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matchablossomhcs · 1 year

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dead already // young mb in rome fic

The smell of rain on sun-warmed pavement. The shimmer of wet, uneven cobblestone in the yellow street lights. The empty beer cans crumpled along the walls in narrow alleys between houses painted in terracotta orange. The smell of cigarette smoke that always accompanies restaurants and bars open almost until dawn.

The feeling of being small and unimportant when faced with the magnificent beauty of monuments that once upon a time have witnessed insanely impactful events in the history of the human existence—the wars, the times of greatness, the joys, the sorrows. The columns of emperors, raised in victory, stretching themselves into heavens, their reliefs telling stories where the statues were removed upon the change of rule. The triumph arches, massive in stature, looming over passersby, the statues at their tops regarding the world from all the way up there, reminding the onlookers of the glorious, old days. The churches, with tall towers and long, thin windows when placed in the middle of important piazzas, or pressed in-between buildings with strong facades and heavy doors.

Kaoru didn’t know what to expect when he first landed in Rome, Italy—but it wasn’t…. this. The grandeur, the sheer strength of the architecture in the city, the impact of five cars honking at the same time, the fountains at every second corner, the plazas emerging suddenly between buildings and alleys.

He feels out of place. There is no order, at least not as far as he can see. People step into the streets between cars and ignore the loud, honking complaints, and they smoke as they walk, and everyone seem to drink wine for breakfast. Even the weather is unruly—it pours when the bus spits out it’s passengers somewhere in the middle of the city, and then stops suddenly, just when Kaoru finally finds some small store with crates of beer bottles stacked by the entrance. His phone predicts the weather to be somewhere around eleven degrees Celsius, but his hair sticks to the back of his neck and indicates a higher temperature paired with humidity.

His headset ran out of battery as he was waiting on the bus, and he now he wanders the streets with faked confidence, following the little, blue dot of the maps app to the address Kojiro sent him a few days ago.

New flat, check it out if you are free, the message said. Kaoru hasn’t seen Kojiro since he waved him goodbye at the airport four months ago. He hasn’t seen Kojiro since they hugged by the security at the busy airport in Tokyo, a gesture so familiar, yet suddenly intimate for no reason Kaoru can explain. He hasn’t seen Kojiro since he, overcome by a sudden feeling of utter loss and anxiety pulled at the ugly collar of Kojiro’s ugly shirt and kissed him, square on the mouth, his lips probably quivering in nervousness. He hasn’t seen Kojiro since he made a hmf! sound as Kaoru kissed him, and let out something akin to a whimper when Kaoru pulled away, hurriedly blurting out a last goodbye and storming off.

They’ve talked since then, of course. Their friendship has been built from the ripe age of three, and Kaoru cannot remember a time when he existed without Kojiro. They’re intertwined, whether they like it or not, and Kaoru sees Kojiro in his own habits, just as he sees him in Kojiro’s.

They can’t be torn apart by a kiss.

They can’t be torn apart by Kojiro moving across the world.

They can’t be torn apart by anything, and that’s why Kaoru saw the message, opened his laptop, and ordered plane tickets to Italy before typing out a I’ll be there next Wendesday, and the reference number of his flight.

Kojiro answered with some silly emoji showing surprise, followed by a row of green hearts, and the week passed in a numb anticipation, anxiety, and a surprising lack of planning. Kaoru packed the evening before his flight, pulling clothes out at more or less random, surprising himself at his own willingness to ignore his (apparently not so) strict principles of deciding outfits and folding everything meticulously after the rules of madam Kondo.

He doesn’t remember the flight, registering only sounds and movement of the masses at the airports, the wait for his bag surprisingly short, the bus trip at his destination surprisingly little annoying. He’s probably running on pure anticipation and adrenaline, and it feels surreal to finally be here, finally walking the same streets Kojiro walks again, the familiarity of a foreign space forming though the knowledge of Kojiro’s existence in this part of the city.

Another street, another flight of marble stairs with stupidly low, wide steps, more cobblestone and uneven alleys. Some old lady is leaning out a window with a cigarette between her fingers, and someone further down the street is laughing into their phone.

Kaoru watches as the little, blue dot of his position inches closer and closer to the final destination. If he was more of a romantic, more of a poet—if he was more like Kojiro, he’d think of butterflies in his stomach and the rosy flush of his cheeks as he remembers the warm timbre of Kojiro’s voice.

He isn’t a romantic like Kojiro, so he looks up at the dark sky and the stars, surprisingly clear in this side alley of slippery stone, and some ancient voice of an equally ancient philosopher he read once upon a time echoes in his mind. Something about stars and space and chaos put into order, and how their planet is but one of many, and how insignificant humans are, a mere millisecond on the clock of the world's existence. Maybe the philosopher isn’t that ancient. Maybe he wasn’t a philosopher at all, and maybe it’s just Kaoru’s existentialism showing in his numbing daze of excitement.

Stop worrying, you dolt, Kojiro said when Kaoru must have let his anxiety show at Kojiro’s announcement about going to Italy to study. If we don’t follow our dreams, we might just as well be dead already. Do something stupid and hope for the best once in a while, he had said, and Kaoru had scolded him for being stupid and reckless.

Yet here he is, a week after that stupid message, four months after kissing Kojiro in some odd spur of the moment, afraid of being dead already as Kojiro so stupidly eloquently put it.

A dog barks somewhere, a distant conversation pulls him out of his thoughts. Kaoru feels a bit dizzy from staring up at the sky, and he’s glad the alley is dark and empty and no one can judge him. He must look stupid, he knows, and even in his oddly dazed state he’s capable of scolding himself for maybe being a little bit of a romantic after all.

He walks past more ruins of those grand monuments, the spotlights illuminating old stone a bit dimmer here between buildings, the fence emerging from the wall of a regular building and into the wall of the next one. Kaoru stops to look at it—the ruins, not the stupid fence—and finds himself feeling small again. Someone stood in his exact spot two thousands years ago and looked at the building and didn’t know that Kaoru would be here, two thousand years later, and that they would be coexisting in some odd form of time and space and multiverse that right now is beyond Kaoru’s comprehension.

Somehow, he shakes it off. The ruins will be here tomorrow too, just as they’ve been here, in various states of, well, ruin, for two thousand years. Kaoru’s existentialism is also everlasting, albeit probably for a shorter eternity than the old building. The ruins and his crisis can wait. Kojiro, texting a gotten into town yet? clearly cannot.

As he reads Kojiro’s name on the message notification, the excitement returns threefold. It makes his fingertips tingle in anticipation, and his cheek flush again. It’s stupid, he tells himself, even though that romantic part of his (that doesn’t exist) is clearly stating otherwise.

Another street corner, another flight of stairs, this time down and a bit shorter. The steps are crooked and polished by two thousand years of steps (or less, Kaoru doesn’t know the history). The marble is chipped where it meets the buildings it’s nestled between, and it’s nothing short of charming. A fountain is spitting out drinkable water at the bottom of the flight, the proof of the ancient aqueducts still running, more or less uninterrupted, since it was built. The glory of those romans is shown everywhere, from that water, to those alleys planned by someone centuries ago. How is he supposed not to feel absolutely inferior among all this grandeur? How is he supposed not to be dead already, when the architects and creators and great inventors and painters and artists left such a huge impact on the world, and he is but a speck of dust in comparison?

The blue dot on the map reaches its destination. The door is wooden and heavy, and locked. The light above it shines weakly, and it’s too dark for Kaoru to read. Which is your doorbell? he texts, and fumbles with the flashlight on his phone, fingers clumsy (from excitement? from lack of sleep?). His phone vibrates as he shines the flashlight on the brass buttons, trying to read the worn labels. No “Kojiro” on there; maybe he hasn’t put up his name yet, maybe it’s his landlord's name by one of those little buttons. He opens the message from Kojiro to check the answer, and tries to find it on the doorbells.

He never finds it, because he doesn’t have the time to. He’s distracted by quick steps that run on the other side of the wooden door. He never finds it, because suddenly the doors pull open wide, and Kojiro’s frame (was he always this tall?) fills the space.

His cheeks are flushed, and his hair is messy, as if he’s brushed his hand through it too many times in the same nervous anticipation that is thrumming in Kaoru’s veins. His breath is short as if he ran (he did), and Kaoru’s breath hitches as if mirroring him.

“You’re here,” Kojiro says, and Kaoru doesn’t have any of his usually smart, witty answers to Kojiro’s stupid, unwitty questions.

“I am,” he simply says, meeting Kojiro’s eyes. They’re shining, like the wet cobblestone, like the once-golden statues on top of the triumph columns now illuminated by spotlights, like the stars that for some reasons are brighter here than back home.

“You’re here,” Kojiro repeats, and reaches out, and not reaching back simply isn’t an option. The chaos of the city, the planets, the universe, his mind—it’s all unimportant the moment he feels Kojiro’s fingertips against his. The feeling of being small and unimportant burns away under Kojiro’s amazed gaze as he smiles, almost bewildered, fingers closing around Kaoru’s bony wrist.

Suddenly, he is pressed against Kojiro’s chest (was he always this big????), with Kojiro’s arms around him, and he is anything but small and unimportant—he’s the sun, the ruler on top of the column, the lover of emperor Hadrian that has countless statues in his image and a city called after him.

And as Kojiro finally, finally brings his hands to Kaoru’s cheeks and kisses him, not hurriedly and half-assed like Kaoru did four moths ago but properly, fiercely, mirroring all the emotions Kaoru will never be able to put into words—Kaoru has never felt more alive.

also to be found on ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43434849

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