10 prompt;

[sunshowered]

“I’m sure you’ll know him when you see him. He’s that kind of person.”

“Yes, young master.”

Eichi’s brow furrowed, not even looking up at his driver’s words, instead continuing to stare down at the message that he’d received at no earlier than 11 PM at night.

pLease help.

Followed by a pin where the sender had shared their location.

Where Chiaki Morisawa had shared his location, not even two blocks away from the hospital.

Cool blue eyes looked down at the text message. It was rather callous, considering the fact that Chiaki apparently needed someone, was quite desperate if he admitted that he needed Eichi, but Eichi still couldn’t help but wonder.

‘I didn’t delete his number? He didn’t delete mine?’

“Is… Is that the person that you’re looking for, Eichi-sama?”

“Is he not doing hero poses along the side of the road with a box of orphan kittens that he probably saved?” Eichi sighed. If not, then that probably wasn’t the person they were looking for. Still, he moved closer to the limousine window, tilting his head to check.

What he saw instead was an anxious, nervous pile of a man.

Chiaki Morisawa sat stooped on the curbside, red hoodie pulled over his hair, arms around his legs. His gaze stuck to the black of the pavement until something – the sound of a car, the headlights, Eichi wasn’t sure – made him look up.

When his eyes locked on Eichi’s, some light returned to his expression.

When was the last time he looked at Eichi like that?

Like he saw hope, instead of disaster?

--

“We’ll be okay, Eichi!”

A bright, young round face with brown eyes that burned with the hope of the sun stared at him, held onto his hands. Even though Eichi was the one elevated, resting in the hospital bed whereas Chiaki had scrambled out of his own to stand next to him, something about Chiaki felt so big back then.

Like his love was big enough to envelop Eichi whole.

“I… I know that,” Eichi sniffed, turning his nose up as if tears hadn’t pricked at his eyes at the idea of yet another set of medical tests.

They were endless, you know. The nurses would come in, saying that there would be good news – don’t worry, you don’t have horrible side effect X, Y, or Z – but then move right on to say that tests were needed to ensure that Q, R, and S didn’t loom in the horizon.

It grew so tiring.

“Oohh, do you? Good, good!” Chiaki laughed, bright enough to fill up the whole room. He squeezed Eichi’s hands reassuringly, “This can’t last forever, you know? We’ll grow up big and strong and never have to worry about another test again! This is just another episode in our show!”

Just another episode in their show.

Even young, Eichi wondered what kind of show it was. Was it a hospital drama, where the two of them were recurring children who had to undergo a slew of tests, experience being prodded with needles, were used to garner sympathy and pull at the heartstrings of viewers?

Or was it a comedy, filled with the days when Chiaki would want to get up to mischief and bring Eichi in tow, like when they stole all the pudding cups from the cafeteria and built a fortress out of them in their hospital room?

Or was it a love story – something impossible, where they would fall for one another now, two kindred spirits, only to be torn away by none other than the embrace of death or even worse –

Falling out of love?

“Don’t be scared, okay?” Chiaki continued on, inviting himself to sit right onto Eichi’s hospital bed, his arms wrapping around the other’s neck. He smelled like hospital food, medicine, and a breath of fresh air. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

“I’m not scared,” Eichi replied petulantly even as he let Chiaki keep hugging him. “… but if you’re ever anywhere else, I’ll never forgive you.”

What a demanding young master.

Chiaki just laughed.

“Silly! I’ll always wanna be with you!”

Well.

To Chiaki’s credit, he hadn’t known he was lying at the time.

--

“Sorry,” Chiaki said.

Or rather, that’s what he probably said. It grew muffled in the way that he pressed his face against the shoulder of Eichi’s coat, the words caught in the wind as he threw himself against Eichi for a hug that the other barely knew how to accept, much less return.

Sorry?

Sorry for what?

Questions rested precariously on Eichi’s tongue, dangerously close to being said.

Sorry for leaving me? Sorry for pretending that our acquaintanceship was merely that – acquaintances – for the sake of protecting your reputation as a hero and not wanting anyone to know about your stay at a hospital next to someone like me? Sorry for lying?

Sorry for being every bit the sun that you say you are and then taking your warmth away, leaving while I was in a hospital bed and couldn’t follow?

But instead what left his lips was: “You’re a fool, Chiaki.”

The other shivered against him. It must’ve been cold, waiting here while Eichi had to convince his parents that really – he wasn’t purposefully making trouble by requesting a ride out at 11 PM.

(“Someone important needs me,” he’d said to his driver to get him to stop asking questions that would be reported back to Mr. and Mrs. Tenshouin in the morning.

Eichi had wished that were a lie.)

“I know,” Chiaki spoke again, still not quite lifting his head. “I needed someone and… you were the only one that I thought of.”

Profiles flashed through Eichi’s mind. Three out of four members of Chiaki’s unit were underclassmen, weren’t they? Of course Chiaki wouldn’t call for them. The last was an Oddball and though he’d heard rumors of Shinkai and Morisawa’s closeness, rivaling that of a marriage, perhaps that’s why it would be too close to home to invite him in. It could become smothering. Perhaps that’s why Kiryu wasn’t called either—

They were still two blocks away from a hospital.

Chiaki, headstrong, stubborn, loving fool that he was, probably didn’t want anyone to see this part of his world.

Part of his and Eichi’s world.

“What happened?” Eichi sighed as he reached up, gloves brushing imagined dirt off Chiaki’s jacket.

‘What’s so wrong with you that you needed to call me? What part of you is so twisted that I’m the only one who could understand?

‘What’s so awful that it managed to drive you back into my arms?’

“I had… an episode.” Chiaki’s fingers shook. He didn’t peel himself off Eichi. “I had a scare and…”

“And what did the doctors say?”

“They haven’t yet.”

Eichi paused.

“You mean you haven’t—”

“I… I couldn’t…” Chiaki’s voice shook, his head bowed.

Eichi glanced down the street. Two blocks away from the hospital. It never occurred to him that Chiaki would have been stopped, his feet so weighted down that he couldn’t take another step, before he even reached his destination.

Not for the first time, Eichi thought that Chiaki was too weak to be a hero.

Before it had been a thought when Chiaki was too small, had no muscle to speak of, couldn’t even open his own applesauce and would instead be stuck pouting petulantly as a nurse opened it for him.

Before it had been when he’d heard that Chiaki was taking the mantle of Ryusei Red, Eichi laughing in the privacy of the Student Council Room because – how had that bright-eyed crybaby manage to become a leader of a unit?

Now it was in this moment, when Chiaki had called him in the middle of the night because he was afraid to go back to the place that they’d met without Eichi at his side. When Chiaki was so afraid that the past he’d tried so hard to bury was finally catching up to him –

Afraid that even after all these years of hard work, of posturing, of transforming himself into the heroes that he’d always so admired, he’d realize that in the end, he would always be the same, sickly, soft little boy.

‘But didn’t you realize, Chiaki? That’s the sort of game that life plays with us. Not all of these games are fun. Not all of them are fair. Not all of us come out of them as winners.’

“… You’re like a child, you know,” Eichi sighed as he gently pushed Chiaki off of him. “Well, I suppose it would make your parents cry if I left you here… so.”

He extended his hand out to the bewildered Ryusei Red, the self-proclaimed Hero of Yumenosaki Academy. He tried not to sneer.

“Let’s go, Chiaki. What would you always say? ‘Don’t be scared’? Hmm, I think that’s fair advice. Though you’ve always needed it more than I did.”

It was taunting, teasing, a full on mockery of Chiaki’s insecurity and fear.

Yet it wasn’t even a second later that Chiaki took hold of Eichi’s hand.

Despite everything, he did not look annoyed. He did not take Eichi’s bait. Inexplicably, he looked terribly fond.

This shameless idiot.

“Right…” he started quietly, the word practically lost in his sigh even as he held onto Eichi’s hand. How foolish, Eichi thought. They were high school students and yet Chiaki was so happy for them to become grade school children all over again.

(Eichi’s heart ached – maybe I want that too – but he paid it no mind.)

“Right,” Chiaki repeated, nodding this time. A smile curled around his lips, sheepish and shy, like the sun hiding behind the clouds. “I… I was scared – but I’m not anymore. H-How silly, huh? For a hero like myself to be so caught up like that…!”

The first steps made toward the hospital were taken by Chiaki. Led along by their fragile connection, Eichi walked next to him.

“For your anxiety to be dispelled so quickly, what am I? Your good luck charm?” Eichi continued to prod, herding Chiaki away from the depths of his own curling wisps of depression. “Or perhaps a spell ward or a scarecrow would be more accurate…”

“I think… a good luck charm would be accurate!” Chiaki spoke up, his bravado returning to him. Eichi watched the pieces of the hero mask realign into place, the little sick boy retreating from Chiaki’s expression. “I really…” He took a moment to look hesitant, contemplative, like he was about to utter something better left unsaid.

Eichi wanted to steal whatever unspoken words rested there from Chiaki’s mouth.

“I really… owe you, Tenshouin.”

The final piece of Chiaki’s hero narrative clicked into place – even now, he held Eichi at an arm’s length.

Though at least he held him by the hand.

“What kind of President would I be if I were to allow one of my academy’s leaders to skip out on a doctor’s appointment?” Eichi followed the script that Chiaki had provided. At least for now.

It was worth it to see the flash of regret in Chiaki’s eyes.

Even so, he did not let go of Eichi’s hand.

One block left until the hospital.

“I mean…” Chiaki tripped up, caught off-guard by Eichi’s reinforcement of the space between them. “I mean – you’re a good friend, Ei—” His own eyes widened. “Tenshouin.”

Eichi glanced over to him, feeling Chiaki’s hand tense even against his gloved fingers. Yet despite the nervousness in Chiaki’s body language, the other’s gaze was direct and unwavering. Warm against the chill of the night air.

Their gazes locked. Chiaki’s lips curved into a smile, a real smile. Not the sheepish one that he’d offered earlier even in the face of his own uncertainty. This was more natural, a smile that was well-loved and worn, fitting around Eichi like a familiar old cloak. Maybe even a cape.

“You always have been,” he finished.

Chiaki’s heart was still as loud as a lion’s roar.

Eichi took a breath.

There were still so many things that had to be said –

(“Do you still always want to be with me?

“Is this your way of saying you miss me?

“Where have you been?”)

– but they’d made it to their destination and Chiaki’s fingers left Eichi’s for half a second, only long enough to intertwine them properly.

Eichi paused, sighed, and squeezed back.

This forward, shameless, fool.

He couldn't even lie to himself by saying that they would have time to discuss everything later - he knew in his heart that they probably wouldn't.

'What poor children we are.

'Already so out of time.'