Second Time Around
He rings the doorbell one last time, sighs, and sits down on the steps in front of the door. He doesn't know what he would have done if Tachibana's mother had opened the door. The lady with her sad, tired smile who had passed him the slip of paper after the match, the address of their new home written in curling characters that did not waver, unlike her son's messy doctor-scrawl. He knows even less what he would say to his former basketball partner her he to open the door. He has rehearsed it in his head a million times, but he knows when it comes to real life all he will have to go on is instinct.
Where Akane is concerned, his instinct is usually right, and so he sits in the sun's setting rays and waits for his premonition to come true. It doesn't take long. The sun is just touching the horizon when familiar touseled black hair comes up the walk and his breath catches and quickens, heart beat going up a gear. He is not noticed untill Tachibana looks up the stairs a little tiredly, bags of food in his arms. He sees for the briefist of moments the trials that were had on these steps with a weak leg and then it is all surprise and bewilderment.
He stands and smiles hesitantly, hands brushing off sand from his pants. Akane closes his mouth and walks by, grocery bags in hand, and fumbles for a key in his pocket. The door opens to a plain little home, half a ground floor of a two-story building. He can imagine Akane and his mother eating in this kitchen, and feels like a ghost. He thinks about helping put the groceries away to have something to do with his hands and realizes he doesn't know where they go. That hurts most of all; he doesn't know if Akane wants him here or not.
And then Akane leans back against the counter, folds his arms and ask him what he's doing here. He realizes with a flash that the boy - man - standing in front of him doesn't know either. Neither of them would have voluntarily searched out the other. That is the way they work. And so he looks away, ready to go and yet feeling a little dissapointed, when he spots a gym bag with the black equivilant of his brother's shoes sticking out the top. Instead, he smiles.
I wanted to see you.
And it's true, if ambiguous. He doesn't realize how hard it was to say untill after he had said it, drained and almost pleading.
Me too.
So he knows how hard it would be for proud, struggling Tachibana Akane to say those words. They are the acceptance of his apology, and maybe Mrs. Tachibana knew her son well enough to know he had stopped being angry.
Just when he thinks: I need to touch him, Akane is there, sliding an arm around his waist and heasitantly nudging their foreheads together. They are always pre-empting the other's moves, and this easy fit makes him smile. It is comfortable enough to allow him to finally say something that had been held bitter in his heart: You came to visit Yoshikawa and not me. Akane smiles back and he realizes that his opposite has grown another few cetemetres, because Tachibana's lips are at his nose.
You're the enemy, Tachibana teases back, teeth bared in his hunting cat's grin. Somehow it is all very funnny, and he collapses against the chest in almost hysterical laughter. It may have just been an excuse to touch him more completely, though, because although he hated how easily Akane could turn him to mush, he desires it like nothing else.
Then Tachibana stars laughing, chest pressing back in heaving gasps, and he gets the feeling that neither of them have laughed this freely in a long time. They rest like this for a long moment, Akane leaning back against the counter with a Cheschire-cat grin splitting his face. He knows he has a smile of his own on, and although it's not quite so loud nor expansive, he knows that Akane will understand it in his own way. He is always smiling when Tachibana is around, and he had almost lost the feeling, the glow that flowed through him when they were close like this.
Surprisingly, it was not he who broke down first. The lanky, muscled frame bent down and a heavy head rested against his shoulder.
I wish you had been there, floats into his ear, but they both know it would not have worked. It is followed by a moment of peace with the sun streaming in the kitchen window, golden rays of the sun as it travelled the last few degrees into the ground.
The first kiss is as fumbling as the very first one, lips leaving spit on a cheek and beside a mouth. The second works better, a tender, comfortable movement that causes both their eyes to fall shut. The third is needy, pushing, hand reaching up to finger hair. They decend from there to the hot, open-mouthed clashes that have been the focus of most of their day-dreams during boring classes with not hope of naps during the break together. It is not idyllic, but it is close enough. They stop when the sound of a key turning in the lock breaks through the sound of their pants, and their hands mostly rearrange themselves when the door creaks open.
Akane? I'm home.
He realizes with a jolt of silly surprise that they are standing in the dark when the overhead lights turn on and the woman that is Tachibana's mother nearly jumps a metre in the air. She yells at her son for nearly giving her a heart attack and he yells back, but not untill after she gives them both a soft, knowing look. He is invited to dinner when the rukus dies down for a moment, and accepts. He explains with a glance at Akane that he needs to get a train home early this evening because he needs to get work done for tomorrow's classes, spurring the elder Tachibana into a rant on the younger's work habits. He revels in the warmth and loudness of this family and hate to leave, standing awkwardly in the pool of light from the lamp above the door with his first real friend.
He doesn't know what to say except I still live at the same place.
They kiss goodbye, quiet and awkward, before he leaves down the same path he came up, knowing he'll spend all his nights secretly waiting for Akane to come get him.