Chapter Text
Tokyo, Winter of 2008. Four days until the release of Falling in love / Aftermath of violence.
Face covered in light and cameras on, following the carefree movements of his hands. A microphone clipped on the collar of his shirt. The interviewer smiles.
Behind them, a gigantography showing the album cover hangs on the wall: Suna’s body lounges carelessly on the sink of a public bathroom, stretched before the camera lens. He wears a white t-shirt creased at waist-height and unbuttoned jeans, low enough to display the black elastic of his underwear. One of his hands slides under the t-shirt, caressing his stomach, while the other hides inside his pocket. An expensive-looking cheetah fur coat falls over his shoulders, sumptuous and big against his lanky frame. A face full of sharp angles and brusque lines feigns innocence, holds eye contact with the observer under dark lashes and droopy lids, tongue out, showing the metal ring wet with spit. The greenish lights of the bathroom give him a vulgar look. At the top part of the image reads the album name; at the bottom, Rintaro’s.
The interviewer gives the cover a quick glance before looking at Suna again. Suna assumes he is being examined in search of any trace of the boy in the picture. He knows the only thing he can give him at this time is his characteristic stare, lazy and sensual, so he does.
The man clears his throat before beginning.
The questions are not very different from those of the previous interviews. They always want to know the same things, if he is excited about his debut, what it feels like to be the true love of every japanese young woman, if he realizes how lucky he is to have such a promising future at such a young age.
Suna knows the script by heart. He nods when he has to, laughs when he has to, smiles with that boyish smile of his. He is an ace of practicality: no sigh is useless to his discourse. He has been practicing this charismatic act for a while now, since his career started asking for it. He does not remember when exactly but it is certain that it was not needed before. It used to come naturally, like a second skin.
“I’m sure this album will be chart-topping,” he says, tilting his head. “There is an extraordinary team supporting me and I've been working very hard on this album, plus the reception of the EP has been positive, so we can only hope for good things, don't you think?
The rich-boy, pretty-boy, self-assured-boy thing. He speaks that way, flutters his lashes like this, bends a wrist like that. It gives him the air of a sex symbol, a proper star.
“Just positive?” The interviewer laughs. Suna shrugs, looks down feigning a blush. “Excellent, I'd say. You've been quite the talk of the industry since it came out, which is impressive considering they are not new songs.”
Suna spreads his long legs, lowers himself across the purple velvet couch he’s sitting in. A ringed hand caresses the armrest as he pulls the corners of his mouth downwards, careless and masculine. He chews the words slowly, looking for the right answer without having to divert his gaze towards his team.
Everyone seems to want to talk about it, they all bring it up at some point. The PR people had warned him that they would, so Suna had expected it.
It's nothing out of the ordinary. He knows his name is not new, that he isn’t just popping up out of nowhere. Kobe's audience had not been huge, but they had been faithful in showing up at every show and recruiting new fans. There was also the internet thing, right, the blurry, poorly lit photos in which he appeared as the target, a skinny boy dressed in black sweating in the middle of a homemade stage.
Of course they’re not new songs. He still wishes they didn’t make it sound like such a big deal.
“Well, I did it thinking about the people who were there from the beginning," he says. "They deserved a clean, good-quality version of my early work.”
The interviewer drinks from a plastic bottle, forwards his head in a way that makes his eyes look like a frog’s.
“And you gave them what they deserved but, I– I can't help but wonder, if you’d let me, wasn’t it difficult to stand alone in the recording booth?” The air sounds like static. He keeps going. “As far as I know you never had the chance to do these tracks all by yourself.”
Suna smiles, hopes it comes across as amusement.
“I wouldn't call it difficult, I think... I think they're two very different experiences and fortunately I've been able to enjoy both for what they can offer individually.”
He can't take his eyes off the interviewer's greasy nose.
“And what do you think your former bandmates would think?”
The smile is tight on his lips when he says, “As I stated in previous interviews, we're not in contact anymore.”
Everyone wants to know about it. Everyone brings it up each time. The copyright issues, the other guys' issues, the band issues, the personal issues.
“We have sadly grown apart– life, work, taking different paths is more common than people might think. But I hope the best for them, as always– as far as I know my former bandmate Atsumu Miya has recently joined a new group, so I wish him the best of luck!”
He’s getting out of breath. He knows it’s a low blow, mentioning his name on public television, pretending not to know how long it’s been since he joined that band. He wonders what Atsumu will do this time.
“We know they'll be watching you, that's for sure! Is there anything you want to say to them, any words to spare?”
When the EP first came out, Atsumu made it to the news for drawing a dick in Suna’s face in the cover of the CD that an old Red Fox fan wanted him to sign. His label apologized for his behavior a week later and suspended his activities for half a month but then he came back to schedule, got asked by a TV reporter if he felt remorseful for his behavior and he spat it out, loud and clear, I’d do it again, that ungrateful cocksucker.
“I hope they like my new music,” he says. He could go on and on about how they have been a fundamental part of his growth as an artist, how his music wouldn't be what it is today without those two years with the band, how they taught him so much. He knows they don't care. “If not, at least I aim for them to feel even a bit nostalgic about the good-old times.”
“I'm sure they will, Suna,“ the interviewer smiles. Suna bows because it is the polite thing to do.
Someone gives the signal that they have stopped recording and Suna, finally, lets his guard down.
Tendo and Semi wait for him backstage, one in a suit and tie, the other in a gray hoodie and cap.
One of the stylists rushes to him to unhook the microphones from his clothes. The studio lights were too high and he can now feel a thin layer of sweat forming on his upper lip.
Tendo approaches him with a styrofoam cup in one hand and a black folder in the other.
“All right, that was the last one,” he says. “Promotions are officially over, yay.”
Suna accepts the coffee cup with a nod. “Did I overdo it with the whole good old days thing?”
The big sunken eyes in Tendo's face grow rounder as he smiles.
“I don't care. If any of your friends have any problems with what you said, that's on them.”
He diverts his attention to the folder, muttering something under his breath. Suna takes a sip. From across the room, Semi motions for him to come closer.
“Your first last interview, congratulations.” He says. He pats him on the back, but he's looking everywhere but him. It's nothing against Suna, he knows. “How are you feeling?”
Suna exhales slowly. He's spent twelve hours without having consumed anything but latte, chewing gum and a pack of cigarettes. That and anxiety, he's sure he won't make it to twenty-five without a stomach ulcer the size of his fist.
“Can I have my smokes back?”
Semi shakes his head. “You’ll have to wait ‘til we’re done here.”
“I am done.”
“You need to take your makeup off, wait for Tendo to check everything is ready to air, and then you have to stay and make a good impression on the staff.” This time he does look him in the face. “I don't want you to go around staining my name more than it already is.”
Suna moves closer to him, almost begging.
“Semi, come on, look-” he puts a shaking hand between the two of them. “It's just a cig, I need to get some air and I'll be right back.”
Semi sighs. His gaze travels from Suna's hand to his face, then he reaches into his hoodie pocket and pulls out the pack of SevenStars, a strip of mints and a silver lighter.
“Five minutes. Wash your hands before you come back.”
“I'm going to kiss you on the mouth,” Suna whispers, and Semi dodges before he can attempt to mark his words.
The building is a maze. To get to the street he has to pass eight floors of tired employees, a revolving door and the security guy who asks if he has permission to leave. Outside, the blue streets of Tokyo are freezing water poured over a burn that has taken a whole life to heal.
He gets a cigarette and holds it in between his lips while he lights it, the flame of the lighter a forest fire that threatens to burn his lashes. When he smokes he does it with his whole body, as with all his vices; he frowns with his lungs and chest when he inhales, he kisses his fingers an instant more than necessary, goes through the path of the blood in his veins carrying nicotine and pride. During the exhale, he releases the smoke through clenched teeth, almost in a hiss, and his lids caress his eyes lazily as they water because of the cold.
The clothes he is wearing don't do much. He wants to go back to his apartment and sleep for the rest of the day, for all the days that are left. He decides he will wake up in four weeks. Screw the album premiere, the post-release interviews, the signing event, and the opening concert. He'll be back when he has to start the tour: one date in Osaka after the two in Tokyo, one in Kyoto, one in Kobe, the closing in Sendai.
He takes the half-finished cigarette of his teeth and throws it into a puddle that is evidence of last night's rain. He keeps his hands in his pockets and waits for the fire to put out, for the burn to stop aching.
Despite the cold, Suna does not move, does not make any attempt to go back as he promised and despite the cold, on a balcony on the third floor, doors are opened for a woman to step outside. She holds a mug in her hands and speaks cheerfully with someone Suna cannot see. She is wearing a t-shirt made of thin fabric that hugs her body and defines the line of her shoulders when she leans against the handrail, the mug still in her hands.
The woman stops for a moment, listening carefully, then lets a burst of laughter blossom. She throws her head backward until the curve of her back and her throat becomes one. Her dark hair and her content torso appear until the balcony ends and the void begins, a step before falling and crashing so much life against the sidewalk. The woman straightens then, wipes a tear out, laughs again.
Suna straightens as well. He has just decided that show-time is over for him and the city, and he wants to be back home as soon as possible, far from the audience and from women who laugh in balconies. He takes out two more cigarettes that he puts in his pocket, shoves two mints in his mouth, takes one last breath of fresh air and heads back inside.
Kobe, summer 2006. One year and six months until the release of Falling in Love / Aftermath of Violence.
Warm light on his eyelids. Animated voices coming from somewhere around the apartment, a familiar hum. Sheets knotted at the foot of the mattress. Suna stirred in his sleep.
The humming stopped.
“Did I wake you?“
Suna rolled over with his brows furrowed. His neck muscles ached, his head felt heavy and the heat of early summer had been eating him from the inside out for weeks. He wanted to keep on sleeping until winter came back. Footsteps approached him from the left side of the bed. The curtains opened and the sun hit him in the face.
“Shut ‘em," he asked, covering his eyes with one hand. His voice was scratchy and damp with sleep. “Atsumu, shut ‘em.”
A gentle hand reached for his head, fingers curling, caressing his hair, then the grip became firmer, pulling until he felt the burn on his scalp. Suna clicked his tongue and opened his eyes. Atsumu smiled down at him.
“I'm leavin’ for work," he said, turned his back to him and walked the exact ten steps that separated the room from the kitchen. His hair was carefully arranged to look dishevelled and the tip of a tattoo peeked over the collar of his T-shirt. “Kuroo wants us to get Saturday's setlist done and I wanna play something new, so I need ya to finish at least one decent song.”
The coffee pot on the stove had dark spots near the spout and Suna could smell the hot bread that had just come out of the toaster. Dishes and knives from last night's dinner sat in the sink, along with a cup of cold tea from this morning.
Suna stretched like a cat. “What's the problem with the usual setlist?”
He sat on the bed and reached for his cigarettes on the bedside table, fumbled the sheets and under the pillow in search of a lighter. Atsumu sighed before grabbing a box of matches and tossing it on the bed.
“It's borin’."
The matches landed on Suna's stomach, inches from his bare hip. He lit the tip of the cigarette and took the first puff leaning against the cold wall. Atsumu's slumped shoulders washed a cup with a broken handle and fill it with hot coffee before handing it to him, looking reproachfully amused at the state of his body. Suna accepted the cup from and exhaled the smoke in Atsumu's direction just to piss him off.
“I don't have any lyrics," he declared with the first sip of coffee.
“Then listen to the recordings ’til you come up with somethin’," Atsumu pressed bluntly.
Next to the maroon leather couch in front of the entrance door was a suitcase that had been wide open for three months, the same amount of time that Atsumu had been living in Suna's apartment. It wasn’t pretty, it was old, smelled like naphthalene and they tripped over it at least thrice a day.
They could have put it somewhere else, emptied it, turned it outside out, and squeezed it into a corner of Suna’s wardrobe. They didn’t do it simply because they didn’t talk about it. Call it a fact, call it the elephant in the room, the suitcase stayed open night and day and no one said a word about it—from the suitcase, Atsumu pulled out a tank top with a picture of Semi Eita and tossed it to Suna before going into the bathroom. Suna pulled the shirt over his head and stood up, cigarette between his lips and cup clutched in his slender fingers.
He dragged his feet to the couch, reached between the cushions with his free hand and rummaged around until he found the purple, bruise-sized MP3 player in which he and Atsumu had recorded the tracks.
“Which one do you want me to use?” he yelled.
“All of them," Atsumu yelled back. Suna rolled his eyes. He heard the toilet flush, the water in the sink running, and a minute later Atsumu appeared through the door, still buckling his belt. “But if your brain is too fried to write anything you're free to choose the one you like best.”
Suna nodded wryly. He placed Atsumu’s bass on its stand, between his guitar and piano, and removed the remains of the previous night's composition process from the table: three beer cans, an ashtray, a mountain of loose sheets and candy wrappers.
“No promises," he mumbled into the rim of the mug. He took a seat and reached across the table for his notebook. The wide sleeves of the tank top exposed a strip of pale skin, sticky and pearly with sweat. Atsumu pinched him right there.
“You can always remove your shirt mid-song and I’m sure no one will care that they’ve been listenin’ to the same five songs for a month straight”. Atsumu looked at his reflection in the window, ran his hand through his hair one last time before unhooking his backpack from the back of a chair. “I have things to do today so I'll catch you at rehearsal.”
Suna lifted his chin in a gesture that could mean 'see you', 'don't care what you do' or 'take care'. He then thought to himself, ‘you don’t have things to do without me’. He didn’t say it.
“Take the bass to rehearsal for me," Atsumu asked. This time Suna was kind enough to nod. Atsumu opened the door and hesitated for a few seconds before turning around, pulling the cigarette from Suna’s mouth and stubbing it out on the ashtray. “For the love of God, stop smokin' in the morning.”
It wasn’t that he didn't have any lyrics. He did. They came to him by some sort of miracle God owed him back from when he used to pray. The leather-bound notebook, covered with ink stains and burns, boasted the lyrics of more than fifty songs: five finished, three unpolished, fifteen incomplete, at least twenty that would never see the light of day.
Sometimes a song fell into the last two categories at the same time, unfinished and banned. Some wouldn't get out of that notebook because Suna was ashamed of them. They were too personal, would leave him naked, seething with want, and he still believed in the wonders of subtlety. For a song to work, Suna believed, one should give just enough to leave emotions bubbling: sensual enough to turn people on without making them come, grotesque enough to arouse hatred without driving them to kill.
But other songs were forbidden to the rest of the world because they were not Suna's, even if it had been him the one to put the words down. He had written these songs in fits of self-centredness, because the compelling need to create had been stronger than his respect for whoever the story he sought to tell belonged to. They were artistically good, morally bad songs.
But there is no such thing as immoral art!, he could sometimes tell himself, squeezing a pimple and wiping the blood off his fingers in the mirror. At this point, he would be too drunk or stoned or both because such displays were not an everyday occurrence. You're right, Atsumu would add from the kitchen, and fuck, yes, Kuroo would shout, banging on the table. Tadashi wouldn't mind the argument too much but it was enough for Suna to have two out of three on his side.
Then he would return from the bathroom with his wet hair slicked back and his jeans low on his hips, put his hands on Tadashi's shoulders and say: music will be as immoral as a man's soul is immoral and under this roof (here he would point his index finger at the moldy ceiling of the flat and lean forward slightly, eyes wide open) the spirit is but a handful of flesh with its due right to be and take what instinct demands of it.
Tadashi would shrug him off, and Kuroo would choke on the smoke and giggle. Suna wanted to believe that Atsumu would laugh too.
But, but. Morals were a list of precepts to shit on until morals suddenly had a face, a name, a tattoo on his back. Everything was hypothetical and Elizabethan, an ode to freedom, until morals fell asleep on his couch, woke up an hour after sunrise and poured him a cup of coffee.
Suna signed the end of the page, closed the notebook. He thought about guilt and got up to get the piece of bread that morals had left in the toaster for him.
He left the flat around six, properly dressed and groomed, Atsumu's bass on his back. The corridors of the building were a good way to keep the heat at bay once you got used to the darkness and the pungent smell of damp and old wood. Inside the rickety elevator, it was hard to tell what time of day it was. Suna pressed the button for the ground floor, leaning close to the mirror to look at his face. He enjoyed the timeless, dreamlike feeling of seeing his reflection repeated over and over again, an infinite chain made of identical versions of himself. On the street, the sun beat down the pavement. Suna walked.
Their excuse for a rehearsal room was outside the downtown area, in a neighborhood of scarce, flickering streetlights. Tadashi had moved there almost a year ago after his parents found out where the money for all those clothes came from. The band had been lucky: one of Tadashi's roommates had a frustrated dream of pursuing music and would have cut off an arm to be in either of their places; the other one didn't mind the noise.
Suna knocked on the door. Tooru opened the door with a can of iced tea in his hand.
"Rintaro," he greeted, “you're sweaty.”
‘I walked.’ Suna tried to wipe his cheek with his shoulder as discreetly as possible. ‘The others are already here?’
Tooru took a very long, loud sip of his drink. ‘The loud one has been sleeping here for two nights now, and Miya just arrived.’ He had a way of speaking that reminded one of overripe fruit, overly sweet and starting to stink. ‘Does he not have a house or something?’
Suna grimaced. ‘Atsumu lives with me.’
Tooru looked him up and down before moving away from the entrance to let him in. ‘I wasn't talking about him.’
Inside, it was as clean as a house with three men could be. The only window in the place let in a yellowish light that skipped in the kitchen, where a poor fan creaked in an attempt to keep running. The walls remained a sticky white, but the sparse furniture was filled with old photographs of Tooru and Hajime in their high school days. Suna recognized several of Tadashi's T-shirts in a pile of clean clothes on the table. He removed his shoes and left them by the side of the door.
The entrance hallway was as narrow as a needle. Tooru locked the front door behind him. He had a razor cut near his jaw, and his long hair was sticking to the back of his neck from the sweat.
‘I'm going to take a shower,’ he said.
Suna didn't want to answer. From far away came Kuroo's dry laughter.
‘Does he have a personal problem with me?’ he asked as soon as he stepped through Tadashi's door. Atsumu, sitting on a small speaker next to the door, raised his eyebrows. Suna slipped the bass off his back and handed it to him. ‘It's nasty, really.’
The room didn't have a window or a desk or a wardrobe, not even a decent bed. Tadashi slept on a mattress on the floor, and his stuff divided between a chair in the corner and Kuroo's drums. Apart from those and the shoebox full of needles and expensive ink that Atsumu was going through, Tadashi's current belongings boiled down to a few piles of overpriced clothes, a borrowed electric guitar and a blue phone with shiny stickers on it. Suna believed it had plenty of personality.
‘He said you look like a snake.’ Tadashi smirked from his mattress on the floor. He had dyed the lower half of his hair a yellowish blond, Suna noticed, and a star-shaped scab was drying at the base of his neck. He looked happier than the last time he saw him. ‘That and that you were ugly. He believes you think too highly of yourself.’
Sprawled beside him, Kuroo snorted. He had rolled up the sleeves of his T-shirt over his shoulders to reveal a pair of tan, well-defined arms. He was as restless as usual, tongue fidgeting inside his mouth and feet tapping on the wooden floor. ‘True.’
It was annoying how attractive he was.
‘‘Why are you squatting in their house?’ Suna inquired, plopping down on the mattress and taking the pack of Mevius from the front pocket of his jeans. His backpack stayed trapped between his back and the wall, almost empty.
‘Felt like it,’ Kuroo sighed and helped himself to one of Suna's cigarettes. “Hajime likes me. He's teaching me how to read sheet music.’
"No one cares about reading sheet music these days."
‘Rin does,’ Atsumu said.
Tadashi turned to look at Suna. "That's what they taught you at music school?"
‘Mostly,’ Suna shrugged, feeling upset. He wanted to talk about anything else. He waited until his cigarette was lit. ‘What do you guys think about Slowdive?’
Tadashi said he should've been born with Rachel Goswell's face. Kuroo hummed. Suna knew that Atsumu had liked Souvlaki.
‘Hypothetically, if we were to play three of their songs,’ he said, ‘which ones would they be?’
Atsumu rolled his eyes and said nothing. It annoyed Suna. He tried to meet his gaze, but he set the shoebox down and fixed his attention on his phone-flipping up the lid, then shutting it down, then flipping it open again. His left knee kept bouncing up and down. Suna had seen this before. He stared and hoped he felt the weight in his gaze.
“Let's do Alison, everybody likes Alison.” Kuroo dropped his head on Suna's shoulder. “And 40 Days. “
Suna put two fingers down on his right hand. “And–”
“Sing,” Tadashi proposed. Kuroo thought it was boring.
Suna stuck out his leg and nudged Atsumu's foot with his. “Care to join in?”
Atsumu looked up, shrugged. The phone on his hands: flipped open. Suna felt like punching him.
Kuroo clicked his tongue before Suna could make his wishes come true.
“I know we wanted to change the whole setlist, but can we pretty please leave Talk Show Host.” He was looking for something he could use as an ashtray, his hand up holding the cigarette. “It's sexy and makes me feel like, I dunno, Semi when he was still cool.”
Tadashi popped up a mug, handed it to him. “When wasn't he?”
“Literally when he started having a fetish for synths.” Kuroo always ashed his cigs too soon, held the smoke in for too long. “Like, after PainDivine, he forgot that real instruments are a thing he can play.”
Tadashi groaned. Atsumu's phone snapped shut.
Suna stood up. “We can leave anything Thom Yorke ever made.” From his backpack, he pulled out his notebook and a pencil chewed halfway through. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kuroo sit up and sigh. “We add the two Slowdive songs and keep the rest.”
Suna crossed one line off the list and added two more. The smell of peach juice came from the kitchen.
“Let's go over the new tracks.” Suna proposed, then looked pointedly at Atsumu. “We'll start with the bass.”
The phone rang.
They had a method for these things. Actually, Suna did. But that was okay. He was the only one with an extended, in-depth musical education– he had the qualifications to teach at a decent institute, even, instead of wasting away like this. He could be in Osaka with a steady job position at his alma mater, a decent haircut and more meat on his bones, and yes, he would have to take out his tongue piercing and resort to not wearing short sleeves ever again, sure, but there would be a semi-stable career in music secured for him and his perfect fucking pitch.
But what about what he wanted?, Atsumu used to ask him at least once a week between the ages of 14 and 17.
The conversation always went like this:
“It's not that simple,” Suna would say, sighing, “My dad says he can secure me a place at College, I'd major in piano, graduate in- I don't know, four years? then get a job there.”
The gum Atsumu was chewing would show as he fake gagged. “Sounds boring.”
Suna would shrug. He liked to play the piano, he liked it so much. He was also attracted to the idea of a big city, much bigger than this –even back then, he'd had issues with wanting to chew more than he could swallow–, with wide streets, tall buildings, and music stores that brought in new CDs before the ones in Kobe did.
“I don't know,” Suna would say, “I really don't know.”
He had stayed, of course. Atsumu had introduced him to Kuroo and Kuroo had done his part with Tadashi and before Suna could realize it, the band already had a name and permission to play in bars every Saturday, and there was even this MySpace blog dedicated to him and, well, he liked it. The cheap stage, the colored lights, heavy drums, dirty riffs, and singing songs that talked about fun things like sex and being a little sad. The weed, the boys and girls, the headache the morning after. The easy life of working when he wanted to because mom loved him and dad still had hopes for him and they both had enough to afford his existence without him having to lift a finger. The spotlight, right. That too.
He had run away from academic life as much as he could, but fifteen years of classical music training (Or was it seventeen? He was twenty already, so it might as well have been seventeen) had taken its toll on him. So they had a method. The Method, capital M.
Suna viewed music as a perfect system made up of individuals who were complete in themselves, but incapable of making the system function to its perfection if they were not in touch with the perfection inherent to themselves and to the other composing individuals.
Say, he needed the whole band to listen to each song until hearing the first chord made them nauseous.
It was a good exercise, something they could do well.
Exhibit A: Kuroo, decent friend, beautiful male specimen, passionate drummer. Lousy at collaborating to get the job done, laughed in the middle of the song.
Exhibit B: Tadashi, funny and considerate, too effeminate for his taste, amazing guitarist. Helpful, happy to participate in the exercise.
Exhibit C: Atsumu. Moody, childish, a gigantic nose and a horrible dye job. His skills as a bass player were his only irreproachable qualities. He kept looking at his phone the fourth time Suna hit play on Alison.
“They have like, four guitars in that,” Tadashi pointed out.
They took advantage of Hajime's absence by using his not-at-all-humble sound system, sitting on the floor around the computer desk as if it were some kind of god.
“Three, actually.” Suna sighed. Kuroo's hands mimicked the rhythm of the drums on his knees. It had been a fruitful evening. “I can arrange it for two.”
The blonde half of Tadashi's hair brushed his cheek as he turned to shoot Suna an uneasy look. “We play in about four days.”
“I can have it ready for tomorrow, I promise. I'll send you the tabs.”
“What time?”
“Before noon, Yams, c'mon.”
“Deal.”
They shook hands. Suna looked at Kuroo, who had decided it was much more comfortable to lie down and tap his belly.
“You can absolutely play it by ear,” he told him.
Kuro gave him one of his goofy grins. “Who do you take me for?”
Ring. Snap.
“What about me?”
So now he wanted to talk.
Suna lay down next to Kuroo, propped up on his elbows. He made sure to look at Atsumu from under his eyelashes, deepen the nasty scowl on his mouth as he spoke. “If you need help you can get off the couch for once in your life and walk all the way to my bed, or the kitchen, or the bathroom. I'm usually there.”
Click. Boom. Poor choice of approach. Atsumu was pissed off. Suddenly, everyone was playing a hilarious game of don't move or something might explode. Player 1 looked directly into Player 2´s eyes as if he wanted to jump him, go for the jugular and rip him apart right there. Player 2 wasn't going to back down. Player 3 and Player 4 wanted to change the subject.
Tadashi rolled his eyes and typed something into the YouTube search bar. “Can we at least play Cherry Bomb for the eightieth time in the month or something? I need to do something that gives me a sense of accomplishment or I get super anxious afterward.”
Go fuck yourself, Atsumu mouthed to Suna.
“Yeah, let’s play Cherry Bomb,” he said.
So they played Cherry Bomb, the drums muted with t-shirts and Hajime's acoustic guitar instead of the electric one because there was only one speaker and they needed it for the bass. Suna didn't even have a microphone, but that didn't stop him from doing the moaning part hanging from Tadashi's shoulder. They laughed at that. They all did it despite themselves. It was fun, after all. It always was.
Everything was happening so fast back then. There was a point at which it was no longer possible to tell the difference between when one song ended and another one began because they didn't let it happen. The ending, I mean. They kept playing and playing, morphing a final chord into the first one because Suna didn't like to slow down and wouldn't let them do it. Instead, he sang louder, throwing his head back with a grin, looked them in the eyes for a long time and changed the lyrics.
“I'm literally gonna kill myself. I can't wait for Saturday.” An hour later, Kuroo stole another cigarette and smoked on the sidewalk, all impatience and sweaty skin. His hair stood in spikes from all the messing up. “I’d trade my left hand for a joint right now, I swear.”
Tadashi hit him in the back of the head.“ You're not smoking here.”
Kuroo turned to Suna. “Rin?”
“I got nothing, man,” Suna lied.
Kuro clicked his tongue. Suna felt Atsumu's cell phone ring to his right.
He did not answer. Instead, he let it ring, staring at the screen, then inhaled very slowly through his nose. Suna took out the Mevius and held them out to him, a glorious olive branch squeezed into a pack of twenty.
“Wanna walk?”
Atsumu looked at him for the first time that afternoon. He accepted a cigarette, put it between his lips and brought his face close to Suna so he could light him up. “Sure.”
They hugged goodbye, slapped each other's backs. Kuroo decided he was going to stay over –again– even if there was no weed. Tadashi and he disappeared into the house, bickering over dinner choice. Suna thought it was better not to ask.
The night was quiet, humid and hot, a pressure cooker of disproportionate size. The cicadas had had all spring to meet someone, fall in love and have a good litter of nymphs; now it was time to sing.
Atsumu and Suna walked side by side without saying a word. The bass hung between them, a line that could not be crossed. Suna could see him out of the corner of his eye, smoking with his head down and kicking stones. He waited five blocks before speaking, kept on looking straight ahead.
"Will you tell me to go fuck myself if I ask you what's wrong?"
Atsumu huffed. “You were bein’ a bitch for no reason.”
Suna frowned at the pavement. “I had my reasons.”
“Oh, yeah?”
"You looked so entitled when I mentioned we should play-"
"'Cause I told you I wanted a new setlist."
"And I gave you a new setlist."
"I wanted songs of our own."
“Then you write ‘em.”
Atsumu stopped in his tracks, puffing out his chest. Suna stared at him with his droopy lids, indifferent. He was taller, quicker and most importantly, gave a shit if Atsumu got aggressive. Instead of pushing him, Atsumu rolled his eyes and took a drag.
“I don’t write good songs,” he whispered as he kept walking.
“I beg to differ.”
“I don’t like what I do if I do it alone.”
You mean without me, Suna thought. What he said was:
“This isn’t about me not writing songs.”
Then he put out the cigarette with the sole of his shoe. Atsumu took one nervous drag after another until the small circle of fire lit up his calloused fingers. Suna silently handed him the cigs.
“Was it your brother?” he asked, “The one who kept calling you?”
The phone rang. Atsumu answered so quickly that the motion of his hand to his pocket was almost nonexistent. Suna just stood there, holding the cigarettes in mid-air and looking stupid.
“Call me one more fuckin’ time and I'’m filein’ a restrainin’ order,” Atsumu hissed into the phone, his back turned to Suna. He didn’t want him to hear the voice on the other side of the receiver. "I'm bein' serious, I got twenty-three calls in less than four hours, ya hear that? Twenty-three! Yer sick in the head, man, fuckin' sick!"
He stood very still, his back hunched and the hand not holding the phone tugging at his hair. From where Suna stood, he looked huge, wider, darker in the middle of the empty streets.
“No, I told ya– shut the fuck up, lemme speak– never, I’m not–” he stifled a scream with a chuckle, a dirty, painful sound. “Oh, so she’s dyin’ now? Big fuckin’ time, dude. Next time ya call, it better to tell me you´re on your way to scatter her ashes.”
He hung up. The air smelled of gasoline and gunpowder, something had died somewhere.
Suna shoved the Mavius back into his front pocket. “Guess that answers my question.”
Atsumu's phone trembled in his hand, the screen still glowing an electric blue. Samu ^-^, it read, call ended at 20:21.
They arrived at the front of a convenience store. The fluorescent lights from inside were the only source of brightness at night, like a lamp attracting moths or a trap in the middle of the ocean. The sign at the entrance glowed red. Open 24 hours, snacks, cigarettes, alcohol. We only take cash.
“I feel like coffee,” Suna said, slowing down. “Want one?”
Atsumu sniffed. “I want a beer.”
Suna felt like looking at him a while longer.
“'Kay.”
The air conditioner was on inside the store. The girl at the register bowed her head slightly. Suna felt the cold air stick to every bit of exposed skin, down his throat and into his stomach. He spent a minute longer than necessary looking at the refrigerators, then chose the cheapest brand of coffee and a Sapporo, because that was the one Atsumu liked. He stood looking down at the bubble gum brands on the counter as the cashier counted the change and smiled at her as she handed him the plastic bag. There was no bell on the door.
Outside, Atsumu was sitting on the curb, the neck of the bass covering the back of his hair. Suna sat next to him and passed him one of the cans. He liked the noise the bag made when he crumpled it and the one the Sapporo made when Atsumu cracked it open.
“Osamu told me my mom is dyin’,” he said after the first sip.
“Okay,” Suna nodded. “Right, sure. I didn’t know that.”
Atsumu raised his eyebrows with a wry expression. “Neither did I.”
“I thought she was doing well.”
“As well as a fifty-year-old woman with cirrhosis can be doin’.”
Suna filled his mouth with cold coffee, swiped the liquid from one cheek to the other. Squatting, his knees almost reached his ears. He was too tall for some spontaneities.
“No need to be so awkward,” said Atsumu. Suna turned his head to him. “I knew this was gonna happen at some point.”
“Right.”
“N’ I don’t actually care.”
“Mhm.”
Atsumu clicked his tongue. “The fuck is goin’ on with you?”
A car passed in front of them.
“I don’t know what to say, man, it’s a fucked up situation.”
“You’ve been with me through situations a lotta more fucked up that his one.”
“Yeah, well, one thing is taking you out for dinner after your mom beats the living shit outta you, and another one is knowing she’s passing away in the next few months.”
Atsumu smiled. Suna felt like staying with him for much longer.
“Passin’ away?
“I’m trying to be respectful about it.”
“Don’t be.”
The thing about Atsumu was that there was too much going on inside him and a big heart was not always meant to be a good thing, Suna had learned. It was not about what was happening outside but about the city that was being built from within. Every morning, every night, every half an hour, brick after brick, full-time, unpaid overtime hours. Exhausting. He couldn’t pull it out of him, Suna had learned.
“What are you gonna do now?”
“Maybe have dinner, not sure. Sleep on your couch, definitely.” Atsumu downed three big gulps of beer. He set the can down, turned to look into his backpack. Papers rustled, then he shoved a wide envelope before Suna's eyes. “Here, last few months’ rent.”
Suna frowned at him. Atsumu kept pushing the envelope closer to his face, so he took it and checked the insides. The cash gave off the smell of fresh ink. Suna shook his head, sealed the envelope and handed it back.
“No,” he said.
“The fuck do you mean by ‘no’?”
“I’m not taking it.”
Breaths were heavy in the heat, tasting like malt and sugar.
"I'm not a damn charity case."
"I don't see you like one."
"Then take the money."
"I don't need the money, Atsumu." Suna liked to play with the tongue ring, putting the bottom part between his teeth and making the little silver metal ball appear between his lips. What you like is to fuck your tooth enamel, Tadashi used to say. “I own the place.”
“Then I’m payin’ directly to the landlord.”
“I’m not charging you for letting you crash on my couch and occasionally use the shower.” The annoyed grimace on Atsumu's mouth was a funny thing to see. He was still holding the envelope. Suna nudged his hand away with his elbow. “Use it for groceries, if you wanna, but I’m not taking it.”
Atsumu sighed, put the envelope back in his backpack and drank the last of his beer. His sunny eyes burned, but the skin around them was thin with sadness. There it was again, the walls of a small house being assembled on his breastbone.
“Do we have more beer back home?” he asked.
Suna nodded his head, stood up and wiped the dirt off his ass with his hands.
“Two six-packs and like, half a gram.”
“So two joints.”
“One and a half.”
Atsumu seemed to consider it. “That's enough for me to kill it.”
The house had very large doors and big windows with golden curtains. A smoky fireplace, pink tiles in the bathroom, a bowl full of fruit in the center of an oak table. Birthday pictures everywhere, an extra set of blankets just in case. A jute rug that says 'Welcome Home'.
The next morning, there was not enough time to shake off the hangover peacefully. Atsumu had to leave at seven, and Suna had promised an arrangement for two guitars by noon.
Some of Suna's convictions were firm enough, so he didn't get high before finishing the composition. Instead, he got down to work. Half-naked, teeth unbrushed, and half a cup of cold rice for breakfast. There was no better atmosphere. He finished in an hour and a half. He took a picture of the tabs, recorded an audio file, and waited for the computer to turn on while he rolled a joint with what was left of last night.
New Message
Subject: songs n a nude
4 files attached
tabone.jpg
tabtwo.jpg
dickpic.jpg
allisonnnnnn.mp3
not an actual dickpic, Tadashi texted him ten minutes later, disappointed.
Suna coughed out the smoke. He turned on the CD player, played loud music, ate a tangerine, sat down in front of the piano ready to play something. Someone knocked on the door. Weird. Suna always left unlocked because Atsumu didn't have a copy of his keys. Atsumu knew that. So did Kuroo and Tadashi. Suna stood up, slightly unsteady, and looked through the peephole in the door.
Osamu Miya was standing on the other side.
He knocked on the door again, louder this time.
“I know you're in there,” he said, voice muffled. “I heard ya trippin’.”
Everything was very noisy, suddenly, even with music playing in the background. Suna covered his mouth.
“If you're gonna hang up on me, then let's talk face to face.” He had a peculiar, deep, nasal voice, much like his brother's. “Open up.”
He punched the door. He got aggressive very easily, Suna noticed. A black cap covered his eyes and only the upper part of his body was visible. He looked much heavier than his brother.
“Do you wan' me to beat the shit outta you again, you cunt?” The key was in the lock. Suna only had to reach over and turn it to the right. “I've been breakin’ my back tryna afford her meds and you got the nerve to run away, hide out at your friend's house and play the rock star shit– you left me alone to deal with all this n’ you still think you got the right to hang up on me?”
Suna reached over. The door locked with a click. Through the peephole, he watched Osamu stan very still, then brought his hand to the handle and pulled at it. The door shook violently.
“Fuck you! You're a rat, Tsumu, that's what you fuckin' are!”
Suna felt his heart pounding hard against his ribs. The door's wood seemed to warm up and widen with each breath of the man on the other side. He could guess the silhouette of his body, his weight, the length of his arms and hands.
“'S not him,” he rushed out. “He's not in here.”
Suna could take those measurements into account and use them to rewrite the anecdotes in his memory, so now when Atsumu said and then he punched me in the chin, he would know exactly the force put into the blow and somehow calculate the reality of the damage, figure out the difference between the facts and the call for compassion.
Osamu lifted his head and looked straight into the peephole with exhausted gray eyes.
“Rintaro,” he called. His name sounded like a sigh of relief. “I'm so sorry, I- I thought I was going to find him here, I need to talk to him, I really need to. Could you please tell him-”
“Stay away from us.” He had never mustered so much courage for anything in his entire life. “I mean it.”
Osamu licked his lips. He took off the cap, ran a hand through his hair.
“Excuse me?”
“The night he came here I thought he had a broken nose. It kept bleeding and- I told him we should go to the hospital, but he wouldn't because he said that that would be the first place you'd look.”
They were silent for a while, Fell In Love At 22 playing softly in the back. The smell of tangerine and weed still lingered in the air.
“What did he say to you?” Osamu asked.
“I saw enough.”
A crooked, manly smile appeared before Suna's eyes, distorted by the peephole. The greenish light of the building's corridor and the shadows the black hair drew on his nose gave him a gloomy look. He looked taken straight out of one of those Chinese movies Tadashi liked.
“You're hidin’ a rat, did you know that?”
Playing card games in the room, this is our life. Suna thought it was a beautiful line.
“He can’t live in fear that you’ll show up out of nowhere.”
Osamu got closer to the peephole. A close-up of his square teeth and the bags under his eyes, see, a fly rubbing its legs in the rear-view mirror of a taxi, a chewed lollipop stick lying in the middle of the street.
“‘Kay, alright.” A worn-out leather wallet and no photos to keep inside. “I assume you’re not gonna pass on my message, then?”
“Osamu, he made a decision.”
Osamu wasn’t going to answer. Suna watched as he looked at the door, crouched with his hands inside his pockets and reached for the handle. It lowered slowly, then returned to the frame. Osamu was there, weighing his options. Suna silently prayed he’d take the smartest one, and because God loved him, Osamu turned around and left.
Suna pressed his forehead to the door and exhaled. The apartment was flooded with a deep feeling of reality. The curtains could set on fire, or the humming fan could implode and the blades would behead him anytime now. He rushed to the refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of cold water and drank in desperate gulps. It was either a nightmare or at the beginning of a bad trip.
Suna headed for the living room and dried the corners of his mouth with his wrist, looking for the elephant in the room. He kneeled next to the couch, opened Atsumu’s suitcase and carefully began to rip it apart He pulled everything to the side because he didn’t want Atsumu to know what he had been doing. Jeans, belts, tank tops, underwear, uneven socks. At the bottom, last night’s envelope, full of money. Under it, there was a white shirt, and after that, a plastic bag with more money and shiny, feminine gold jewelry. Very pretty, very expensive, would sell for a good price.
Osamu was right. Suna knew this, had known it since Atsumu knocked on his door at seventeen past ten in the night with his shirt bloody and begged him not to call the cops on Osamu. Suna knew Osamu was telling the truth. He had just really, really hoped he wasn’t.