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The rising sun recolors the building across the street from neon orange to butter yellow. Shadows of bare branches retreat from the balcony as cars begin to trundle slowly over the cobblestone roads, shaking as if they too are blown by the breeze. Faded flags dance a tired jig, spring leaves blow across the ground, and tiny people spill out from doorways into the streets below. A solitary nightjar spreads its wings and flutters up and up and away.
Bachira wraps his arms tightly around his legs. The seat is barely large enough for him to curl up on, his heels cling precariously to the edge. He rests his chin on his naked knees and lets the residual chill of the spring morning seep into his skin, turning him to yet another marble gargoyle perched along the city gutters.
There’s a light tap on the glass.
Oh. He’s been out here for a while now, hasn’t he? He can’t bring himself to move.
There’s another tap, and then the sound of the balcony door sliding open.
“Guru?”
He cannot help but heed this call, even if turning his head feels like sliding the lid off a granite tomb.
“Yoichi,” he manages, and is that his voice? He sounds like he’s been crying, even though he’s sure he hasn’t. Stone statues do not weep.
“What’s wrong?”
Isagi steps out onto the balcony and places a hand on his shoulder. Bachira rests his cheek against it, letting its weight and its warmth ground him here, in this now, and not wherever he’d let himself float off to for the whole morning.
“Will you get my phone?” he says after a moment, and Isagi doesn’t ask, just quietly slips back inside, returning a few moments later. At the gentle touch of fingers brushing through his hair, his limbs are finally able to move. He takes the phone and unlocks it while Isagi pulls the other patio chair up right against his. He hands it back to Isagi and watches him as he reads, studying the faint crease between his brow and the sudden clench of his jaw. Isagi’s anger is tangible. It hovers in the air like piano wires that Bachira can reach out and pluck. Is that how he should feel too?
“That selfish greedy swine has the nerve to make contact with you now? I’m going to kill him. No, I’m going to make him wish I would kill him.”
Bachira covers Isagi’s hands with his own and his shaking stops. He blinks and the fire is gone from his eyes, leaving only unfathomable warmth.
“What do you want to do?”
Bachira shakes his head. He hasn’t gotten that far yet. He’s still trying to wrap his head around the first two words of his manager’s email.
Your father.
“Will you come inside?” Isagi’s hands are so warm against his face, always gentle. Bachira lets himself be coaxed up off the chair and back into the cozy familiarity of their apartment. Isagi wraps him up in the checkered quilt that lives on their couch and leaves him curled up in the armchair. “I’m going to call Noa and let him know we’ll be late. I’ll be right back.”
Bachira doesn’t doubt him. He can wait. He isn’t sure what for, but he’ll always wait for Isagi. It turns out he’s waiting for Isagi to slip into the seat behind him and wrap him up in his heavy arms. He rests his cheek against the slippery fabric covering his shoulder. His eyes close, almost unbidden, when he feels the soft kiss on his forehead. Here, surrounded by the man who has banished his loneliness, he finally lets himself cry about the man who stood at its beginning.
What starts out as a trickle of tears quickly grows into ragged sobs and he’s leaving stains all over Isagi’s jersey. He’s always cried too easily, but never over this. Mama was always enough, always his everything, always made sure he never missed someone who wasn’t ever going to be there. Maybe he cries for her. He is her age now, that young woman who chose to love him all on her own. Maybe he cries for another little boy who would have been a mix of Yuu and a stranger, and therefore would have been a stranger himself. Maybe he cries for himself, for that hollow well where he’d pushed every thought or question he ever had of the man who would never be his father.
He has kicked and clawed and fought his way to be something more than that, to be someone who isn't defined by what he is lacking, to be someone who can smile even when the world tells him not to, to be someone who chooses to see the sunshine between the leaves. He hates how the shadow of grief can still crawl out of that hollow well to consume him so completely.
And though that well may be bottomless, his tears and energy and willingness to indulge it are not. Eventually, he comes back to the feeling of Isagi’s fingers carding through his hair, his other hand rubbing circles into his bicep.
The apartment still smells faintly of the poor bastardization of seafood paella they’d attempted to make last night. The face Isagi had made upon taking his first bite had Bachira rolling with laughter in his seat. When he’d kissed him to shut him up, Bachira could taste saffron and wine on his tongue.
The recipe had come from a teammate, who had gotten it from his mother, and had sworn to her he would not share it on pain of death. But he’d made it for them once, and they’d loved it so much that he had broken his promise. They would have to tell him later today that they had desecrated her dish, but that her legacy still remained safely with her family.
Really, they would have seen him by now.
“Noa is going to kill us,” he says, and his voice sounds familiar. He is flesh and blood once more.
“We can take him,” Isagi jests.
Bachira brushes his hair out of his face and looks up into blue eyes that gaze steadily back at him. “I love you,” he says, then adds, “A lot.”
“Good. It would be pretty embarrassing for me if you didn’t.”
Bachira tests out a grin, feels the crack of drying tears across his cheeks. “Because you’re so in love with me?”
Isagi’s smile is like a balm for his heart. “Yes.”
Bachira ducks his head a little, his heart speeding up with the simple declaration. Once, Isagi had told him he would keep saying it until Bachira stopped blushing. One day he will, once those words have been etched so deeply into his heart that he won’t need to hear them to know them. That he is loved. That he is wanted.
They cuddle for another minute before Bachira untangles himself and pulls Isagi up with him. They have somewhere to be. They have people waiting for them.
Isagi brings it up one more time before they walk out the door.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Bachira slips his hand into Isagi’s, laces their fingers together. “No. Maybe later.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.” Bachira shifts his gear bag on his shoulder and leans over to give Yoichi a soft kiss. “I have everything I need right now.”
He shuts the door of their apartment behind them and follows Isagi through the hallway and down the stairs, allowing himself to be led out of the shadows and into the sun.
*
"The shadow of the oak tree
is no less a part of it
than the sunlight shining through its leaves."