It was one of those nights where I was suffering insomnia, sitting up in my bed with the candles I had bought in South Africa left half burnt on the dresser of my bed room. I could hear nothing but the occasional car disappear down the street outside the window of my apartment, until I returned to the haze of writing down lyrics on paper towels that were left strewn beside my bed. A car engine hasn’t stopped running outside the window, but I don’t notice. I don’t notice until there’s movement outside my hallway. Through the sliver of my bedroom door, the rap of knuckles against my door throws off my thoughts. There’s a lot of them, and I wonder even now, as the clock blazed two o’clock in the morning, who’d demand my company.
Abandoned work for the meantime, and Heart sleeps as if nothing exists in her bed in the living room. She barely raises her head, and tucks her face farther away into her tail as early morning passes in. Who is at my door is surprising. It’s him, and he’s staring at me when I open the door as if he hasn’t slept in days. Though I wasn’t about to let my guard down. Days before, when the man had laid his guitar down, he’d said you know I kind of like you. Well, damn, because that had been my mentality too, and my stomach ached for the entirety of the evening thanks to you.
Damnit, Yuusuke. I can get nothing out of you that’s not cryptic. It’s like pulling teeth, and even now, I bet you’re not going to tell me what you’re doing here. “Come in.” My voice is low, and he makes himself at home in the comfort of the dim living room. All I had asked of him was to let me see what was inside of his eyes, since the day he had walked away. That was my only request for him. He disappeared down the steps of the station and only returned once, and that was to pick up his guitar stand from the studio. They erased all traces of him from that place, but he’d already gotten so far under my skin, that everything still reminded me of him. Even now, when he had walked by me, I smelt the familiar scent of the Calvin Klein that still makes me turn around in the hallway of the studio, expecting to see his face.
“I’m sorry.” I hear you say, and your hands are on your knees.
“For what?” No greetings. No nothing. All of that is left unsaid because we honestly don’t need to say it again.
“For running.”
I know what he means. On several levels. The night after, when limbs entangled into limbs and I could trace the skin of his bare back with one finger. When he held my hand and roughly awoke my senses and spoke of the world in heavy pants and sweat that burrowed in our depths. When his eyes had met my own and we’d said everything we had been wanting to say for years and years, and I was all ready. Though he was not. He left the morning after, and I had to untangle my emotions out of sheets but all I could think about was his bedroom eyes that took me to the edge of the earth. I stood rigid for a time, but then I re-called that Suga Yuusuke was human.
“I didn’t judge you too harshly.” I took the seat beside me, and I noticed he visibly relaxes, and his hand falls against my leg. Vaguely I wonder if this is why he’s here. That he can’t sleep and had been tossing and turning until his thoughts were loud enough to bring him here. His hair isn’t too out of place, but his shirt doesn’t match his pants, and his shoes had been hastily thrown on. His hand tensed, and I noticed that his grip had gotten rough, until it bled through the fabric of my pajama pants.
“I still shouldn’t have fucking done that. I was up in the air, tossed through the ringer about this and that. My future, our future, how I pushed, scratched and clawed my way out. Then I had to go and tie it into my personal life. Then I had to go, and disappoint you. I’m sorry.”
He’s watching, somewhat hesitant, but his walls are caving in. I can see into his eyes, just a little, but it’s more than I could’ve seen weeks prior. We’d known each other for years, and our feelings had always been some jumble of mismatched and chaotic emotions. Small storms that boiled beneath our beings and rattled ourselves to the cores of our existence. Suddenly, it’s no longer important about what was done in the past. It had gotten them to the present day, and the thing that mattered was that he had came back. He’d came back in his uncertainty and didn’t know what to expect.
“I forgive you for being human.”
His face is suddenly pressed into my neck, and his hand crosses over my lap. Body warmth came and went, but this lingered with his lips against my skin and trickling murmurs of ‘I’m really sorry’. To us, this couldn’t mean ‘goodbye’, and I’m going to reassure him until the sun rises on both of our backs. This time he’ll stay even after I fall asleep, because I can hear him breathing against the hollow of my throat come six or seven before he slips his way into my dreams.
I forgive you.
