but they both tried to work it out—they had worked it all out, he thought. Kei’s been his first in everything: first friend, first crush, first love. He wanted their relationship to be his last, too. He wanted them to be together for their entire lives.

But he always knew Kei wasn’t like him; that’s why he’d let Kei choose. Maybe it was a choice he should have given more than once; maybe he should have left Kei when the only reason that came for why he stuck around back then was that they were already dating.  Or when Kei came back with a shrug and calls it easy when Tadashi struggles along with it.

He’d known that ‘I like you both’ and ‘I don’t want to hurt you’ didn’t mean ‘I love you more’; it meant Kei pitied him. But he’d turned a blind eye to that and fooled himself into thinking that Kei had chosen him not out of pity, but out of love. He thought they’d been happy, too. But happy people don’t get drunk and sleep with people while their lover was away.

But he’d really thought they were okay. That Kei was okay with what he’d chosen and that they were in love. He thought Kei loved him, really loved him, had grown to love him more than he did at that time, and had grown to respect him. The idea that Kei didn’t brought on a new wave of sobs that shook his body and made his face and neck hurt. The sound was loud and ugly and shameful; he buried his face into the dingy pillows and sobbed until he was lightheaded and dizzy from the lack of air. He felt himself slowly go limp, the struggle to breathe overwhelming the hurt and shame in his head and he let himself fall into a daze, rolling onto his back.

He just has to pretend he’s never seen it. Never walked in on it. Let Kei clean the sheets and send Kuroo home and wash the smell away. He just has to go home and be happy with what he’s gotten. Come home earlier, cook dinner more often. He just has to be better.

He just has to remember to pace himself at school and work so he won’t so tired, so he can catch Kei’s interest again. Make an effort to put out—it’s not like he has a strong dislike of sex, he just doesn’t think it’s as great as everyone else, even Kei, makes it out to be. Occasionally, he and Kei will have really, really good sex, but Tadashi gets more enjoyment out of the fact that Kei likes it than the act itself. But, if it was sex that pulled Kei out of being faithful, he’d do it. Or… maybe…

He just has to share.

He doesn’t want to share. He’s never, ever, been okay with sharing Kei with more people than he has to. But he’s been sharing for a while now, he thinks—Kei’s heart hasn’t really been his since high school, and he’s dealt with it just fine until now. He just has to… keep doing that.

He closes his eyes and breathes out, air rattling in his throat. It’s a wet nasty sound and he hates it. Doesn’t want to make it again. He thinks about what would happen if he just… stopped breathing. Didn’t go home. Didn’t call. Kept the pillow to his face past the point where his lungs started screaming and he normally rolled over. Filled the bathtub up and slipped down under the water and let himself fall asleep in it and suck in water instead of air.

Utterly pathetic.

He knows he can’t do it; he’s not strong enough to. Or maybe he’s too strong to, he’s not sure. But the idea is certainly appealing.

He falls asleep in his clothes in the early morning and sleeps until his aching head and dry mouth wake him up. He takes a shower and resists the urge to crouch under the spray and dig his nails through his flesh; as it is, the insides of his palms hold four crescent-shaped gouges each, from digging his nails into them as he cried. That, he can pass off as something he did in the nervous hours before he had to present his research…

That is, if Kei notices.

He throws the cake into the trash on his way to check out of the hotel as well as the trinkets he’d gotten Kei on his trip. Souvenirs and treats, his little habits to spoil Kei with his affection, were not enough to keep Kei, so there’s no use in bothering. The cakes always go stale before they get eaten, and the trinkets get put away anyway; he’s not going to waste time like that.  

When he goes back to the little townhouse they share, Kei’s not even there. The place is immaculately clean. Any evidence of Kei’s bedroom transgressions is gone, and had Tadashi come home when he had originally planned, he knew he wouldn’t have suspected a thing.

The only oddness is the emptiness of the house; he remembers that Kei said that he’d have the day off. Tadashi realizes that even though he feels like he’s been scraped raw on the inside, he’d still wanted to spend the day with Kei, looked forward to it, even as he was crying his eyes out.

He tentatively pulls his phone out, empty of any messages from Kei himself, and dials.

“Tsukki?” he asks quietly when Kei picks up.

“What?”

The blond’s tone is terse, impatient. Tadashi feels tears well up in his eyes again, and he doesn’t know how he’s going to manage pretending he doesn’t know. Because he knows now, and can’t operate under the illusion that they were just fine; Kei isn’t frustrated with his job, he’s frustrated with him, and he knows this now. “S-sorry,” Tadashi murmurs, “I just… I’m home?”

“I’m at work,” Kei says with a sigh.

“I… I figured, but—”

“Then why did you call?”

“I thought you had the day off,” Tadashi says plaintively, “I just… wanted to see where you were. I… I’d just thought that we could… spend the day together?”

“I’m at work,” Kei repeats again. “…Did you expect me to pick you up from the airport or something?”

No, Tadashi thinks. But it would have been nice, he realizes. Kei used to. Kei used to be waiting for him when he came home… but that was years ago now, wasn’t it? It hurts. “No,” he says, throat tight. “I just thought you had the day off today?”

“I did,” Kei snaps. “But I had to come in: Overtime pays well and someone has to work a living pay between us.”

Tadashi feels his hands shake against the phone. He sits down hard on their sofa. “Tsukki, I’m sorry,” he breathes. He’s drowning, suffocating; the weight of this is going to kill him. He doesn’t even have to put the pillow over his face, fill the tub with water to do it. “I’m sorry. I m-meant it, th-though wh…when I offered to t-take up a-another j-job,” he whispers into the phone. He can’t keep the shake of tears out of his voice and he feels so ashamed, so stupid, when he hears Kei’s weary sigh. He never got any stronger than he was in high school.

This was why Kei never told him. Never made the choice; he was still something so fragile that he was pitied.

“It’s fine,” Kei murmurs, tone a bit softer. It’s coaxing. Tadashi can’t stand it.

“I wanted… to tell you differently,” Tadashi says, “But… they’re going to take me on full time. I’m not a work-study intern anymore.”

“That’s nice,” Kei hums quietly; Tadashi can hear keys clicking in the background. Kei’s gone back to work and has only half-heard what Tadashi said. That or he doesn’t care how big of a deal it is.

“So that’s going to be helpful, right, Tsukki?” he pleads. “S-so you can take more time off if you want to.”

“Yeah.”

Silence. Nothing more. Tadashi swallows. “Do… will you be home for dinner?”

“I guess.”

“Do you want me to make something?”

“I can pick up something on the way home,” Kei replies.

“I’d like to cook something,” Tadashi says firmly. Or as firmly as he can with his wavering voice.

“If you’re up to it, I guess,” Kei answers. The sound of his keyboard stops. “Are you okay?” he asks.

Tadashi is torn between answering honestly, that no, he’s not okay because he got home early last night and found Kei sleeping with another man and Kei’s not even really making an effort to pretend that he still cares, and being ecstatic that Kei’s noticed that something’s off about him.

He lies. “I’m just tired,” he says gently.

Maybe it’s not really a lie. He’s exhausted and worn down and he desperately wants Kei to be there for him. He wants to put his head in Kei’s lap and wrap his arms around the blond and bury his face against Kei’s stomach and sob. He wants to have his hair petted and cry himself to sleep and wake up in a bed untarnished by the presence of another person and listen to the list of things that Kei likes about him.

He hasn’t heard that list since they were undergrads, but he remembers it. He remembers every sleep-roughened syllable and the soft way Kei’s hands cupped his cheeks, thumbs feather-light over his skin.

Loyal. He’s always going to love Kei even when it’s hard, even when he shouldn’t. Patient. He was going to wait this out. Kind. He’s going to forgive Kei. Determined. It’s going to work. Positive. It’s hard, it’s so hard, but they’ve picked up pieces of their relationship before. Hard-working. He’ll make it work. Courageous. He’s going to face his own trembling fear and he’s going to fix it without ever having to mention what he saw.

“Then sleep. Don’t bother about dinner,” Kei sighs at him.

“No, I’ll make it,” Tadashi insists. “Tell me what you want.”

“Just make curry or something, I don’t know. Look, I have to go,” Kei says.

“I can do that… Tsukki,” he says softly. “…Kei, you know I love you, right?”

“Hmm,” is Kei’s only reply.

It hurts so much. Kei is not a liar, and his lack of response is more telling than anything so far. He feels the parts of himself that were still hanging on start to crumble. Tadashi whispers a quiet ‘I’ll see you tonight, then, work hard,’ into the silence and Kei’s curt ‘yeah’ fades into the dial tone.

It rings in Tadashi’s ears. He curls up onto the sofa and presses his face against the back cushions and wonders what it is that went wrong, and when. He feels worthless and stupid—for all of his degrees and credits, he can’t figure it out. Kei’s always had a way of making his courage and his intelligence dissipate.

He stares into the darkness of the cushions, fabric ticking his eyelashes until the blackness he sees is indistinguishable from the inside of his eyelids, and the next thing he knows is a hand shaking him.

“Yamaguchi, wake up.”

Tadashi opens his eyes, looking up at Kei. He sits up slowly, feeling drunk. “Was I asleep?”

Kei give him a look that Tadashi notes is mildly irritated. He glances at the clock on their mantle—it’s past eleven. He looks back at Kei, panic starting to rise in his throat; the blond is in his flannel pajama bottoms and a tee shirt, arms crossed and eyebrow crooked.

“Oh my god,” he breathes, running his hands through his hair. “Oh my god, Tsukki, I’m so sorry,” he whispers. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep like that—dinner, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, I picked up something anyway.”

“But I said I would cook dinner,” Tadashi said, confused.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Kei answered with a shrug. He folds his hands together; the motion isn’t lost on Tadashi. He tastes bile in the back of throat.

“What did you eat?”

“I just went out,” Kei answers, shrugging. “Take-out food, nothing big.”

Tadashi wonders if ‘out’ meant eating with Kuroo. He feels his face twist into something uncharacteristically ugly; he sees the flash of Kei’s eyes. “Look,” Kei says defensively, “You said you were tired. I would have just put it in the fridge if you’d cooked. There was enough for us both, but you were out. I only wanted to see if you wanted to come up to bed.”

Tadashi uncurls his fingers and forces his face to relax. “Okay,” he breathes. “Okay.” He settles back down on the sofa and pats the place next to him. “Let’s just sit, is that alright?”

Kei looks at him and sighs. He settles down next to Tadashi. It’s like sitting on the sofa with a stranger. Tadashi leans his head against Kei’s thin shoulder, warmth pooling against his cheek. He wants to touch Kei, feel the blond against him, snuggle into him and pretend; but he wants to give Kei space, because the tension in his shoulders feels like a live wire.

“How was your week?” he asks softly.

“The same,” Kei answers. “Work was tedious and obnoxious. No one thinks these days, they act like it takes actual brain cells to file paperwork.”

“Ah,” Tadashi murmurs. He doesn’t miss the bitterness in Kei’s voice, doesn’t miss the accusations in his tone. He wonders how he’s managed to miss it before. They sit in silence for a long time before Tadashi sits up and looks at Kei. “Tsukki… you’re not going to ask how the conference went?”

“It went badly, didn’t it?” Kei asked dismissively, “For you to be upset. I mean, you got your job, so it won’t matter. I won’t make you tell me.”

Tadashi feels offended. “It went really, really well! And even if it didn’t, I still want you to ask!”

“Well, I don’t really want to hear about it now,” Kei sighs, standing. “Come to bed.”

Tadashi stares at Kei, mouth falling open soundlessly. “You—you can at least pretend to care,” he whispers, standing from the couch. He can’t stop himself from shaking. “If you’re going to pretend to love me, don’t be half-assed about it.”

“What’s that?” Kei snaps, face turning red. He stands too, glaring at Tadashi. “Who the fuck do you think is paying for most of this, huh? What’s half-assed about that?”

“And I told you I didn’t have a problem working another job!”

“Except you said it in such a way that it was a fucking guilt trip, you know that? ‘I’d have to take time away from my research’,” he mocks, face curling into a sneer. “I would never hear the end of it if you got pulled away from your precious lab—not like there’s ever an end to you chattering on about it anyway. It was so damn quiet with you gone this week, it was wonderful,” he hisses. “I didn’t have to hear you rub it in that you were able to get into your grad program. Like you would have been able to without my help.”

Tadashi takes a step back, feeling like he’d been punched. “What?”

“You heard me. Don’t you ever realize what it feels like to listen to you, who’s mediocre at best, blabber on and on about what I could have had? While I’m stuck in this dead end office job, surrounded by idiots, working my ass off to support you through school?”

“But you… I thought you liked hearing about… I didn’t… You said you declined the offer into the program,” Tadashi whispers helplessly.

A dark look passes across Kei’s face, “I got rejected,” he says. “There wasn’t even an offer to decline.”

“I didn’t… I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, shows how much effort you put into this. If you had half a brain you would have realized,” Kei snarls, “So I don’t want to hear you bitching about being half-assed. You’re never home, and when you are, you’re tired and don’t do anything but talk about work. Do you know how tiring that is?”

“Is that why you’ve been cheating on me?” Tadashi asks softly. He didn’t ever want to have this fight. He didn’t know that Kei felt that way. He thought… He thought…

Kei’s face doesn’t change; he stays silent. It’s more damning than an answer.

“I saw you,” Tadashi confesses. “I came home last night, to surprise you. I saw you and Kuroo-san. …It’s not… it wasn’t a one-time slip up, was it?”

“No.”

“Why?” The question is barely a breath. It’s barely even a whimper. “I love you more than anything.”

“I doubt that,” Kei laughs. “Between me and your research, your career, what have you chosen so far? It’s always been that.”

“But you chose me.”

“Everyone makes choices they regret,” Kei says, shrugging. “I didn’t want to see that pathetic, broken look on your face. Like the world’s turned against you, and it’s anyone’s but your own fault it turned out this way. Like you’re the only one in the world hurting. You’ve never really given me any choices or any thought, it was always about what you wanted.”

Kei’s been miserable. He’s been resentful and spiteful and Tadashi has never noticed. “…how long?”

“Pardon?”

“How long has it been? …Since you… you stopped loving me?”

“Years,” Kei answers. “To be fair, that’s how long it’s been since you stopped, too.”

Tadashi nods, looking everywhere but Kei’s face. “I’ll… okay, yeah. I’ll… just… I’ll get my things then. Wh… what I can’t get by the end of the week, you can… do whatever with.”

“Did you not notice? We don’t spend time together, we don’t go on dates or have sex or kiss, and you’re acting like you didn’t ever notice?” Kei demands.

Tadashi shakes his head mutely and moves past Kei.

“There’s no way you can stay in Tokyo without my help,” Kei says calmly. “It’s not like roommates are any different than what we are now. And with your new position, it would be better.”

“I can’t,” Tadashi says, climbing the stairs robotically. It takes all of his concentration to put one foot in front of the other.

Kei hasn’t loved him in years; Kei hasn’t thought he was loved in years. He didn’t think there was anything left in him to break after last night, but it seemed there was.

“You won’t be able to afford it,” Kei says from the foot of the stairs, fingers clasped at his waist.

Tadashi looked over his shoulder and gave a shaking laugh. “I can’t take kindness from a stranger,” he says softly. Because that’s what they have become, he realizes: Strangers who had been sleeping in the same bed. Two actors in a play that he didn’t even realize was being staged.

He doesn’t voice the other thought, the quiet uneasy whisper in his mind that knew in order to leave, he had to leave everything. That in some sick way, he was trading Kei’s misery for his own.

He packs up his things. He takes a meager amount of clothing, toiletries, and his computer. He leaves his school things.

He doesn’t come back to get them. Kei leaves a voicemail a week later, and again two weeks later saying they’re there, that he’ll keep them for Tadashi to collect. He doesn’t. His resignation from the doctorate program is already finalized. He stares at his shoes as he explains to his research advisor that his money has run out, and that he can’t afford the program—that he can’t even afford an apartment anymore, not even with loans and the new position they offered him. That he’s so sorry; he relinquishes his research findings to the university. No one will ever know that it was he who pieced those things together, found the things he did; the research he worked so hard at will be published without his name on it at all.

It hurts him. Everything hurts him; his skin feels tight and sore like it does before the onset of the flu. Barest brushes against him on the street feel like knives on him; he’s hungry and tired and he has train tickets booked back home. He’s miserable.

But then again, Kei had been miserable for all that time.

He doesn’t think that trading his potential away will win him any favors from Kei. He doesn’t think of this as some romantic gesture to prove that he did love Kei more than school; it wasn’t a choice that Kei had offered to him. But he does think of it as atonement of a sort. Some way to wipe his guilt and misery away so he could start over again, so he won’t make the same mistakes again.

Except it never goes away.

He goes back home; his parents, who helped him pay for university and beyond, are furious with him. They practically disown him. He gets a month, tops, to find a new job and apartment—after that, they’ll kick him out.

He manages several part-time jobs and a very old one-room flat in Sendai. His parents close the door in his face as soon as he comes back with a lease and a work schedule. They do not call to check up on him; they do not answer his phone calls; they stop sending money like they did when he was in Tokyo.

He’s alone. No Kei. No research. No parents. He’s too ashamed to seek out his friends from high school—he knows they live and work in Sendai, too. He works each back to back job with a fear that one of them will duck into the convenience store, the used book store, the café, and see him. It eats him alive.

Life eats him alive. He had never realized just how much he’d gotten used to Kei taking care of him. How spoiled and short-sighted he’d been; but now, it consumes him.

Without someone to talk to, his anxiousness claws him open and he spends the few hours of sleep he can get awake with sore hands and feet and a churning stomach. It’s hard to sleep alone now, so used to Kei being there beside him. It’s hard to eat alone too. So he doesn’t, not much and not well. He doesn’t cook, the little kitchenette is too small, too rickety for him to bother with. Besides, he can’t stand putting just one serving of rice into the cooker. He eats cheap convenience store food and precooked rice. He knows, objectively, that he isn’t taking care of himself.

He feels himself getting shabbier and shabbier; he thinks his appearance hasn’t much changed, though. He’s thinner than he was, and his hair is longer: he just looks like any old gloomy twenty-something. But he feels shabby. He feels run down. He feels tired and achy and lonely. He thinks that he’ll get over it, and he’ll feel better one day.

He never truly does. But he convinces himself that he does, that he will.

Six months after moving to Sendai, he quits the late-night convenience store job and gets promoted in the bookstore. Money is still tight, but he doesn’t feel as worn thin. He thinks that maybe, one day, he’ll be comfortable like this. He might even be happy.

He gets a phone call from Hinata and listens to it on his break.

“Hey, what’s up with you and Tsukishima? We went to go visit you two, but he said you disappeared on him after breaking up! It’s weird, him not knowing where you are! And, like, he’s got this new girlfriend and—”

Tadashi hangs up, message not even half-listened to. After all that, and Kei didn’t even have the courtesy of getting together officially with Kuroo. It makes him sick and angry and every ounce of progress he feels like he made is gone.

So that’s all he was worth, in the end. And that’s all that Kuroo was worth, too.

He feels bad for the both of them.

The days start to blur together again, and before he knows it, a year has passed. He feels like he’s just making the motions of living, like his feet are dragging through mud. It’s not getting any better.

He accepts the timid confession from the girl from the nature and science section he occasionally chats with about biology. They date.

A few months pass. She dumps him.

More time passes; he accidentally stumbles across a volleyball game in the park and watches in absent envy for an hour before someone trots over and invites him to join. He sleeps with a middle blocker from a local college a few times before they get into a serious relationship with the captain of the girl’s team there. Alone again.

Always alone. No one wants him. He doesn’t amount to anything. He’s not worth amounting to anything.

Two years. He becomes the manager of the bookstore; he burns himself badly at the café and gets fired. He can’t sleep anymore. He forgets to eat, and stares up at the ceiling for hours before he comes to himself. Coffee keeps him running. Sometimes, he sits and can’t stop eating until he’s sick.  Hinata manages to track him down and is horrified to find him working in a used bookstore with two masters and half a doctorate’s program behind him.

He smiles and lies through his teeth and says this was what he wanted from his life, that he’s happy like this. Hinata doesn’t quite look like he believes it, but he just nods softly, brows drawn as they part ways.

He dates around. He sleeps around. He still feels scraped raw and alone and when he does sleep, he dreams about what went wrong with Kei. About what went wrong inside of him.

His clothes are threadbare at best. He buys more, but they’re all uncomfortable and itchy and drab. He finds himself wearing the same, now-often repaired, cable knit sweater that’s two sizes too large for him now every day. It’s comfortable, he tells himself.

But he remembers who bought it for him.

His newest companion is a pretty girl with bleached-blonde hair and a pixie cut. He hates himself every time he takes her hand and makes himself smile at her. This isn’t completing him. This doesn’t make himself feel like he’s worth anything.

He doesn’t love any of these people. But he’s lonely and he wants to break himself out of this misery. He wonders, even two years later, if this was why Kei slept with Kuroo, but never dated him. That maybe Kei was lonely, and needed to feel some sort of connection to a person. But Tadashi doesn’t feel connected to the people he makes himself sleep with. He doesn’t even enjoy the sex.

He gets calls from Hinata, Yachi, and even Kageyama. It’s time for their reunion, and they want him there. They beg him. His girlfriend doesn’t understand why he won’t go, but he simply says that there are people he doesn’t want to see there.

The night of the reunion, he gets a call from Kei. It doesn’t matter that he’s trying to fulfill his duties as a lover to this girl—it’s Kei, and he’s calling him. It’s like getting a direct call from god.

“Hello?”

“You actually answered. Wow. From what the idiots were saying it sounded like you were some perpetually busy, non-reachable fiend,” Kei says.

His voice has not changed. It’s still flat and drenched with barbs. It hurts him. “They call while I’m at work.”

“Work, huh,” Kei hums thoughtfully.

“Kei, don’t,” Tadashi whispers. He doesn’t want to talk about work with Kei; he’s reminded of their last conversation. Of Kei telling him that he  loved his work more than he loved Kei. It hurts. “Why are you calling?”

Kei’s tone changes. It’s softer, “Look. I… they want to see you,” he murmurs. “More than they wanted to see me. You dropped off the grid, and they’re worried. And they want you to come. More than me really. They want to see you.” There’s an awkward pause, like it hurt to admit that; “If you didn’t come because I was invited, I can leave,” he offers. “Or, they can come get you, if it’s transportation that’s an issue? Hinata says he knows your address?”

It’s genuine. Tadashi knows it is. Kei never offers things he doesn’t want to give. It makes his heart and stomach twist. He just can’t stop making people miserable, can he? Kei lives in Tokyo; he knows that. He still lives there, in their old house. He doesn’t get to see their old friends often. As much shit as Kei doles out to them when they visit, Tadashi knows Kei loves them, loves their company, enjoys visiting with them. Other than Tadashi, their old volleyball teammates are Kei’s only friends. He knows that Kei always used to look forward to the times that they could all get together.

But he’s offering to leave, because their friends want to see Tadashi more than they want to see him.  Tadashi feels horrible. It hurts. “I can’t,” he says softly. “I really can’t. I can’t  do it. I can’t go.”

“I see,” Kei sighs. “Well... I hope you’ve been doing well for yourself, at least. Really. …Bye.”

“Bye-bye,” Tadashi mumbles, hanging up the phone.

The girl pulls her clothes on, shaking her head. “I can’t do it,” she says. Her voice is harsh and clipped. “I can’t do it anymore. Like, how big of a coward are you to just decide you can’t go see people who want to see you? Because your ex is there.”

“But we’re—”

“Don’t use me as an excuse for you being a coward. It’s pathetic,” she snaps. “I just. I don’t know what I was thinking. Gloomy is okay if it’s just there; I mean it’s even kind of cute. Like a mysterious vibe, but you’re just dark. It’s awful. It’s like there’s nothing good out there for you. And I can’t do it. And the sex isn’t even that great, which is a shame, because you’re pretty attractive. Whatever.”

She gathers her things and leaves.

Tadashi lays back on the futon and thinks about it.

Pathetic. Cowardly. Gloomy.

Well, she was right. It feels like it’s Kei telling him. And it hurts. He stands slowly and makes his way to the bathroom counter, rummaging through his old pills from when he’d gotten burned at the café. He pops a few of them into his mouth.

Still hurts.

A few more.

It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.

He doesn’t realize that he’s taken the entirety of the rest of the bottle until nausea starts to crawl up his throat. He feels heavy and his chest can’t seem to expand enough for him to breathe right. He tries to summon up enough energy to panic the moment he realizes that this is an overdose, that he’s overdosed on pain medicine. He tries to reach for the phone to call for help. His muscles lock up and he thinks he blacks out for a moment, because the next thing he knows, he’s on the floor, bile burning up the back of his throat. He struggles to roll onto his side, remembering the lessons from his stupid first-aid classes—surely alcohol poisoning and an overdose are pretty similar, right?

If he’s going to die, he doesn’t want to go choking on his own vomit. That’s pretty pitiful, even for him. He manages it, and manages to not choke as he throws up. He still can’t breathe. His nails are starting to turn an alarming shade of blue. He closes his eyes. He thinks he hears his phone ringing again.

He’s tired. He’s so tired. Tired.

A nap.

That would be nice. A nap. He hasn’t slept well in a long time. This will help.

He’s cold. He starts shivering, and it scares him. He knocks his head back against the shower tile. He’s terrified but his heart isn’t racing at all.

He can’t open his eyes. At least it doesn’t hurt anymore. He’s probably doing everyone a favor, too. He thinks that everyone will just be better off forgetting about him and moving on. It’s not that hard to stop breathing, he thinks, remembering how he wondered if he was just too cowardly or too brave to stop that night he found Kei with Kuroo.

Kei… Kei won’t miss him. Hasn’t missed him. And that’s fine. Because it doesn’t hurt anymore. He’s just so… tired…

There’s a moment of peace, then a feeling like every cell in his entire body starts bursting, and he wants to scream in pain, but he can’t, won’t, nothing happens, nothing at all and all he’s aware of is the crushing weight of how much air actually weighs against a chest that isn’t moving. 

And then everything just… stops.

When he opens his eyes again, he’s very vaguely disappointed that he does so. He feels like he’s been run over by a truck; his arms are strapped down  and there’s something large and plastic shoved down his throat. He starts gagging on it as soon as he’s aware of it, but he can’t move to take it out.

Hands push down on him, pinning him to the bed. Another pair grasps the mask over his face and pulls. It’s worse than throwing up; he can feel every edge of the plastic tubing as it comes up his throat and scrapes over his tongue. He gags and wheezes and the nurse’s hands continue to hold him down. Another mask is fitted over his face and something cold runs through his arm. An IV drip.

Whatever it is, it makes him sag back into the sheets. He closes his eyes again. Maybe this time he won’t wake up.

He does. He’s far more coherent this time around. He can take note of his surroundings. He’s no longer strapped down, but his arms are still a mess of tubes and wires; an oxygen mask is still fitted around his face, puffing air against his nose. He takes it off hesitantly. It’s dark in his room, but a low level of light shines in through the glass windows that separate his room from the hallway. Nurses shuffle through the hallways; no one has noticed he’s awake. He hears a small snuffling noise, one he’s intimately familiar with.

He turns his head. The person on the pull-out sofa bed is illuminated by the cold green and red lights of all the monitors, the flash of the heart monitor reflecting off of their eyes. Hands fumble with a cotton blanket and push glasses onto their nose, voice quiet, but rough with sleep. “Tadashi? Are you awake?”

He can’t answer; his heart monitor does. It beeps shrilly as his heartbeat picks up; it feels like it’s going to explode. He pushes a hand to his chest as a nurse rushes in to check on him. It hurts as it thuds against his ribs, like he’d been punched or strained a muscle; he didn’t know you could strain your heart muscles without dying. Or maybe he did die. He doesn’t know.

Kei apologizes to the nurse, explaining that he’d just startled Tadashi, that was all. She scolds him with a soft smile. Tadashi watches quietly. He doesn’t know what’s going on. The nurse checks him over, takes his blood pressure and temperature and watches his monitors. “You’re a lucky one,” she says sternly. “We almost couldn’t get your heart started back up.”

That explains a lot. He leans back into the bed, aching and already exhausted, like he’s run some sort of marathon when all he did was sit up and panic.

There’s a shuddering breath beside him and a hand slips over his own and clenches it tightly. Tadashi looks blankly at his hand where Kei’s fingers are curled around his own, weaving between his oxygen monitor and taped on electrodes. He doesn’t understand. Kei shouldn’t be here.

He shouldn’t be here. He’d resigned himself to dying.

Kei shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t care. But Kei’s hand is shaking against his skin and he listens to the rough shaking of Kei’s breath as the nurse leaves, satisfied with her readings. Something warm drips onto is arm.

He looks over. Kei has his head bent over, but he can see Kei’s face clearly. He looks rough, Tadashi decides. There are bags under his eyes and his clothes are rumpled. His lips are chapped like he’d been chewing on them. Maybe he imagined that he’d felt tears drip onto his arm. He’s not sure anymore.

He doesn’t understand. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes out; his voice just rasps. Kei looks up anyway.

“Water?”

Tadashi shakes his head slowly. He feels like he was stuffed with cotton. His IV trills and the cold fluid trickles into his system.

“It’s saline right now. And a low-level sedative,” Kei explains. “You were pumped full of Naloxone; it lowers pain-reducing endorphins—they’re trying to keep you from hurting too badly.”

Tadashi blinks slowly. He hurts, he wants to tell Kei. Not because he didn’t die, but because Kei’s hands are shaking against his own, warm and intimate. It hurts him, like Kei’s fingers are knives. No amount of medicine can take that away—he tried already.

“You overdosed,” Kei says. It sounds like the words were being ripped from him. “You took over half a bottle of opiates. You died, almost.” His hands shake harder and his eyes dart around the room. “Pretty much. Your heart stopped. You stopped breathing. I—you had several seizures—Tadashi… why?”

“Hurt,” Tadashi finally manages. His voice is hoarse; it barely even sounds like his voice. “Hurts.”

Kei lowers his head to the bed, forehead pressed to their hands. He looks like he’s praying. It scares him.

“Thank god Hinata made us go find you—thank god.”

“Why do you care?”

“You would have died.”

“Why do you care?”

“We—I—you… god, after so many years you ask me why I fucking care if you died?”

Tadashi tries to pull his hand away. He doesn’t have the strength to. He’s never had the strength to pull away from Kei. That’s what put him in this mess in the first place—his inability to learn how to stand on his own. “You said you didn’t love me.”

“I was wrong,” Kei whispers. But Tadashi’s already closed his eyes like he’s fallen asleep. He leans forward and brushes Tadashi’s hair from his forehead and drops a soft kiss to the skin there. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry, Tadashi.”

Tadashi keeps his eyes closed and listens to Kei whisper to him over the hum of the machines. He falls asleep to the feeling of Kei petting his hair and face, and the low sound of Kei’s voice. He can’t discern what Kei says, but he never thought he would hear that softness again, not when the only sound that ever echoed in his mind anymore was the calm coldness as Kei tore apart the façade of their relationship and the sound of his lover moaning for someone else.

It hurts. He wished he didn’t have to hear it anymore. He falls asleep wishing he could cry as Kei’s tears fall onto his hand, burning hot where his skin was chilled from his IV. He wakes up thinking he’d dreamed it all, because when he looks over, Kei’s back on the little sofa, book over his face as he snored.

He wakes and sleeps sporadically. The ache lingers in his bones and his voice remains rough. The doctors make him do test after test to make sure the lack of oxygen, seizures, and his heart stopping didn’t affect his brain. The psychologist comes and goes periodically, asking him questions about his life he doesn’t want to answer. Words are thrown around that make his head swim. Acronyms, things he doesn’t want to face; generalized anxiety disorder, depression. Suicide watch. Drug addiction.  Therapy. 

He wishes they would leave him alone. He doesn't want or need any of it. 

Kei’s there through it all. It’s humiliating. Kei’s presence makes his tongue grow heavy and dumb in his mouth, and makes every test more mortifying. He helps the nurses clean and change him, helps him up to the bathroom when the doctors allow him to start moving again without asking. He just knows, somehow, when Tadashi starts thinking about needing to get up.

He doesn’t say much, he’s just there. Suffering through it all, perched at Tadashi’s bedside like some avenging angel, hand clasped around Tadashi’s. The nurses comment on how dedicated Kei is to his boyfriend and it hurtsit hurts it hurts because Kei doesn’t correct them, he just squeezes Tadashi’s hand and thanks them for letting him stay when it’s after visiting hours. It hurts it hurts it hurts.

He pieces together the pieces of what happened that night. Kei doesn’t talk about it. He scowls and clenches his jaw when Yachi and Hinata and Kageyama come the second day after he wakes up for real, and relay what happened, filling Tadashi’s room with flowers and bears and snuck-in food.

They tried to call him. Wanted to see him. Came to his apartment and pushed open the door where it was unlocked and found him, seizing with the pill bottle still on the floor, in a pool of his own vomit. His lips and fingers were blue and he was barely breathing. Kei had held him down and tried to make sure he didn’t choke. Yachi had cried. Hinata just stood there in shock. Kageyama was the one who called the police. Kei had bullied his way onto the ambulance with him. His heart stopped on the ride to the hospital.

Tadashi eats the food they bring him only to throw it up later. The doctors start eyeing him for more big words and diagnoses that he doesn’t want or need. Kei rubs his back softly and pushes his hair back and doesn’t comment on how thin Tadashi’s shoulders feel under his hospital yukata, and tells the doctors that Tadashi probably just wasn’t ready for food like that just yet. Said that he was just tired and over-exerted from the visit.

Tadashi feels raw and worn through. He looks at Kei and tells him the truth after Kei’s helped him clean up and get back into the bed. “I wish I had died. It was an accident, but I wish I had died. You should have left me.”

“Why?”

Tadashi lifts his hand slowly, pointing straight at Kei. It’s not Kei’s fault, not really. He did this to himself, after all. Kei hadn’t asked him to give up his degree and his passions, hadn’t asked him to leave Tokyo and a future he adored with every fiber of his being, hadn’t asked him to work himself bare to eke out enough money to keep himself barely alive, or to force himself into a string of relationships where he felt forced to give what he didn’t want to or seclude himself away from his friends and support. Kei had told him the truth— that the best option had been to stay and live as roommates, to get over himself. But it feels good to put the blame on someone singular that’s not himself.

He wants Kei to call bullshit, to get angry and leave so Tadashi can go back to pretending to live just long enough to find a way to either live for real or die for real. He needs to hear it in Kei’s voice, needs Kei to call him what he is. Cowardly. Pathetic.

He doesn’t expect for Kei to start shaking, to put his face into his hands and cry.  But that’s what happens: Kei just shatters right there. He covers up his face with his hands, glasses falling to the floor as his shoulders heave and a ragged sob breaks from his mouth. And another. Another. Kei's sobs fill the room; Kei cries louder than Tadashi would have ever thought he could. 

Tadashi realizes that Kei’s tight jawed stoicism when Kageyama had haltingly explained what happened wasn’t anger or disgust, but a last-ditch effort to keep control. That Kei’s been struggling to keep it together this entire time; no one would be unaffected by their once-best friend and ex-lover nearly dying.

He’s cruel. He’s always been needlessly cruel to Kei. He trapped him in a relationship Tadashi isn’t even sure Kei even wanted, hung his expectations on him until Kei was heavy with them, and took without giving. Now he’s lying in a hospital bed, pointing his finger at Kei as the reason why he wants to die, knowing it wasn’t Kei himself that made Tadashi feel that way, but how Tadashi reacted to Kei. He’s determined to make Tsukishima Kei’s life miserable, it seems.

He doesn’t know if Kei has ever once been truly happy with him. Maybe once, back when they were kids and everything was innocent. But he wants Kei gone. The longer Kei stays, the warmer he feels, the more relaxed he gets.

The higher his hopes climb. He wants Kei to enable him more, let him take and get nice and warm and comfortable again and take, take, take, until he’s sucked Kei dry. He wants Kei’s love like water or air; he wants Kei to love him again, and feel that satisfaction.

He’s got to hurt Kei so Kei will leave him for real.

“You should leave,” Tadashi says quietly, once the sobs have petered out into shuddering breaths and quiet hiccups. “Just go ahead and leave. It hurts to have you here.”

“I wanted to see you,” Kei says instead of agreeing with Tadashi. His voice is raw and soft. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk to you again,” he continues. He raises his head and his face is flushed and his eyes are bloodshot. He looks old.

They’ve gotten old, Tadashi thinks. And they didn’t do it together, despite how much they had planned to.

“I didn’t think it would fix anything, but I missed you. I wanted to tell you. I—when I realized you—you just left Tokyo.  Your school things, your clothes. Your research. You left it all.” He scrubs at his face, breath shaky. “You adored that job, Tadashi. It lit you up like a star. You loved it so much, and you left it. You left.”

“I couldn’t stay,” Tadashi whispers. He can’t remember why he left anymore. Just that he was miserable. He doesn’t think he had any real reasons, other than to punish himself.

Or maybe, all along, he wanted to punish Kei. Maybe wanted Kei to hurt just as much as he did. He couldn't stand being alone, after all. “You didn’t love me.”

“I was jealous,” Kei whispered. “You started living on your own, the sort of life I wanted. I’d never thought that I would get rejected from med school, and that you… You would be able to go forward without me. It was hard. I couldn’t tell you, and I got resentful and I shouldn’t have been. I didn’t stop loving you. I just… I got caught up in myself.”

Tadashi shakes his head and turns his head away. They should have had this conversation two years ago. He doesn’t want it after all. He doesn’t want a broken down Kei—this doesn’t make him happy. It just breaks his heart even more. 

“I went back to school,” Kei says softly. “I got another degree, reapplied to the program I wanted. I got accepted. I’m a resident now.”

Something bitter rises in the back of Tadashi’s throat. He remembers his own program, his own research. The joy in the little things, the harsh lights of the laboratory and the smell of boiling agar. He aches with it. He thinks about the research magazines he buys,  keeps subscriptions to with his spare money, of the project he was supposed to lead that’s gone forward without him. How, even though he forfeited any intellectual rights to his work, his professors had still put his name in the footnotes. He aches with missing it.

He thinks about the hours Kei spent helping him prepare for admissions, of helping him prep for his oral examinations; he thinks about how he was so tied up in his own excitement and nerves that he forgot about Kei’s concurrent application to med school. He thinks that during that time was when it started falling apart.

“Kuroo help you study?” The words slide out of Tadashi’s mouth before he realizes what he said.

Kei looks up at him, hands falling to clasp at his knees. “I don’t see much of him anymore,” he murmurs. “Not for a while.”

“Shame, you two were close.”

“We were closer,” Kei says. “Besides, even if I wanted to be with him, it wouldn’t have worked.”

Tadashi can feel his heart start to pound, face warm with anger. He rips off his heart-rate and oxygen monitors and jams down the reset button on them so the alarm won’t sound. Kei looks panicked for a minute, reaching out to grab at Tadashi’s hand before letting it fall. Tadashi knows Kei’s seen the nasty look on his face, and he doesn’t care. “Bull fucking shit,” Tadashi hisses. “You fucked him. I saw it. You two were fucking since high school and you pitied me. You kept me around because you thought something like this would happen but you didn’t realize it would hurt me more to walk in on you cheating on me than if you’d dumped me  the second you realized that you felt bad for me more than you loved me.

“And now I’ve done what you thought I would do all along, and here I am. Weren’t you right, after all? Aren’t  I the most pathetic piece of shit you’ve ever seen?” Tadashi seethes. “Did I meet your expectations? Or did I let you down again by living?”

Kei surprises Tadashi for the second time that day. He stands and settles on the edge of Tadashi’s bed, drawing Tadashi to him. Kei holds him tightly, cradling his head to his chest; Tadashi can hear the blond’s heart and feel the way he shakes. Kei rubs his back and strokes his hair and rocks him. He keeps screaming over the words that Kei whispers to him.

“You could have told me, you could have just fucking told me and I would have gotten over it! And you knew, you knew all that time it was just you for me, that I could never love anyone the way I loved you, and you knew I didn’t like it, that I didn’t want to always have sex and you knew it and you said it was fine if I never wanted to at all, but then you go and you turn it around and say that’s how I should have noticed we weren’t okay—but it was never like that for me! You didn’t give a shit, you wanted to hurt me and it worked okay? It worked, you got your wish, I hurt, I still hurt and I’m miserable now too! I hope you’re happy! I hope I finally lived up to everything you ever expected from me!”

Tadashi pushes at Kei with all his strength; it’s not enough to budge Kei and it makes his muscles scream in pain and his heart starts aching and skipping oddly. He punches at Kei’s chest, feeling the IV pull at him in ways he knows it shouldn’t, but he doesn’t care. He’s half-screaming, half-sobbing. “So how dare you, how dare you! I want you gone, I want you to leave, I don’t want you here; I don’t want you with your guilt trip and your pity, or your ‘my poor Tadashi’s’—I was never yours okay, you never wanted me, and I can’t survive it if you pick me up now and drop me again a few months from now when I’m not better or I’m not putting out the way you wanted me to or I’m annoying you! I’ll make sure I won’t—!”

His voice breaks on the force of his words and he doubles over, coughing. His IV alarm is shrilling loudly, and the resets on his other readers runs out. Black eats at the corner of his eyes and he thinks that he’s done something really stupid. He sags against Kei, feeling like his strings were cut.

Kei reaches around him and pushes on the call button, though he’s sure the nurses are already coming to check on Tadashi. Tadashi’s chest heaves as he coughs and slumps over, and his breath is uneven and shallow against his neck. He pushes Tadashi back to lay flat against the elevated bed, picking up the hand that’s dripping blood and IV fluid and holding it over Tadashi’s head.

The nurses rush in and usher Kei out, and he sits outside Tadashi’s room, still in full view through the windows, head in his hands. Tadashi gets sedated again and they have to start over again. But Kei still does not leave.

Tadashi wonders if this was how Kei felt back then, cornered and suffocated, faced with stubborn affection. 

They don’t talk. Kei goes through book after book in the hours that pass after his fit; sometimes, he works on his laptop. Leaves only to eat. After lunch the next day, he comes back wearing cleaner clothes, and brings back things from Tadashi's apartment: the worn-thin cableknit sweater because it gets in the hospital at night and books to read.

He also brings Tadashi’s phone. Understandably, he’s been let go from his job. He listens to the message on his cell and thinks about the rent for his place and the hospital bills. His head swims with the information, and his heart twinges uncomfortably. He looks up at the ceiling and thinks ahead to train schedules and rush hours—when he could make sure the job was finished for real.

“Don’t,” Kei murmurs. It's the first word Kei has uttered since the day before. 

“Excuse me?”

“You… were thinking aloud. About…” Kei’s voice trails off and Tadashi turns his head to look at him.

Kei’s so pale that the bags under his eyes look like the eyespots on a panda. His lips are thin and his fingers lace at his waist. His throat heaves once and Tadashi thinks that Kei is actually queasy with the idea. It’s laughable. It makes his heart ache. 

“About killing myself? Yeah,” Tadashi says flatly. He watches as Kei swallows hard. Amber eyes dart around the room. “I was thinking about you know, jumping in front of a train. Making sure it works. Maybe the shinkansen. There wouldn’t be anything but pieces after that, don’t you think?”

“Tadashi, don’t,” Kei whispers. “Please.”

“I don’t have anything, Kei. There’s no reason for me to not to.”

“You have me,” Kei says.

Tadashi laughs. It’s ugly and twisted, but he laughs. “For how long?” he sneers. Something inside of him is broken now. He wants to fix it. He wants to fix it so badly. 

“Until I die,” Kei answers. The swiftness and sincerity of the answer startles Tadashi.

Kei closes his laptop slowly. “I think you should come back to Tokyo with me. I know a good psychologist. If you don’t have anything here, there’s nothing from stopping you from starting over.”

“What, you sleep with the psychologist, too?”

Tadashi has to applaud Kei’s patience, really, he does. He remembers having to tiptoe around Kei’s patience before; now he’s just steamrolling through it and the blond doesn’t even flinch.

“No,” Kei says. “No, I’m their patient.” He pauses, “I was really angry with a lot of things. Insulated. I lost my job after you left because I took it out on another coworker. I had to go to be able to get another.”

Tadashi has a hard time imagining Kei as being violent enough to warrant being fired. But then he remembers the rage and resentment that had bubbled up to the surface that night two years aog, that he’d never noticed until it was too late. He wonders that if he’d paid more attention back then, if he could have helped Kei sort it out.

“They… they were very helpful,” Kei says softly. “They reminded me of you, back in high school when you told me off. I’ve spoken with them, and they said they could take you on, if you wanted to be seen.”

“What did you tell them?” He thinks about the nurses and doctors who think that they’re dating.

Kei seems to know he’s thinking about that, too. “I told her the truth,” he offers. “That someone who used to be very close to me overdosed and is… angry. Suicidal. Tadashi, I… I know I lied, but… I had to get access to you,” he whispers. “You were going to be back here alone when you woke up. Your parents, they…”

“I don’t have parents,” Tadashi says flatly, looking away from Kei. That one still hurts, too.

“They weren’t going to let me, but the lead nurse, her daughter lives with another woman, and she… She let me back. You don’t have to feel obligated—god knows you don’t—to pretend that that’s what we are. Or even think about starting over, but…” Kei sighs. “I think you should still come back to Tokyo with me. Get help. Start over your life. Try to reapply for your program, finish what’s left of your doctorate. Be happy. It doesn't have to be with me, but... Know that… I made a mistake,” he adds. He pauses and fiddles with his fingers. 

“I make a lot of them,” Kei says finally. “And one of them wasn’t being a good friend or lover to you. Even if nothing else happens, I hope you forgive me for that.”

Tadashi curls his fists into the sheets, feeling tears stream down his face. Kei’s making it so hard, so damn hard to hate him. To push him away. Even though they’re already adults, Kei’s grown a lot in the time they were apart. Meanwhile, Tadashi thinks he'd just turned into a spoiled kid too afraid of being hurt to even try to grow.

“Or don't. I won’t blame you if you don't. Kuroo never really did,” Kei says softly. “Because I lied to him about us. I let him think we were just roommates, and he found out. We still talk occasionally, but he never really… You don’t have to, in the end.”

He’s already forgiven Kei, Kei in his rumpled clothes and poorly combed hair and stubble he needs to shave away and dark-ringed eyes, who looks sick at the idea of a world where Tadashi kills himself out of spite. Who lied his way into his hospital room so he wouldn’t be alone. Who held his hand and cried and helped him stand. He forgave Kei the second he'd woken up and found Kei beside his bed, sleeping. 

The person Tadashi can’t forgive isn’t Kei, or even Kuroo. Who he can’t forgive is himself.

“I hate myself,” Tadashi whispers into the silence. “I hate myself for not ever noticing you were unhappy. I’m sure you tried to let me know back then. I hate that I couldn’t ever like having sex enough to do it as often as you wanted. I hated that the first thought I had when I found out was ‘it was bound to happen this way’ instead of ‘how can we fix this’. That I’d made you feel trapped in a relationship you weren’t happy with. I hated that I just... gave up. That I did the easiest thing and just stopped living because I hurt. I hate that I did this to myself. That I let myself go, let all my pride and willpower go, and wallowed in my own guilty and self-pity.”

“It wasn’t just you…  Mistakes were made and..., well, we both had a part in what happened,” Kei murmurs.

“And I hate that,” Tadashi whispered quietly. “I hate that I didn’t—I hate that I had a part to play in it, too and didn’t want to accept it.”

Kei remains silent for a moment before shaking his head. “Well, I don’t hate you for any of that,” he answers. “I don’t think you should, either.”

Tadashi holds out his hand; Kei takes it gingerly. Tadashi closes his fingers tightly around the blond’s. “I know you don’t,” he says, closing his eyes. “Not now.”

Kei squeezes his hand as he stands slowly. He settles first on the edge of the bed, then slides fully into it as Tadashi tucks himself against Kei’s side. “Will you come?”

It’s not much, but there’s a faint flicker of warmth in his chest, deep inside where he thought everything had been frozen over and scooped out. He knows the feeling; it was once so very familiar to him, so very integral to his very being that it’s strange to think that he was without it for so long.

“Yeah,” Tadashi answers softly.

He thinks that warmth just might be his pride.