Free! doesn't belong to me. Neither does High Speed!
This fic was written for SouKisu Week, for the promtp Free! (a. k. a. this story didn't really fit with any of the other prompts).
a cure for restlessness
.
It's nearly 2:30 a.m. when an annoying, repetitive beeping disturbs Sousuke's sleep.
The source of the sound is close, and he blindly reaches for his phone before even raising his face from the pillow. Sousuke can barely open his eyes at the light coming from the screen, but he doesn't think it's already time to wake up. He blinks a few times, tearing up when he finally manages to read who is calling him.
"Make that thing shut up or I'll throw it through the window," Rin growls from the lower bunk, but the beeping stops before Sousuke even has the chance to sit up and stare at it, bewildered.
Why is Kisumi calling him at such an ungodly hour?
"Sorry," Sousuke mutters, climbing down his bunk.
He barely acknowledges that Rin is burying his head under his pillow, though; he's more intrigued by his boyfriend's call. It's not like Kisumi sleeps much –his good-night texts always come at late hours, and judging by the good-morning ones he's an early riser–, but it's nearly 2:30 a.m. and being awake now is definitely not normal, not even for him.
Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Sousuke walks out the bedroom and calls Kisumi after closing the door behind him, leaning his back on the dark hallway's wall.
Kisumi picks up after the first tone. Sousuke waits for him to say something, but he can only hear a quick, ragged breathing from the other side of the phone line.
"What's wrong?" he blurts out, trying to keep his voice quiet despite the worry increasing with each second Kisumi doesn't speak. It doesn't get better when something eerily similar to a sob reaches his ear. "H-Hey, say something."
"There's…" Kisumi starts, but a violent hiccup swallows the rest of his words. "I-It's nothing, really." But it is something, because Sousuke doesn't like at all how Kisumi's voice sounds, shaky and oddly insecure. "I shouldn't have called you…"
Sousuke grips his phone tighter.
"No, it's fine," he hears himself say, even though it's nearly 2:30 a.m. and he really should sleep if he doesn't want to drown in the pool at practice tomorrow. "What's with you?"
Kisumi sniffles and takes his time to think before he replies.
"It's pretty dumb, actually," he starts, and lets out a nervous laugh. "I just– I've been studying at night a lot for the exams, you know? A-and now– maybe I drank too much coffee or something– but I can't… I can't sleep." Sousuke frowns, but he bites his tongue and lets Kisumi continue. "And I know– I know it's stupid, okay? But I really don't like it. I hate being tired and my head has been hurting for two days and… I want to sleep."
His voice gets thinner and thinner with each word, crushed by an audible embarrassment, until only his trembling breathing can be heard.
But that's not what stops Sousuke from snapping a not-very-nice why don't you try drinking milk and relaxing a bit and hanging up.
"Hey," he whispers, almost as low as Kisumi, "your parents are still abroad, aren't they?"
Kisumi exhales slowly.
"They're at Tokyo. But–"
"No buts."
"Sousuke, you don't have to–"
"If you stop crying before I get there, maybe you'll hear me before I knock and wake your brother up."
Sousuke hangs up before Kisumi has the chance to protest.
The hardest part is forcing Rin to pay enough attention to explain where he's going. Getting out of Samezuka dorms is actually easy, and luckily Kisumi doesn't live too far away. Sousuke is standing before his boyfriend's door in twenty minutes.
He raises his fist, but the door opens before he can knock at the door. Kisumi appears behind it, and under the street lamps' light Sousuke can see his puffy eyes, his quivering lower lip; but at least he's managed to stop crying.
Kisumi looks down.
"You didn't have to."
Sousuke sighs. "Too late." He reaches for Kisumi's cheek, brushing wet traces from his skin. "Can I stay over?"
Kisumi just shrugs, still not looking at him.
Sousuke has brought the old clothes he uses as pyjamas in his bag, and soon he's settled in Kisumi's room. Kisumi is sitting on his bed, knees pulled up towards his chest. There's a faint blush on his cheeks as he moves to the side and Sousuke gets under the blanket, and Sousuke tries not to think about how Kisumi is beautiful even when he's upset. After letting out a shaky sigh, Kisumi lays down too.
"I'm sorry," he mutters.
He's laying on his side, his back turned towards Sousuke. Even in the dim light the tension in his muscles is evident.
Sousuke reaches out, surprised when Kisumi flinches at the touch.
"Don't be," he replies. "Your bed is really comfortable."
Kisumi giggles, turning his head and looking at Sousuke out of the corner of his eye.
"This is really stupid."
This time, Sousuke doesn't hesitate to hug Kisumi and pull him close, resisting the urge to blow on his nape. He lands a kiss on the patch of skin visible between hair and clothes instead, feels Kisumi shivering against him.
"Stop beating the bush. Do you want to try to sleep now? If you can't, we can talk about something. Or you could talk while I listen; because I'm not exactly good at making conversation."
Still trapped in Sousuke's arms, Kisumi turns around.
"Why aren't you angry?" Before Sousuke can reply, his boyfriend goes on: "I'm making you lose sleep, too."
Sousuke shrugs and leaves a peck on Kisumi's forehead.
"Yes, you are." He feels his cheeks heating up, but forces the words to stumble out of his mouth. "But you aren't crying anymore, so it's worth it." And at last Kisumi looks at him, eyes wide and surprised. "You feel better now, don't you?"
After some seconds, Kisumi nods. For the first time this night, he kisses Sousuke and he snuggles closer to him, hiding his face in the crook of his neck and tangling their legs together.
"I'm going to fail," he whispers then, and Sousuke has to force himself not to draw back and look at Kisumi with his eyebrows raised. Kisumi wouldn't say what is in his mind that freely if he felt observed; it's the privacy of having his face hidden what allows him to be sincere. "Mum will be angry– I bet I did everything wrong."
For nearly a whole minute, Sousuke falls silent.
So that's where Kisumi's restlessness actually comes from.
"You studied a lot," He finally reminds him. It's true. Sousuke has barely seen Kisumi for the last weeks because he was too busy with his exams. "I mean, you were studying instead of sleeping."
"But what if it wasn't enough? God, they're going to kill me."
Sousuke doesn't know what to say. He only knows that Kisumi is still upset and that he feels he's been pretty useless since he awoke to his boyfriend's call, and that he hates it when Kisumi looks so vulnerable, so tiny that Sousuke almost forgets they are nearly the same height.
"You're only saying that because you can't sleep," he finally replies. He kisses Kisumi's hair, runs his hand down his tense back, biting his tongue before his opinion about Kisumi's parents slips out. "So let's have this conversation tomorrow, okay?"
It takes several minutes before the muscles under Sousuke's fingers finally give in and relax, and a lot more before Kisumi draws back and looks at him. And it's 3 a.m. and Sousuke really wants to sleep, but Kisumi's little smile, barely noticeable in the dark, is enough to snap his eyes wide open and make him want to look at him forever.
"Thank you," Kisumi whispers, closing his eyes.
Sousuke threads his fingers through light hair, caressing it until he's too sleepy to go on. Kisumi's breathing is slow and deep and it doesn't sound shaky anymore, and Sousuke's last coherent thought before dozing off is that he's glad Kisumi is no longer upset.
When Sousuke wakes up in the morning, he's two centimetres away from falling from the bed and his left arm feels numb under Kisumi's sleeping weight, but he decides Kisumi is worth being a bit uncomfortable.
Author's note: As someone who gets really anxious over not being able to sleep, I can be only a tiny bit sorry for projecting that part of myself on him, even though it also lets me sneak some headcanons in.