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gonzaburrow · 2 years ago

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to the tide

Tashiro tries to remember, whose idea was it to come here? He doesn’t think it was his; he doesn’t often leave work past midnight with an itch to go to the beach. But he doesn’t not want to be here. Truth be told, the drive over is a blur.

And so, he’s on the beach with Hanzawa Masato. He abandons his shoes before they leave the car and urges Hanzawa to do the same. The other man complies, and before long they’re meeting the tide roll in. Tashiro squeezes the wet sand in between his toes; it feels weird good and soothing.

He’s wading into the water before he’s processing his actions. Ankles, to knees, Tashiro stops when the water meets his thighs. He’s extending a hand towards Hanzawa, who joins him without hesitation. They’re holding hands, their hair is blowing in the salty breeze, and Tashiro is struck by a suffocating sense of deja vu.

Hanzawa’s hair is blown out of his face, and there it is. His every feature is illuminated by the moonlight, and Tashiro’s heart jumps in his chest. He pulls the other man forward and steps back, pulling the pair deeper into the water.

They’re waist deep, and he’s regretting not removing even his t-shirt. He’s pretty sure they didn’t bring any towels or spare clothes; the air is crisp and threatens to turn into a biting chill.

They’re in too deep now. Turning back now would be silly.

Tashiro takes another step, and his foot is met with a strange texture. It summons a shriek out of him, and it’s at that moment he realizes neither of them have spoken since they stepped foot on the beach.

Hanzawa tries and fails to hold back his laughter. His hands are braced on Tashiro's shoulders. Warmth radiates from his palms through Tashiro's t-shirt. He shivers.

"You know, you're the only person who consistently steals laughter out of me."

Tashiro's head whips up, their faces are just a breath apart.

"Of course, that's cause I'm freakin amazing. "

The other man's laughter dies down, but he's got his real smile on. "Yeah, you are."

At this distance, their slight difference in height is present. Hands are still on shoulders, Tashiro is hyper aware of the light pressure.

"Wait no, I was kidding. You weren't supposed to agree with me."

"You don't give yourself enough credit."

"If that's how it is, then you don't give yourself enough time to relax."

"What's this then? I'm feeling pretty restful here, with you."

"You know that's not what I mean." But then Hanzawa's words sink in. Tonight Tashiro's brain is in a constant scramble, just bees trapped in a jar. "Why’d you say it like that?" It comes out in a mumble, he kicks the sand under the water; whatever he stepped on earlier gets caught on his toes. He tries to ignore it.

"How would you have me say it?"

Tashiro processes the response and reaches to free his foot from the seaweed. He braces an arm on Hanzawa’s chest before he realizes his actions. He loses his balance, but Hanzawa’s hands move to his waist and keep him steady.

They're essentially hugging. Tashiro feels the hard line of muscle under his hand. Their position feels like something out of a shoujo manga.

"I'm waiting for that answer." He says it like the punchline of a joke.

Tashiro doesn't have an answer.

"Can I get back to you on that?" On instinct, one of his fingers pet the fabric underneath. It's soft and barely textured. It feels nice. A warm hand covers his. The absence on his waist feels wrong.

"Yeah, or don't. It's not that serious after all, is it?" Hanzawa plucks Tashiro's hand from his chest and steps back. His smile returns to its shallow standard. "Sorry I dragged you here. But thank you for coming."

They're still speaking in whispers.

"I don't mind. Can I ask why we're here?"

"You can ask," Hanzawa says, "but I'm not sure I'll answer." He turns away and walks back to shore.

Tashiro is stunned.

Was this one of those serious moments he couldn't read? What would happen if he asked Hanzawa? He wasn't sure if he should be scared of the potential answer or lack of.

They're watching each other, one on the beach and the other waist deep with waves tapping his back.

Tashiro wishes the ocean would swallow him whole.

A particularly large wave crashes over him, bowls Tashiro forward. He swallows a most foul mouthful of saltwater. He’s spitting it out, and Hanzawa is still by the shore. He’s got one foot hesitating in the water. But he doesn’t make any further moves.

Something about their positions, Hanzawa’s hesitance to do something for once in his life, and the ocean water lingering on his tongue makes an animosity bubble in Tashiro’s gut. He’s not an angry guy, he always lets things just roll off his back. He’s a lazy stream.

This moment though, breaks something inside him.

He’s shouting, screaming; he didn’t know his voice could sound so feral. Tashiro starts moving towards the shore, attempting to maintain composure although the tide is making it difficult. Let this be the one moment he’s actually taken seriously.

He stops close enough that Hanzawa can hear him, but enough that they’re a generous arm’s length apart. Tashiro’s gathering his thoughts, and trying not to admire Hanzawa’s form when his clothes are sticking to his body; white button up now translucent.

The other man opens his mouth to speak, but Tashiro brings a hand up to stop him.

It was now or never.

“You can’t just run away like that.” Tashiro says.

“Isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black?”

Waves crash in the distance.

“You always have an answer until it comes to yourself. You gotta stop putting yourself in punishing situations, man. I’m not letting you deflect this time.”

“It’s not that easy.” Tashiro almost misses his words; the ocean threatens to bury his voice under its sound.

A chuckle sneaks out from Tashiro’s throat. He knows it’s not a funny situation, but the absurdity of how stubborn Hanzawa could be, it hit him in a strange way.

“Sorry, I know there’s nothing funny. But I don’t think it needs to be that deep?” He heaves a deep sigh. His mouth is still bitter from the water. “Why don’t you try being more direct? Everything you say is so enigmatic; I never know what’s for real and what’s a joke.”

Hanzawa’s eyebrows stitch together. It’s such a foreign look; he doesn’t look like himself. Their eyes are meeting, and Tashiro can’t tell if water sprayed on the other man’s face or if he shed a few tears.

“The problem with that, my dear Tashiro, is I’m not entirely sure myself.”

“Well,” Tashiro invades Hanzawa’s space and envelopes him, pulling his head into the space beneath his chin. “That’s a good place to start. Thank you.”

#sasaki to miyano #hanzashiro #hanzawa to tashiro #tashiro gonzaburou #hanzawa masato #just gonna keep sharing snippets of this story here and eventually post it on AO3 with it all stitched together #hopefully this wasn't too long to post on tumblr #if its a lil sloppy then uuuuuhhhh pretend its not or smthn #ALSO #i was literally sobbing from the reaction to the last hanzashiro thing i wrote #thank u thank u thank u i am literally the biggest fan of all of u #tryin so hard not to be starstruck by the cool kids liking my writing

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dirtbra1n · 6 months ago

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he kind of doesn’t know why he does it, didn’t really take the time to think about it. all he knows is that the time read 2:41 a moment ago and changed the second shirahama’s voice crackled over the phone, “what?”

“gonna tell you something weird.”

“…mhm…?“

tashiro squeezes his eyes shut, groggily rubbing a thumb over quick-drying salt at the outer corner of his eye. “just dreamed about hanzawa senpai dying on me.”

“…” shirahama breathes in; tashiro can hear him hold it. similarly, the sound of his hand being dragged over his face is crisp and loud.

finally, he says, “fascinating.”

—

thing is that tashiro could go for a vending machine drink, right about now.

not that he’s bored. the underclassman sweating and fighting for his life across the net is putting up a solid fight, and sweating enough to really make you believe it. tashiro’s having a lot of fun just watching the kid’s expressions alone.

he returns the ball, hard; there’s a sour taste in his mouth all of a sudden. he wonders if the president position makes sadism into a contagion. the ball floats back in his direction. he sends it back with spin.

his point. his chest inflates with fresh air.

could go for a vending machine drink, yeah, but he hasn’t had the chance to yet. hard to sneak out of club when you’re the president. harder still when you’ve got a nosy little ghost creeping over your shoulder about it.

not that anyone’s dead. that was a metaphor. the ball’s put back in play. tashiro’s mind wanders back outward.

somewhere between here and there, points a and b, aka kinda always aka from the beginning, tashiro started worrying about hanzawa senpai, started thinking about him a lot. started keeping a personal score of how many piercings he’s got to compare against the cagey answers he gets when he asks the question, Hey, senpai, how many piercings have you got now? it’s really not about the words that come out of his mouth, see. there’re more of them now than there were a year ago than there were two years ago. eyes on the prize—sharp eyes pay big dividends. you get the idea.

tashiro gonzaburou is curious about hanzawa masato and wants to know things about him.

it’s hard not to. right? he spent so much time seeing this guy who had a network of something like one hundred people in one single group chat to snitch on tashiro when he tried to play hooky. someone who had piercings before and more piercings after, and likes milk tea, and will not turn down a favor asked of him no matter how many other favors he’s doing already. a weird senpai who decided out of the blue one day to finally hammer in that last nail in tashiro’s custom-made president-shaped coffin.

ping—pong—ping-pong-PING—PONG. “ha-HA!”

tashiro gonzaburou notices and notices and notices, hears and sees and gathers and wonders and thinks thoughts that unspool into these big long tangents of thought that might start with ‘You should sleep more’ but end up right back at ear piercings again.

he also wins games of ping pong.

tashiro, spooling thought back up as neatly as he can the table’s net, clocks two corrections to make.

“see the lot of you tomorrow!”

he wasn’t worried about senpai from the beginning, not the way he is now. and that coffin isn’t custom-made.

—

sat with his legs criss-crossed on unfinished stone, knife getting weaved through idle fingers, tashiro watches up the river.

he’s sat a long time before a massive, shuddering, foreign boat appears there.

he’s sat for three more blinks before he hears one solitary CRACK, maybe a musket, some kind of old-timey gun for sure, and falls back with a hole in his forehead.

—

figures that he spends this much time being curious about hanzawa senpai and, out of the blue, as his reward, goes and finds him sat on hard concrete with his back against the wall, his eyes wide open, his hands at his face.

it’s kind of so far removed from the enigmatic senpai tashiro got used to seeing and wondering about that it’s—like—a bucket of cold water dumped over his head, maybe. waking up out of real deep sleep because of an alarm he didn’t remember setting. another last step on a staircase, followed by another followed by another. or something.

hanzawa senpai, spoken of by the devil, is here in front of him, and he looks…

scared. big shoulders shuddering a little, strong arms connected to shapely, masculine, trembling hands, toned legs tense enough to break into a run, handsome face almost hidden in full, half-dozen piercings in his ear, at least, glinting.

hanzawa senpai, who tashiro didn’t know he could describe so well, is sitting on the ground, against the wall, and he looks scared.

“tashiro-kun,” he says. tashiro startles. feels a little stupid after. hanzawa senpai raises his head enough to look at tashiro’s face, sort of. “how are you?”

how are you? “alright, I guess.” tashiro swallows, looks around a little. “are you, um. what’s up with you, hanzawa senpai?”

it’s not really an answer to his question when hanzawa senpai says, plainly, lightheartedly, his eyes sliding shut and that smile pulling at his lips, “I’m doing bad.”

“oh. why?”

the lull that follows feels a little like what tashiro thinks a black hole would feel like. like it’s sucking all the oxygen out of the air and the breath out of his lungs and the words out of his mind and the everything out of the everywhere. the words that follow throw all of it back out, mach speed.

“I like someone.”

oh, wow. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

hanzawa senpai’s eyes are back on tashiro’s face. “neither did I.”

—

he’s home and wearing one less shoe than he was a second ago when a big long reel of spooled memory barrels over him.

he’s wearing no shoes when he says, out loud, “Wait.”

—

embrace it. go into the water, take hold of his wrist before he plunges under, go down with him. pull him into your chest before you can think better of it. let the water carry you down,

down

down,

cold in your ears and eyes and nose and lungs.

feel it all as much as you can. you don’t have the best grasp of dreams even still, after all this time, but you know that this here won’t ever really compare to the real thing. might as well play at being a kettle for a while, let water fill up any space water could. senpai’s warmth clings stubbornly to your chest—he’s far from small, so the temperature feels like a botched seam in your subconscious; pressure from the inside and out, water pressure compressing you to one single, massive point of contact.

not the real thing. you won’t know what drowning feels like after this, let alone the other thing.

they’re fun things, dreams. in a second you’ll start plummeting, the two of you, divorced from the water. you’ll cough, hard, to expel the water from your body, and it won’t really work but you’ll pull senpai away from your chest to get him to do the same anyway.

and your vision will be blurry, so it won’t really matter when something like a sixth sense has your shoulders tensing up. you won’t see the glossy stone you rocket into; only hear the sickening crack.

what you have to do is embrace it all. it’s not drowning, at least.

—

I’ve played a game like this before, you know. girl insists on cleaning up all on her own and she gets—

—

sopping wet, tashiro says, “this is so gross.”

worse than wet, a gnarly broken… everything, replies, “you’re telling me.”

—

the timing’s off.

tashiro feels he wants to be alone in the classroom after school. he doesn’t really know why. he falls asleep.

jolts, pitches, watches his heart plummet. watches himself plummet, too.

the classroom he wakes up to is pitch dark. figures.

paranoid unsafety gets its claws in him. shirahama’s words drudge themselves up. a girl gets what? tashiro holds a broom stern in his hands and swings it around like there’s something sharp at the end of it.

he gives the classroom a courtesy sweep.

after much debate, he leaves the broom behind when he goes to throw out the trash. probably won’t need it.

the cold has a numbing, vicious bite to it. the sound of his shoes on cement and old, dead, dry grass is deafeningly loud cutting through the still.

it’s not his or shirahama’s genre, but tashiro feels eerily like the protagonist of one of those first-person horror games. crunching and slipping, no good foothold. he swallows stiffly; his collar, pressed up against his adam’s apple, is too tight.

this is something he can blame shirahama for, and he does.

finally he puts out the trash. shoves his back up against the nearest wall and looks up at the sky. shadow of the moon, not much else to look at. he takes a picture to send shirahama, accompanies it with a text that reads have u gone outside today

obviously he has. it’s the principle of the thing.

quickly shirahama replies, You’re just putting the trash out aren’t you

You fell asleep didn’t you

I tried to warn you and everything. Stuuuupid

tashiro squints. takes another photo, of the trash bag. u should be here. two thumbs down emojis. he mutes the conversation before shirahama can reply and shuts his phone off again. pushes himself off the wall.

walks three absent steps towards the door, hands to his lips, blowing into them. the timing’s really off. still unstained, tashiro squints wearily at his reflection in the cleaver’s face. another step. he feels his heart overshoot all the way back up into his throat, distantly for a second, at the sound of a message notification.

those claws dig in a little deeper. he can’t help feeling a little watched. he waits ‘til he’s back inside to take his phone back out. hanzawa senpai.

ta—shi—ro—kuuun. tashiro cradles his phone in his hands as he goes back down the hall. are you free? I know it’s late.

tashiro brings his hands to his chest, trying to leach enough warmth to reply. halfway rickety fingers manage, yea

another few seconds of friction against his sweater. i’m at the school still

hanzawa senpai doesn’t reply for a minute. the classroom door clatters extra loud when he pulls it open. tashiro picks up his bag and creeps down the hall for a third time, footsteps either light or muted. at one point or another, he takes the cleaver to old wood.

the notification tone spooks him again. tashiro grasps his chest.

you didn’t happen to fall asleep there, did you?

tashiro doesn’t reply to that text. where are you, senpai?

a panda sticker laughs at him. the location comes a moment later.

tashiro’s looking down at hanzawa senpai standing in a dried up waterway with a trash claw in his hand.

really, really off. tashiro’s been calling so long his voice has gone raw, rumblier, and hanzawa masato hears it through the din of blood in his ears and static behind his eyes and he croaks, so quiet, reverent, out of his mind, “god?”

—

hanzawa senpai, with something like a dozen cuts in each foot, is leaving a bloody trail; it makes tashiro wince. senpai won’t let him wrap the—he’s not gonna admit it but he won’t let tashiro touch him, damn it.

you’d think, running from a flood—taxing, tiring, kind of pointless, a massive pain in the ass—that you’d take a leg up when it’s offered to you. tashiro swallows around something. tashiro does not ease up on his pace.

senpai, though. he’s running like—tashiro swallows around that something again. he’s running like he’s not bleeding out, first of all. like his eyes aren’t foggy. like you can’t nearly see straight through him—this would be funny irony if anything funny was happening at all.

but really, senpai runs like he’s having fun.

he laughs every time his feet catch on something, every time he jumps over a tree root—always pushing up stones, always reaching for his legs—and every time he’s back on the ground. laughs as he apologizes to the faceless people he blusters past, even though they haven’t heard one single objection. laughs and laughs and—

he’s laughing when he goes skidding on cobbled stone and crashes into a dilapidated market stall. curls into himself, laughing so hard that it sounds like something comes up.

tashiro hisses as he hits the ground beside him, momentum skinning his knees.

“come on, senpai, let’s go,” tashiro reaches for his elbow. “get up.”

“tashiro-kun,” hanzawa senpai manages, pulling the less mangled arm, the one tashiro moved to take hold of, up to his face to wipe at his eyes. “hey, tashiro-kun,” his gaping chest heaves, “go already.”

“yeah,” tashiro says, “let’s go.”

another peal of rough laughter sees old blood spat onto the stone. “no. you go.”

he hears the roar of water. he kind of really doesn’t give a shit about it anymore. “I don’t want to.”

tashiro watches senpai’s throat bob. old blood gets older, looks like it’s been there forever. “you’re going to see me cry.”

what’s so funny? tashiro’s own throat bobs. “wh—“

“go.”

get up. “you can’t really—“

“go.”

tashiro, maybe as angry as he’s ever been in his entire life, stays planted on the ground.

it doesn’t even really sound like laughter anymore. “now why did I know…?” hanzawa senpai puppets himself back onto his feet, listing sideways. tashiro pushes onto a knee to reach for him again and crumples in on himself.

hanzawa senpai drops limply into the river.

“no, wait. wait, just—hold on, you can’t. senpai, you…” tashiro swallows. off the ground, his own blood seeps into the stone. on unsteady legs scraped raw, two steps forward.

tashiro gonzaburou, from on high, spits, “god damn it.”

—

he’s lying down in bed when he says, “oh, my drink.”

—

why shouldn’t he get mad and frustrated and have cracks in his composure spilling over each other. why shouldn’t his face fall when he sees someone he cares about dying all over again for the—

he doesn’t even know how many times it’s been. a nightmare is a nightmare is a nightmare.

why shouldn’t tashiro crumple when the moon drops out of the sky. why shouldn’t he stare up at it when he’s fallen on his back, hard, with a stupid, smoking hole in his forehead.

a witness, mourner, undertaker. the only person around to look the corpse in the eyes.

tashiro got brought into it. all of it has hurt. it can’t be helped; if you see someone drowning, you try to pull them up. that’s all.

if he’s been here once, and more times after that, so many times he can’t even remember, then he’ll keep trying. tashiro sees him drowning, and tashiro tries to pull him up. he tries. he’s trying. he’s—

“come ON. please. please,” he spits out a mouthful of silt. “come on.”

gasping, grasping, coughing, free fall. three beats: CRAAACK.

tashiro wakes up with a groan. rolls sluggishly onto his side, grasps for his phone, texts are u awake

startles a second later when his phone starts buzzing in his hand.

“you scared me.”

“sorry,” says shirahama, raspy. “can’t use my hands right now. talk.”

“wh—what are—”

click. click. br-ri-ring!

ah. “never mind.”

“are you hanging up?”

“no!” tashiro rolls back onto his back, resting his phone on his sternum. “had another one.”

“oh, I see. ‘another one’.”

tashiro ignores him, humming noncommittally. “I think these are… maaaybe. making me worse.”

shirahama sighs, big and drawn-out. he pauses for a second like he’s mulling something over. “…you know…”

a chill rushes down tashiro’s spine like a cold marble. “don’t start—”

“played a game once with a plot like this…”

“dude—”

“really didn’t end well…”

isn’t that because you did a bad job!? “st—”

shirahama ignores him, speaks over him, is suddenly right up to his phone’s receiver. “you could die.”

tashiro digs his palms into his eyes. “you could die.”

he’s still close enough to the receiver that tashiro hears him exhale a sleepy laugh, “juuust saying.” shirahama has returned to his game. click. …click… ba-woomp.

“are you winning?”

another big sigh. “I am losing. so bad.” a thud on the other line. too close, “tashirooo...”

“did you die?”

“she hasn’t killed me but I bet she wants to.”

tashiro sucks on his teeth, grasping around in his memory. “which one is she?”

shirahama weeps, “mysterious older girl.”

a crease forms between tashiro’s brow. “I think… I probably can’t help.”

sniffling. “could you pull up a guide for me?”

tashiro rolls onto the floor and crawls towards his laptop. “do you really think I’m gonna die?”

“well…” silence. tashiro lies on his side and curls up. he closes one eye and goes blind in the other. “probably not.”

massive vote of confidence. “what happened in,” he sighs, kind of defeated, “what happened in your game? and what’s her name.”

a note of longing floats from one bedroom to the other, “mirai.” tashiro guesses at the spelling and completely whiffs it. shirahama’s longing cuts short. “they died, tashiro.”

“before that, though. what happened to them.”

shirahama sniffles some more. “we shared dreams and I tried to save her and I couldn’t. and then we died. they died.” tashiro hears him laugh at himself a little resentfully. “the characters died.”

he refocuses his seeing eye. “what chapter are you on?”

“seven.”

“did you give her the bracelet or her book back?”

“I—” shirahama’s voice travels like his face is in his pillow. “I gave her… melon bread...”

“ohhh.” Her humiliation at the perceived transparency drops her affection low enough to trigger a bad ending, regardless of current standing. “she does want to kill you, a little.”

shirahama sobs.

tashiro’s throat closes up a bit. “shouldn’t have said that, sorry. I’m sorry. give the book back, return the bracelet later.”

face still in the pillow, “the bread?”

“chapter, um. chapter eleven. she really doesn’t want you to know she likes it right now.”

miserably, shirahama replies, “okaaay.” tashiro hears him whisper, I’m really sorry.

click. click. …click. whoosh. tashiro scrolls a little further. a screenshot of the game menu reads, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO RESTART?

tashiro gives him a minute before asking, “in the other game, that was a bad ending?”

shirahama blows his nose. “yeah.”

“did you go back to fix it?”

he doesn’t reply for a while. br-ri-ring! “I was too scared.”

tashiro flinches.

“I just… I messed it up really bad. it was my fault and she wasn’t even mad at me when she died. held her with blood everywhere ‘cause mine didn’t stick.” tashiro’s eyes fly open. blinding, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO RESTART?

shirahama keeps going, “I didn’t leave her side after, but I couldn’t carry her home, too weak, so we both just stayed there. I couldn’t do anything. and then I died. and it was over.”

a little nauseous, tashiro reaches out slowly to shut his laptop. “do you know—mm.” what happens when you get it right? “do you think you’re ever gonna try again?”

shirahama’s voice comes out rough. “I wanna save her.”

tashiro climbs back under his covers and throws an arm over his eyes. swallows hard. an echo of words he wanted to hear just once: I want to. “are you doing anything tomorrow?”

tashiro can hear the scowl on his face. “you know I’m not.”

“it’s not too late. to—save her, I mean.”

tashiro can hear the scowl falling away. “yeah. fine, whatever, I’ll go to sleep.”

he finally takes his phone off speaker. “thank youuu. and you’re welcome.”

shirahama grumbles, “I don’t think it’s making you worse, your—this. just kind of…” shirahama sighs through his nose, “different.”

tashiro peels his arm off his face to stare at the fan spinning overhead. “I guess. see you tomorrow.”

“yeah.”

the silence stretches blandly. tashiro presses his lips together. “good night.”

“mm. night.”

—

tashiro’s still flat on his back when he hears hanzawa senpai’s voice say, dull and rumbly and cracking, “please, god, just make me clean.”

—

tashiro forgot to end the call. there’s only snoring on the other end. kyouji grumbles, “hey, tashiro, I’m gonna tell you something you might think sounds crazy.”

no response. he wasn’t expecting one. “those dreams you’re having are your dreams, and generally I think it means something when you get into these… situations… over and over with one person in those dreams.”

tashiro hardly says, “hrngh?”

kyouji says, “go back to bed, punk,” and hangs up the call.

—

hanzawa senpai’s voice is reaching a quality it only ever got to once, during the last quarter of a tournament day—harsher, raspier, more mean than usual. irritable, impatient. waiting for something lying flat on a dozen broken… back… bones. “I miss when I was alone,” he announces at the sky. a boat horn bellows way far off. “I miss when you weren’t here. do you know how easy it was to die then?”

tashiro, someplace between bored and enraptured, and able to stand on two feet, is carving notches into rotting wood. “I bet I could guess. how long do you think this thing has been here?”

hanzawa senpai throws an arm over his eyes, deflates a little. “not as long as its occupant, I wager.”

—

“ta—shi—ro.” he felt warm breath on his ear and jumped. “d’you wanna free pass to say my name?”

tashiro spun on his heel, covered both ears. “aaahhh????”

the president stood there still, bent a little at the waist, hands behind his back. he asked, “you didn’t hear me?”

tashiro caught his breath enough to say, “what would I want that for?!”

“oh, you did.”

tashiro grasped at his chest. “just ‘president’ is fine with me.” he got a funny look.

“I didn’t spook you that bad, did I?”

“huh?” tashiro looked down at where his hand was rubbing the space over his heart. “uh. hm.” tashiro looked up at the president. the president was looking down at where tashiro was rubbing the space over his heart. tashiro stopped. “maybe a little,” he conceded the apparent truth, sounding a little petulant out of the corner of his mouth.

the president’s eyes narrowed a little, like he was holding back an indulgent smile.

tashiro got back to packing his bag.

out of his periphery he saw the president bring his arms over his head, fingers interlocked.

“I don’t think it’s fine with me, though.”

tashiro paused to take a sip of his water. “...mm?” a little dribbled out the corner of his mouth.

the president seemed to notice before he could wipe it. he didn’t repeat himself.

“what’d you say just now, president?”

realization clicked on. “you didn’t hear me. just as well—nothing much.” two long strides; he crouched right in front of him. brought his glasses up to sit atop his head. went over the corner of tashiro’s mouth with his pinky, like tashiro didn’t already wipe the water there.

he smiled knowingly. “break’s over. up we get.”

“wh—I’m done for today!”

the president towed him by the forearm back towards the last table left set up. used his big, booming voice to announce, “one more round!” to a room without an audience.

hanzawa senpai, from the storage room, called back distantly, “one more round!”

—

another lifetime, maybe, when tashiro through the throbbing in his forehead hears a low voice—electrifyingly familiar—ask liltingly, “do you want to be clean or don’t you?”

strong arms hook under tashiro’s armpits. hanzawa senpai drawls, somewhere, like his filter has gone completely, “is this wise to do?”

just above him, rumbling through him, “what’s ‘wise’?” tashiro cracks his eyes open to see lips curling up over shining, dull teeth, “aren’t I wise? you don’t trust me?”

tashiro interrupts with his cotton mouth, “what’s this got to do with me?”

he’s someplace else entirely when he hears the two of them at once tell him, “nothing.”

—

“tashiro, focus up.” the ball went whizzing at the wall.

“I’m focused…” tashiro grumbled, tongue feeling numb. his eyes slid over the room—each match a brutal pace, the few members who weren't playing dispensing incisive commentary while pulling new balls out of infinite pockets. the room was buzzing and the air was warm. tashiro shuddered to think of going back outside. he forgot his jacket. icicles were gonna be hanging off him by the time he got to the bathhouse.

“tashiro.” his name jolted through him, and another ball went flying past him, closer this time. tashiro’s gaze fell back across the table just in time to see hanzawa senpai reloading the president with another missile.

tashiro’s whole mouth feels kind of numb, actually. “what?”

“I want you to focus on the game.” hanzawa senpai moved to another table.

tashiro slid back into position. “yeah,” he murmured, “I don’t think that’ll make much of a difference.”

he saw a smile tugging at the president’s lips out of the corner of his eyes. “‘that so? why not? practice against me off the record… thought you’d do more with it.”

tashiro’s brow furrowed. “your arm’s like a gun.”

loud laughter hit him at the back of his knees. the president’s arm drew back. “hey, tashiro,” he said gamely. tashiro dropped his weight into his feet. “incoming.”

—

an arm holds him up by the waist; tashiro’s head rolls limply onto a broad shoulder. warmth drips low in his ear, “guess you’ve got sharper ears than I gave you credit for after all, huh?”

—

tashiro figured it out a while ago. that he wants to win, but not the way everyone else does. this much time spent playing against the old folks at the bathhouse, more time spent in club without him than with him, and he still gets a taste in his mouth, once in a while, that says, I want to beat him.

hungering for the chance. hungering for the chance to get one over him.

on a separate layer, tashiro watches a fraction of the president’s face shifting in low light; it’s still him, but different. tashiro drags his head back up and looks down at him. the stranger doesn’t turn his head, but watches him out the corner of his eye.

tashiro watches the eye roll, watches a smile tug at his lips.

the entire thing feels like tashiro’s got this unfulfilled something, playing out this game of cat and mouse. because they saw something in you.

he saw something in you. you don’t even realize you’re idolizing him until—

“aw, hell,” tashiro murmurs, half-asleep, arm aching under his pillow, “did I ever even learn his name?”

—

desperate times. he doesn’t recognize the hand that’s holding the cleaver and he doesn’t recognize the white hot feeling that’s lighting him up. they don’t really reconcile with one another.

yet.

shirahama’d amended his statement:

“well,” he’d said, hand brought conspiratorially to cover his mouth, sweat beading at his brow, “define what you think is ‘worse.’”

tashiro doesn’t recognize the cleaver but he knows it’s his hand holding it because he sees the trembling of the blade and feels the trembling in his wrist and forearm, bicep, shoulder, chest, ribs. connective tissue being sheared by the fiber. he doesn’t recognize the cleaver but he still sees his reflection in the metal.

some time ago—he doesn’t know, it doesn’t matter—tashiro pinched his lips together. “uh.” wet them. turning to look at hanzawa senpai, he was faced with the full weight of his characteristically threatening smile. he ended up saying, under these circumstances, “okay. don’t get mad.”

hanzawa senpai replied, levitously, “tashiro-kun.”

“…but I’m kind of… trying to…”

hanzawa senpai cut in, levitously, “tashiro-kun.”

“…get you before the water does?”

senpai closed his eyes.

senpai covered his face.

senpai… sighed. “tashiro.”

“…yeah?”

“come here, please.”

“got it.”

tashiro took an unsteady step forward. took another one. stood before hanzawa senpai, kneeling on the ground, and got a dizzying feeling of déjà vu.

hanzawa senpai looked up at him with a weird look on his face. “you need to kneel down, don’t you?”

a couple moments ago, tashiro still felt like this was out of his hands. he knelt. hanzawa senpai took one of those steadying breaths that tashiro is supposed to take before a serve and has yet to follow through on.

“okay, tashiro-kun,” he says pointedly, now, in a funny kind of way, “don’t get mad.”

it’s like a shutter had gone up. tashiro can’t figure out why he would ever be mad. ‘mad’ couldn’t begin to cover any of this.

senpai has got that damn look in his eyes now, too many moving parts; self loathing and good humor, anger and pity and hurt. he asks skeptically, like it’s been weighing on him, “you couldn’t use a normal knife?”

tashiro wants to tell him, it wouldn’t be enough, this’ll be faster. you’re like livestock. that’s not right, sorry. prey?

senpai looks at him dubiously, filmy glaze creeping in over his eyes.

tashiro wants to tell him, you don’t trust me. I’m better with this thing than I look, I’ll show you. it’ll tell me something, so give me the worst you’ve got.

the breath catches on something in his throat. whatever listless feeling he had a moment ago plunks dully into the water.

tashiro tells him, “just watch.”

the instant he wakes up, confident he’d be awake even still, tashiro calls him raspy-voiced. “there weren’t any endings where you killed her to save her, right?”

“man,” says shirahama, muffled, distressed, “do you remember ‘hey’?”

—

“look at you, tashiro,” the arm curling just under his hip trembles for a second. “tall enough now that I have to really hoist you to keep you off the ground.”

tashiro pulls an eye open.

all he sees is skin. he heaves a sigh and feels a jolt run up the body carrying him so vividly it pings in his brain as plain electricity.

“...figure yourself a tease these days, huh?”

tashiro swallows down around the cotton in his mouth enough to say, “nope.”

lifting his head’s a chore, but he does it anyway—hanzawa senpai’s thrown over the other shoulder, sack-style.

“hm,” tashiro says.

“don’t wanna hear any accusations of favoritism.”

bullet hole be damned, tashiro drops his head back onto its perch. thinks about blood and brain gunk staining an otherwise pristine uniform.

un-damning the bullet hole, “your favoritism looks a little funny to me.”

the quarter of a face he can see smiles a little. “you can handle a little cruelty from me, can’t you?”

tashiro squints at him. before he gets a chance to stitch together a response—feels like thoughts are just spilling out his forehead and onto the ground—hanzawa senpai groans, “let me off here.”

rumbling through them both, “hmmm?”

hanzawa senpai laughs, then sighs like he hadn’t meant to. “...please.”

the hum that means half-hearted consideration. “almost there. request denied.”

tashiro chokes on his own laughter when hanzawa senpai replies weakly, “damn you.”

—

talking to the train tracks, tashiro announces, “I think something is really wrong.”

shirahama only replies, “congratulations on finally hitting puberty.”

—

“hup!” tashiro watches hanzawa senpai fall bonelessly into the bath.

lasts only until he emerges with a little kid’s wet cough before laughing hard enough to push tears out his eyes.

warmth poured over itself again in his ear, “nope, you aren’t safe eith—”

“AUH!” water’s hot. he resurfaces. wiping his hair off his forehead, he asks blandly, “is something funny, senpai?”

hanzawa senpai squeaks a little, gripping his stomach where he kneels in the water. his own hair has already been swept back. their catapult stands triumphant with his hands on his hips. the stains on his clothes are apparently a nonissue. the only indication of exertion is a shudder that runs up from his feet and shakes the sweat-matted hair on his head.

tashiro experiences a feeling of clarity so strong watching the two of them that it knocks him on his ass.

“now then,” tashiro and hanzawa senpai watch him reach over his head to tug at the neckline of his uniform shirt. it comes off in one motion after that. “should be for the best that you two make way…!”

—

there’s a sign over hanzawa senpai’s head. if tashiro squints—it’s a dusty ditch-sign and the evening’s only getting dimmer—he can barely make out the words NO DIVING.

—

“you’re not supposed to use soap here.”

“ask your senpai if he wants to get out to actually clean himself up before nagging me, you.”

hanzawa senpai, dropping his head back onto the elbow he’s got resting on the ledge, groans.

tashiro’s head is lying on—

“could I call you ‘president’ once?”

his face twitches, amused, “if you really want to.”

—the president’s forearm. there is the occasional muscle tremor. tashiro feels no particular way about this.

he stares up at nothing.

no time or tolerance for musing, the president cups water in his hand and dumps it on tashiro’s face, stubbornly brushing his bangs back down. “now if you’d just close your eyeees…”

tashiro pushes his face back ‘til his elbow locks. the president just guffaws.

stretching his neck, the president sings, “ought to see about a change of clothes, huh…” tashiro watches him climb out of the bath with exaggerated effort. pretends he isn’t watching when the president massages his shoulder. he vanishes around a corner.

hanzawa senpai has got his wide eyes on when tashiro turns his head. startles him so bad he slips up to his neck in the water.

“am I some kind of clown to you, senpai?”

senpai wipes his eyes, “only the best one.”

tashiro lets his eyes fall shut and sighs. “are you alive yet?”

long pause. tashiro squints an eye to see hanzawa senpai pinching his lips. “...hold still for a second.” tashiro’s eyes fly open as hanzawa senpai takes his more busted hand to brush up tashiro’s bangs. “I suppose so.” he takes a finger and flicks tashiro’s forehead dead center. “you’re back in one piece, after all.”

tashiro can really only hear static anymore. “huh?”

“self-indulgence. you should be proud of me.” a towel gets dropped over his eyes. “I think he’s been boiled enough, don’t you?”

strong arms hook under his armpits; déjà vu as a feeling moves quick. the tile’s cold.

the president crouches to lean over him, takes his towel and chucks it. in snapshots, tashiro watches his hand lift off the ground, reach upward, be taken. in an instant, “welcome back to the world of the living, tashiro.” a snapshot: tashiro’s wrist, between jaws, and a crunch.

—

“hey,” tashiro says.

shirahama groans affirmatively.

is this something I should say out loud?

YES / NO

“do you think I should’ve touched the president?”

shirahama goes stiff.

“like not in a weird way. I’ve just been dreaming some more stuff lately.”

shirahama sits up to look at him. he has tears in his eyes. “can you give me like twenty minutes to pretend I’m dead.”

“I think I’m just really touch-starved.”

“Please.”

—

if it’s a contagion, tashiro is so, so sick.

old man kumano-san asks him, "say, tashiro... what’s got you gripping the paddle like that?"

he doesn't look down at it to swing it right again. sheepishly, he coughs, "cosplaying the meat guy at the supermarket."

—

“ain't enough for you to just let me haunt you, huh, tashiro?”

tashiro shifts his feet, squints, exasperated, across the table. “I can’t just take it lying down forever, you know.”

the table rattles. tashiro hasn’t ever felt his heart pound like this. he’s asked: “spoiling for a fight?”

“...not any more than before, I guess.”

the ball bounds over the net—tashiro returns it, narrowly; caught off guard.

dull teeth grin sharply at him. “bzzt.” his eyes are shining with something. “try that again.”

tashiro drops out of a dream at the bathhouse in worse shape than he's ever been at that river.

he clears sleep gunk out of his throat. purses his lips. dreamed he was at the bathhouse, at the bathhouse. feels, right now, like a squeezed lime.

he doesn’t remember who won. he doesn't know who he wants to have won.

"tashiro,” yamada-san says flatly, “I told you to get a move on already. look at the time!"

"yeah, yeah," tashiro groans. yamada-san—just before standing from where he was sat keeping vigil over him, apparently—balances a milk carton, still cool, on his forehead.

"get home quick. and, ah, good luck tomorrow," he says.

tashiro, saluting at the ceiling, replies, "...roger."

—

over the bustle beyond the open window, tashiro finds himself saying, to no one in particular, “did you know that heat makes you dream weird?”

miyano, to his right, looks at him with massive doll eyes. kuresawa, to his left, fixes him with a stare over his glasses before going back to his phone.

hanzawa senpai, dead center, looks down at him, hands ghosting over his neck where he was ‘evening his complexion’ a second ago, before tashiro went and opened his mouth, and he says, “really?”

like it’s news.

something in his throat keeps down a disbelieving you didn’t know?

tashiro catches his eye. squints hard. something shutters where he can’t see.

“hmmm?”

tashiro throws his head back with an exasperated sigh, and the extensions whip down his—

“senpai,” tashiro calls, louder than the music outside, it feels like, “what were the parts of the spine called again?”

“pfft,” hanzawa senpai, behind him now, murmurs like he doesn’t mean to, “they’re called vertebrae.”

fingers poke lightheartedly where bone juts. tashiro’s in a glass jar, and he flinches.

“gon-chan,” kuresawa chides disingenuously, standing to stretch his back and head for the door, “ladies tend to have more poise.”

miyano, in his periphery, blinks for the first time. he brings a hand to his chin, nods. “pretty good appeal.”

probably bl. tashiro poses with a hand on his cheek and says, “thanks, miyano.”

—

tashiro’s phone pings with a message from shirahama that reads, If you do anything to screw up your hair I’m shaving it all off your head

ping. And making you eat it

ping. Keep one foot on the ground at all times if you do anything insane I’m really gonna do it

tashiro purses his lips. glances out the open window; first floor.

the picture he takes of his feet, hovering as he sits on the windowsill and clad in black crew socks—he left the shoes somewhere else, he figures miyano will chase him down about them later—is waiting to be sent with incomplete text suck i when he spots someone out the very corner of his vision.

the very corner. an unmistakable figure at the edge of the crowd, staring over the living mass of strangers, right into tashiro stood in the window, until he isn’t anymore.

funny thing about crossdressing, see, is the worldview shift. that broad back looks broader, a piece-of-work senpai haunting his memory like a grief-hallucination.

that was him though. there are only so many people tashiro could recognize from the moon and he’s one of them. how many people in the world could possibly look like that.

it’s a second of stirring in his stomach that bridges the space between shoujo manga and violent murder. his feet are back on the ground but they might as well be dangling out the window; an impulse in the shape of today you are a girl has him gripped by the shoulders, nearly chasing after a living ghost and using strangers as stepping stones to do it.

one foot on the ground with his hands braced on the sill, he hears, “tashiro.”

sky still looks like rain. indistinct collective murmur hangs over the crowd outside like smog. a metal rod’s pang clefts clean through his forehead, up between his eyes. taiko drums. dwarfed by encroaching shadow miyano calls again, “tashiro,” from down the hall. tashiro’s shoes dangle limply from his hands.

thundering resonance. tashiro croaks, “what?”

—

“hey, senpai,” tashiro calls, “where’s, uh. where’s the coffin?”

hanzawa senpai points factually at the water. “go after it, if you want.” he smiles at him; a chill zips down tashiro’s… vertebrae. “maybe you’ll catch him this time.”

—

“—this vision of a lost lover. and she goes running after him, obviously, because he moved away when they were kids or whatever. and she missed him sooo bad, so she’s really hoofing it down the stairs and out the front gate and she’s only delicately out of breath, after the whole thing, which I thought was kinda stupid, but whatever. he’s standing a block away, staring back at her over his shoul—tashiro what are you doing?”

tashiro points at shirahama’s window over the crowd and waves him off. he huffs into the receiver, “I’ll be back in time.” he hangs up the call.

he’s standing two blocks away.

tashiro calls, “could you slow down? please?”

the president tilts his head and grins at him. “haven’t moved much at all, just now.”

he’s standing a block and a half away.

the president’s voice carries like it’s nothing, “you look pretty cute today.”

one block. now or never, “hey, president.”

the lopsided grin widens affectionately. “not the president anymore.”

tell me your name for real this time. it’s not really fine with me either. “have you, uh. been dreaming about anyone lately?”

the president’s shoulders shake, lips splitting impossibly wider. his eyes shine. tashiro hears thunder. “nooope.”

#hanzawa to tashiro #hey if you read the tags first This is about seven thousand words long. are you proud of me #tashiro gonzaburou #hanzawa masato #and our friend prev prez (nameless). no thematic value there #shirahama also. lot of him here i like him and tashiro a lot #shirahama kyouji #hanzashiro #dirtbrain writing #okay that one specifically out of the way. Happy Birthday Tashiro Gonzaburou #it’s only been. like over a year. whatever #i was having fun writing this. please be exorcised efficiently. Go in peace #i’ll surely be back with forgotten tags later. i love you though #never forget that

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