Fic Dumping Ground: 2017

[yrindor]

A new year, a new place for fic. As with last year's, this is a place for fic that I want to share but don't want to post to AO3 for whatever reason. Some of them may make it there eventually, some of them may not. Series, pairing, rating, and any relevant warnings will be in the subject of each post.

Comments

Cheer Danshi, Haru/Kazu, T

[yrindor]

He's staring at his hands again. He's spent a lot of time staring at his hands recently; they're familiar, and he finds that comforting somehow. And more than that, if he focuses on them hard enough, then he can push everything else aside and at least pretend that he's found some sort of equilibrium. His hands are chapped again, his nails bitten down and ragged, and now that the sun has set, they're starting to go numb from the cold. But warming them up would mean going back inside, and he's not ready to do that yet.

He's tracing the lines on the backs of his fingers absently when someone says, "There you are."

He looks up sharply and sees the first and last person he wants to see. "Haru."

"You weren't at practice. We were worried," Haru says. "Is it your grandmother?"

"I lied," Kazu whispers. "She doesn't even recognize me anymore." His hands blur in front of him, and it makes them look softer somehow, like the hands that always held him as they flipped through his parents' old scrapbooks and cut ears into the apple slices in his lunch. "She was the last person I had. I'm all alone now."

Tears start to fall, hot and salty and stinging against his rough skin.

"You're not alone," Haru says. "You have us."

Haru must have had his hands in his pockets, because they're warm when they grab his. "You're not alone," Haru repeats, "so you don't need to cry alone."

A hand brushes against his face, trying to wipe away his tears, but shaking too badly and bumping into his nose instead. The noise Haru makes is somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and the next thing Kazu knows, he's being pulled into a tight hug. Haru's hands are hot against his back, he tears hot against his back. He wants to tell Haru not to cry for him, but he's too busy crying himself.

He's not sure how long they stay like that before they finally separate, their hands shifting to fill the space between them.

He's staring at his hands again, but they're no longer cold and numb. His fingers are moving of their own accord, and it takes longer than he'd like before he makes sense of the pattern they're tracing on the back of Haru's hand—"Haru" over and over and over again. It's a name, but it's also a promise, a plea, a question.

He's trying to figure out how to put everything into words when Haru rests a hand over his and stills his fingers. When Haru squeezes them gently, he knows that maybe he doesn't need the words after all.